When a taxable has been arsenic exhaustively covered — and arsenic infamous — as Elon Musk, the electric-car-entrepreneur-turned-rocket-man-turned-richest-billionaire-in-the-universe-turned-Twitter-disruptor-turned-DOGE-destroyer-turned-God-only-knows-what-he’ll-do-next, reviews of a documentary astir him thin to lead by plucking retired the film’s incendiary bits of investigative reportage, the ones that consciousness worthy of a news headline. “Musk,” Alex Gibney’s 3-hour-and-45-minute documentary astir the tech bro who would beryllium king, has a fistful of those.
The biggest revelation, to me, was the film’s elaborate history of Musk’s effort to put a self-driving car connected the marketplace — a exertion that’s judge to beryllium present astatine immoderate point, though Musk, successful his title to beryllium first, was acold excessively eager to denote that it had already happened. Tesla released its Autopilot driver-assist strategy successful 2015 (and past the Full Self-Driving Beta programme successful 2020), trading the caller exertion pinch ads that exaggerated the car’s powers. And truthful group were suckered. From the outset, location were accidents. More than 60 fatalities person been linked to Tesla’s driver-assistance systems. Talk astir thing that could put a dent successful your image! But Musk, for the astir part, succeeded successful hushing up the lawsuits, the national investigations, and the fatal crashes, which were grounds of a recklessness that should person fixed the full world pause.
There are different places wherever Gibney colors successful sides of Elon Musk you knew successful a cursory way. It’s well-known that Musk has fathered galore children — at slightest 14, though the group astir him opportunity it’s galore more. He believes his progeny to beryllium portion of a larger warfare against organization decline. The documentary, which features a highly illuminating question and reply pinch his ex Ashley St. Clair, goes into the specifications of really Musk, isolated from his 2 spouses, would zero successful connected young women he thought would make bully “breeders” and get them pregnant, dropping each liking successful them aft the babies were born. (They were required to motion NDAs.) The movie besides goes into specifications of his alleged supplier usage (ketamine, Ecstasy, psychedelic mushrooms).
Yet what makes “Musk” specified a lacerating and important watch, grounded successful Alex Gibney’s supremely insightful but user-friendly mastery of the documentary form, is that it takes this flamboyant and successful galore ways elusive figure, pinch his tech ambitions and cosmic dreams and malignant megalomania, and puts him together, letting america spot really 1 section of his life led to the next, and really the Musk dream wasn’t ever truthful grandiose. You tin spot it germinate correct on pinch his look. In the mid-’90s, astatine his first company, the comparatively humble Zip2 (which fundamentally put the yellowish pages onto the Internet), he looks conscionable for illustration the tech geek he was inside, skinny and unthreatening, pinch receding hairsbreadth and a rabbity grin.
But it’s not agelong earlier his Ayn Rand ambitions commencement to flick through. The hairsbreadth fills in, the assemblage thickens, and the grin gets elevated into a benignant of aggro leer, arsenic Musk makes himself complete into his type of a tech-head Nietzschean superman. Gibney plays astir a bit, creating a synthetic “interview” pinch Musk (who, of course, wouldn’t cooperate pinch him) by putting verbatim quotes of his into the rima of an AI Elon. Late successful the movie, erstwhile Musk is wreaking the havoc of DOGE, we spot him sidesplitting disconnected bureaucrats arsenic if successful a first-person-shooter video game.
From the start, Musk has 3 obsessions: the Internet, energy, and abstraction exploration. He first tried to acquisition aged Russian ICBM rockets (minus the nukes they were built to carry) for $3 to $5 million, and Gibney shows a fitting admiration for the invention of Musk’s abstraction dreams. He was starring a activity that was organic: the privatization of abstraction exploration, which resulted from the U.S. authorities having mislaid each passion for it. The thrill was gone — for NASA, and possibly for the public. But Musk rekindled that (working successful practice pinch President Obama). Sending up rockets was his original and driving obsession. Musk thought of himself arsenic an engineer-magician successful the mold of Steve Jobs. With SpaceX, moreover Musk’s failures (i.e., the first 3 launches) were spectacular. But he mightiness person gone bankrupt if the 4th motorboat hadn’t connected.
In a way, you could opportunity that the first semi-scandal of Musk’s profession was the measurement he took complete Tesla, a sports-car institution co-founded by Martin Eberhard successful 2003, and past erased Eberhard retired of the communicative of the company. Instead, it would each beryllium his, pinch Musk showcased arsenic the sole visionary — the Henry Ford — of the electric-vehicle revolution. His brilliant was trading the Tesla arsenic little a car than a shiny caller tech gizmo connected wheels. Yet this required a batch of fume and mirrors, for illustration the Tesla artillery fraud: the claim, sold successful advertisements, that you could conscionable switch a caller artillery into a Tesla (it would beryllium arsenic easy arsenic replacing 2 double-AAs!), erstwhile successful truth the Tesla artillery weighed 1,000 pounds. What Musk was trading was axenic fiction. When group started having problems pinch the cars, Musk established a boiler room afloat of scammers who took the calls and lied astir really the cars could beryllium fixed. In essence, he was gaslighting his customers. The 2nd scandal, according to the movie, is the measurement he gaslit his first wife, Justine Wilson (who is besides interviewed), aft their first kid died of SIDS-related causes.
“Musk” opens connected thing that’s not caller (I wrote astir it 5 years ago), namely Musk’s ardent belief successful simulation mentation — the conception that we are each very perchance surviving successful a elephantine simulation, an thought bolstered for Musk by his emotion of video games, which became much and much blase successful their creation of simulated realities. The measurement he saw it: Who’s to opportunity that we’re not each conscionable portion of a integer dream landscape, and that location isn’t immoderate cosmic unit retired location playing us?
While it doesn’t walk a batch of clip connected this idea, “Musk” uses it make a point: that anyone who genuinely believes this — and thinks it’s the higher contented — whitethorn not beryllium successful complete possession of his marbles. It’s not that Musk is little than brilliant. It’s that it’s his very brilliance that leads him to put successful the thought that his fruitiest fantasies are reality — for illustration the 1 he began to germinate retired of SpaceX that said we were connected the verge of colonizing Mars. There was nary truth to it. But Musk, for illustration his early frenemy Donald Trump, was starting to deliberation that he had the powerfulness to create his ain reality.
Once you commencement piecing together Musk’s scandals and trim corners and slipshod management, you spot that he’s a creator of mirages who promises much than he delivers. There’s nary mobility that the Tesla, arsenic he yet designed it, is simply a beardown and beautiful car, and that Musk’s early defense of electrical vehicles was a affirmative unit successful the world. But his rocket programme is progressively mired successful a benignant of sci-fi stasis. (His fixation connected Mars is correct retired of the cheesy ’50s.) And erstwhile Musk took complete Twitter, which he had to get truthful overmuch to bargain that he coiled up slashing the institution to ribbons, it was a instruction successful atrocious guidance (which he camouflaged arsenic a testament to free speech), and he past applied that acquisition — arsenic if it were a positive prototype — to his slashing of the authorities nether Trump. He was retired to make demolition look cool. Increasingly, though, his ventures began to look for illustration they were astir small much than Elon’s simulated glory.
Musk, arsenic the documentary makes clear, is simply a genuine if flawed technocratic visionary, a messianic opportunist, and thing of a crackpot. Around the clip he was fixed a cameo successful “Iron Man 2,” he’d begun to deliberation of himself arsenic a Tony Stark figure: a superhero correct retired of the comics. He utilized his Starlink outer exertion to power the warfare successful Ukraine (not needfully successful a bully way), and he became a mega-donor and collaborator of Trump’s, successful nary mini part, to squash the national investigation into the Tesla Auto-Drive fraud. In doing so, he demonstrated that tech fascism doesn’t request to beryllium a shape of government; it tin do an extremity tally astir authorities to power people’s lives by reducing them to cogs. That, “Musk” argues, is the world Elon Musk has been building up to, not intentionally astatine first, but erstwhile he sewage a sensation of power. The movie says that what should scare america astir him is really he coddles his ain interests by passing them disconnected arsenic the world’s.
English (US) · 
Indonesian (ID) · 
