Musk
As tech billionaires accrue more and more power and influence over the U.S. Government, one has gotten right inside of it with disastrous results and the potential for inconceivable future harm. His name is Elon "Musk."
Laura's Review: A
Documentarian Alex Gibney's ("Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," "Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief") scope changed when his subject was suddenly tagged to head DOGE, the filmmaker expanding his already revelatory work about the man who claimed to be the founder of Tesla and SpaceX with disturbing allegations about the man's ulterior motives. The well-informed may already know 70-80% of the film's content, but the way Gibney has shaped the material is nothing short of horrifying.
As Musk failed to give Gibney access (their 'X' exchange? 'Alex Gibney is a douche.' 'Douché.'), Gibney has come up with the next best, and somewhat tongue-in-cheek, way to represent the man, pictured in a brown leather jacket seated in a brown leather captain's chair, with AI, Gibney's staff having been instructed to load everything the man has said publicly into a database, so it's Musk's own words we are hearing in his simulated voice. Looking very self-satisfied throughout, the first thing Gibney's Musk expounds upon is his belief that we're living in a simulation, his love of video games well known (and another device Gibney employs for reenactment animation). After showing one of the first movie clips he'll use, a prescient film from his childhood, 'The Man Who Could Work Miracles,' Gibney asks the question he sets out to answer - 'How did Musk assume so much power and why have we given it to him?'
Tech journalist Kara Swisher steps in to talk about Musk's first venture, Zip2 (essentially putting the Yellow Pages on the Internet), which he managed to flip for $22 million before hooking up with Peter Thiel on Paypal, which will be the first example of a company easing him out (and vice versa). Musk's first wife, Justine, provides personal insights, including the misogynistic and egomaniacal attitude that had him telling her he was 'the alpha' during their wedding dance. Then Gibney exhibits how this 'genius entrepreneur' is really neither, instead someone who infiltrates companies like Tesla and SpaceX and assumes the role of founder before using smoke and mirrors to drive up stock prices (the parallels to Elizabeth Holmes' Theranos are many). And yes, it was the Obama administration who engaged Musk and SpaceX before Musk felt jilted by Biden when he failed to invite him to his White House Electric Vehicle Summit (although a Tesla was prominently on display), something the billionaire would counter using Trump in a shoddy display as a car salesman in front of the White House.
Elon Musk is responsible for the loss of at least hundreds of thousands of lives, beginning with around 70 who were killed by believing his Teslas outfitted with AutoPilot were actually self-driving cars (Gibney lays out how the feature is more akin to Cruise Control and that claims made in a 'Paint It Black' video were a complete hoax). The stories, including one about a man who claimed the feature saved his life only to be killed when his car drove straight into a truck a couple weeks later, unable to distinguish its white side from the sky, are horrific. And Musk was being criminally investigated with potential for jail time for this fraud, one of dozens of investigations into his companies. And so, he cozied up to another man looking to stay out of jail while profiting from the U.S. Government (Musk's companies have received $22 billion in federal contracts alone), Donald J. Trump. Musk poured $300 million into Trump's campaign and potentially messed with voting machines via StarLink according to his then girlfriend and baby mama, Ashley St. Clair, who turned down $15 million plus $100K monthly in order to speak her mind here (and boy, did she have her eyes opened beginning with Elon's treatment of her predecessor, Grimes, and their son X). St. Clair does demur on his wildly reported and self-admitted drug use, but the man's mission to repopulate the world with his own sperm is also covered here, as are his ludicrous claims about colonizing Mars.
Gibney lays out the ineptitude, total failure and incredible damage caused by DOGE, cuts to USAID alone estimated to have cost well over half a million lives, many of those children, not to mention not only having not achieved its goal of cutting government spending, but having actually increased it. Offering buyouts to government employees resulted in the best and brightest being first out the door. Then there is the group of 19 and 20 year-olds he hired to do this work who illegally gained access to Government records about its citizens, which leads Gibney to also ask why Musk is so focused on self-driving cars, which use cameras to collect data. The man who once cautioned against AI is now one of its driving forces behind it with his child porn creating and Hitler worshipping GROK and all that data could be used to train AI to corrupt elections. Forget horror movies for Halloween - there is nothing scarier than "Musk" being released this October.
Bleecker Street releases "Musk" in select theaters on 10/9/26, opening wide on 10/16/26.
