Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney spent nearly four hours of screen time trying to convince audiences that Elon Musk — the man who broke the legacy press's information monopoly — is a menace to civilization. When the establishment media devotes that kind of runtime to tearing down one man, it tells you exactly who they fear, and why.
Musk opened X to dissenting voices and cost the media cartel its grip on public discourse. This documentary is the cartel hitting back.
Gibney's film, simply titled Musk, was released Friday after months of legal threats from its subject. Musk called it a "hit piece" and said "dogshit is worth more respect," adding that Gibney "has ZERO integrity" and is a "horrible human." When Gibney requested an interview, Musk's response was posting on X that "Gibney is a douche."
So Gibney built an AI avatar of Musk — fed only the billionaire's own public statements — and "interviewed" that instead. The Free Press described the result as "a cartoonish Bond villain, sitting on a gaming chair and spitting out decontextualized snippets meant to support the film's not-so-subtle thesis: Unless we somehow stop him, Elon Musk will destroy the world." The film's poster shows Musk standing atop the globe, having cut it in half with a chainsaw.
The documentary traces Musk's arc from Silicon Valley darling to MAGA-aligned free speech advocate. Ars Technica noted the film "ends up feeling like two very different films" — a relatively measured first half covering the early entrepreneurial years, and a "markedly different" and "more adversarial" second half after Musk's purchase of Twitter and embrace of Trump. Gibney presents Musk as "an investor cosplaying as an inventor whose real genius is pumping stocks and dazzling investors."
Interview subjects skew heavily toward detractors and estranged personal connections: ex-wife Justine Musk, former girlfriend Ashley St. Clair (mother of Musk's 14th child), tech critic Cory Doctorow, and AI skeptic Geoffrey Hinton. Gibney admitted that many of Musk's friends and business colleagues refused to participate, telling the director, "I can't talk to you because Elon won't give you permission." David Byrne contributed an original song titled "Let Me Sell You a Dream" — which tells you everything about the film's framing before you watch a single frame.
Follow the money: Universal Pictures is distributing. And even Universal wavered. Gibney confirmed the studio hesitated on an international release, suggesting to The New York Times that Universal may have been concerned that "in this political environment, a film about the world's richest man was problematic." Universal publicly denied any shift, stating: "We've always been committed to releasing this film, and our plans haven't changed." A major studio nearly backed down from releasing a documentary about a public figure with extraordinary influence over American political discourse — and the pressure came not from government censors, but from the political and economic discomfort of taking on someone who could retaliate at scale.
Ars Technica framed the film as exceptionally well-made and "not" a hit piece, while acknowledging its adversarial turn. The Free Press saw a monomaniacal character assassination that inadvertently proves Musk's point about his enemies. Variety focused on the studio's nerves. What none of them grapple with directly is the most relevant fact: a near-four-hour documentary targeting the man who opened a speech platform to dissident voices is itself the best evidence that the platform needed opening.
The open question is whether this film changes a single mind, or just gives the people who already despise Musk four hours of confirmation.
