Title: Musk
Describe This Movie In One Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Quote:
INDY: Nazis. I hate these guys.
Brief Plot Synopsis: A hitchhiker’s guide to speed-running the End Times.
Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 4 out of 5
Tagline: “From Academy Award-Winning Documentarian Alex Gibney: The Definitive Story of the World’s Richest Man.”
Better Tagline: “Concerning!”
Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: Chronicles the rise of Elon Musk from his early days selling unprofitable companies for ridiculous amounts of money to a genuinely dangerous political force with the potential to catastrophically affect world events. This despite his (possibly bogus) claims of wanting a better future for mankind.
“Critical” Analysis: In our current reality, it’s hard to think of another person experiencing such a rapid turnaround from genius visionary to despised villain as Elon Musk. Guys like Jeff Zuckerberg and Bill Gates were reviled even before they fell out of general favor. And none ever enjoyed the same slavering fandom.
Alex Gibney, whose previous efforts include going after U.S. torture of prisoners (Taxi to the Dark Side) and the Church of Scientology (Going Clear), takes on a Herculean task with Musk. Not only providing a detailed look at the details behind Musk’s rise, but also methodically laying out how the world’s richest man made a heel turn into extreme right-wing politics.
And he did this without input from Musk himself, who wouldn’t sit for an interview with the director. So Gibney took hundreds of hours of recorded interviews and created a digital simulation of Musk. The effect is almost as disquieting as watching the man himself.
Gibney insists he embarked on this endeavor with an initial admiration for Musk’s ambition and “unorthodox” business methods. Whether or not that survived up to the point Musk called him a douche on X is unknown. Suffice to say, Gibney is no longer a fan.
Musk begins with a younger, pre-hair transplant Elon discovering the dotcom secret to making money. Sell your shares in an unprofitable venture (Zip2), invest in another company (X.com), then get booted from the resulting new company (PayPal). Musk’s ouster was a result of, in the words of fellow tech ghoul Peter Thiel, “driving the company into the ground.” He’d hear that again, eventually. In the meantime, eBay’s subsequent purchase of PayPal netted Musk another $250 million.
It’s at this point in the almost four-hour doc (yes, there’s an intermission), that the tone is still somewhat laudatory. Musk goes on to co-found SpaceX in order to design their own rockets (he’d previously — and unsuccessfully — tried to buy ICBMs from Russia). With federal funding for NASA drying up, SpaceX became the key beneficiary in the U.S.’s investment in private space exploration. And his story may have taken an entirely different trajectory if SpaceX’s 4th attempted launch had gone as badly as the first three.
But it didn’t, and that success also opened the way for him to invest in Tesla. With hefty tax breaks and discounts from the federal government, of course.
Gibney did secure interviews with several key figures, including Musk’s first wife Justine, tech journalist Kara Swisher, and deputy NASA administrator Lori Garver. One assumes these were some of the few free of NDAs. He also talked to Tesla founder Martin Eberhard, who was forced out by Musk so the latter could claim co-founder credit. According to Gibney, investment is more readily available to someone who can claim that title. Regardless of whether you actually, you know, “founded” the company (Eberhard tells Gibney *he* could call himself a founder).
Tesla’s subsequent IPO would help make him the world’s richest man. He also used false mileage and shady “battery swap” claims to secure zero emission tax breaks to mask losses and make Tesla look profitable. But the wheels start coming off (pun intended) as it becomes apparent that Musk cheaped out on features that could’ve prevented horrific Tesla crashes.
Gibney then pivots to Musk’s South African childhood. If there’s any sympathy to be had for the film’s subject, it’s here. A self-described super nerd, Musk was regularly bullied. His dad Errol (also interviewed) is apparently a real … piece of work. He constantly insulted his soon-to-be ex-wife’s intelligence, for example, and blamed a lot of his son’s current behavior on the fact people in America aren’t in the habit of punching people in the face when they insult them.
He may have a point there, actually.
The back half of Musk focuses on his current incarnation. Neuroscientist and atheist poster boy Sam Harris attributes much of Musk’s recent incarnation to COVID. Specifically, that the pandemic “broke his brain.” It fueled a renewed interest in politics, thanks to local governments having the temerity to try and protect workers by allowing them to work remotely. This is also when Musk started employing dark money routes to support far right politicians. Musk bought Twitter shortly thereafter, ostensibly because of its attacks on “free speech” (i.e. banning the Babylon Bee and Donald Trump). That’s all going great, by the way.
But it was latching on to Trump that brought Musk into his current form. His petulance and vanity have always loomed in the background of his actions. But now he wields an unprecedented amount of power. Nowhere is that more apparent than with the Department of Governmental Efficiency. Or “DOGE,” because Musk remains aggressively uncool. And Gibney hammers home the possibly irreparable harm DOGE has done. Not just to domestic programs, but the lives of millions abroad.
All this doesn’t even factor in Musk’s personal odiousness. Like claiming to be the one holding his son as he “drew his last breath” (it was actually Justine). Or enthusiastically embracing white supremacy. How about declaring his very much alive trans child died from “the woke mind virus?” Or impregnating one of his co-workers without his wife Grimes’ knowledge. Former MAGA influencer (and Musk baby mama) Ashley St. Clair provides details about his search for “breeders.” All part of his weird obsession with (single-handedly apparently) raising the birth rate. In true pro-birth fashion, he’s since distanced himself from almost all his children and cut financial support to their mothers.
The movie leaves us with little good news to cling to. He previously gave $290 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign, and is currently donating comparable amounts to Republican midterm candidates. [Anecdotal, but I saw three Ken Paxton ads in a row on Al-Jazeera news, of all places.] Fallout from DOGE continues to be catastrophic both at home and abroad. GrokAI, which once described itself as “MechaHitler,” has been integrated with the Pentagon, and its data centers pose grave environmental hazards.
Musk is a withering look at what happens when you give a sociopath the keys to the kingdom. What also dawns on you at the end of its four-hour runtime is the bleak realization that we’re once again lorded over by charlatans. Trump, of course, is the reigning conman-in-chief. But it’s Musk — who finally found in Trump a suitable daddy surrogate — who’s ascended to dangerous levels of power based almost solely on the cult of his own bullshit. Gibney describes him best as an “inventor of his own value.” Which is a charitable way of describing a narcissistic bullshit artist who’s amassed an unprecedented fortune and rabid cult of followers. Said bullshit artist having already inextricably inserted himself into our politics and technological frameworks there be no permanent way to remove him.
Like I said, concerning.
Musk is in theaters today.
