Release Date: October 9th, 2026
Format: DCP (AMC Orange 30 in Orange, CA)
Written by: Alex Gibney and Michael J. Palmer
Directed by: Alex Gibney
3.5 Stars
Alex Gibney’s Musk does an exhaustive job of documenting Elon Musk’s rise to prominence (domination?) in American culture and, most recently, politics over its 235-minute run time.
Is that the point of the film, though? Gibney, in his voiceover narration, says it is. His film’s purpose is explanatory, he says. He seeks to simply answer the question, how did a socially awkward dot.com nerd from South Africa evolve into a modern-day Tony Stark, simultaneously inventing groundbreaking technologies while also serving as humanity’s savior in the 21st century?
It’s a rhetorical question, and how much pleasure you derive from Gibney’s +4-hour exercise in answering it will determine how much you like his film.
The quick answer is that Elon Musk is a confidence man. He, in fact, does not invent groundbreaking technologies. He does not invent anything, actually. He’s a man that, over the last three decades, has honed an ability to sell a vision, whether it’s fully autonomous electric cars, or humans on Mars, or benevolent artificial intelligence. To say that none of these came to fruition, and likely will never come to fruition, is to miss the point. The point, as any good con man will tell you, is to sell the idea and take the money. After that, let the haze of time and delays fog over promises made. Move goal posts, subtly, encourage patience, then when the financing finally begins to wane, get outta Dodge. There’s a sucker in every town. Pitch those dopes your next revolutionary idea. Interplanetary colonization? For mere billions of dollars, no more than a trillion (promise), who knows what I, Elon Musk could do?
Until, of course, he doesn’t.
I had a few issues with Gibney’s creative choices - specifically his use of an AI Elon as a stand-in for the real Elon, which seems as much about antagonizing real Elon as it is about providing introspection - but there’s no denying his research. It’s overwhelming at times. By the end, when Dark MAGA Elon has emerged, Gibney has convinced us that our own fragile democracy is now in the hands of a jack of all trades, but a master of none.
The fact is, he is not a builder. He is not a programmer. He is not an engineer. He is not an inventor or a rocket scientist or a genius. He is a little man who dreams big, and outside of a deteriorating Donald Trump, he’s the most powerful man in the world.
The sky is the limit, but he’d argue it isn’t.
