Veteran documentarian Alex Gibney’s film about the richest broligarch on the planet has been one of the most eagerly anticipated films at the Venice film festival this year. The Oscar-winning 72-year-old, who has in previous films taken on the US military, the Catholic church, Vladimir Putin and Scientology, has been investigating the tech tycoon’s ascent and speaking to people in his orbit since late 2022, before his Maga turn and Trump 2.0. The result clocks in at just under four hours and presents a comprehensive answer to how on earth one man managed to amass so much money and political influence.
It is shocking less for any individual new pieces of information Gibney has unearthed than for its totality. Here are six things the film tells us: Musk is a genius – at tricking the government into giving him assistance At Maga rallies, Musk has been introduced as “America’s biggest capitalist”, but Gibney reminds us that he’s always been more than happy to go begging to the state for handouts – such as by cosying up to Obama to gain government contracts for SpaceX to launch satellites for Nasa and the military. The film zooms in on a Tesla press event in June 2013, where Musk unveiled a new “battery swap” system that promised to remove and replace the drained battery pack of a Model S with a fully charged one in just 90 seconds.
As it turns out, the technology was never rolled out, and interviewees tell Gibney that a demonstration site at Harris Ranch was barely used for the process. Instead, the film-maker suggests that Musk’s over-promise allowed Tesla to get more ZEV credits from the Californian government, which are awarded to electric car makers based on range and which Musk could then sell to more polluting manufacturers. In spite of everything, there was something admirable about Musk once Gibney’s film serves as a reminder that Musk has never been in possession of charm or charisma – the petulant perma-poster retweeting praise is not far from the self-regarding twentysomething start-up bro.
But what he did with the funds he earned from selling shares of his first software companies, Zip2, X.com and PayPal, was unusual, Gibney concedes. Where others turned to venture capital, Musk turned to engineering. It’s partially an act, we learn from his ex-wife Justine when she recalls how self-consciously he picked his wardrobe, telling her “I can’t look cool or hip, because I need to look like an engineer”.
But in footage of Musk biting his nails with fellow engineers during SpaceX rocket launches his enthusiasm and emotional investment is genuine, and at times infectious. Musk’s procreation drive is motivated by a fear of civilisational breakdown Musk has 14 publicly known children, and sources tell Gibney that there are probably more. Some of them were conceived in romantic relationships but more recently the circumstances of their birth seem to have been entirely transactional, via sperm donations to employees of his companies.
In a text message to one of his ex-partners, influencer Ashley St Clair, Musk said his desire to have “a legion of children” was driven by a fear of “civil war”. The documentary mostly places the roots of that fear in his South African childhood (in one scene, his father Errol Musk talks with no visible remorse of shooting three intruders in their home). The sordid business of negotiating disbursements and NDAs with the mothers of Musk’s children are handled by his right-hand man Jared Birchall, a devout Mormon whom St Clair calls his “henchman” and “demon”.
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