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I watched the damning 4-hour Elon Musk documentary so you don't have to · Best of: Features

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  I watched the damning four-hour Elon Musk documentary so you don't have
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  to. This article is being read by an automated voice
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  generated by Everlet. The new four hour documentary Musk opens with a
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  view of Earth from outer space. The planet gleams against the dark
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  background before it quickly explodes into a ball of flame. It's a
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  foreboding image to preface a film about the richest and arguably most
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  powerful man alive, Elon Musk. The movie is the product of four
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  years of work from director Alex Gibney, whose previous films have investigated
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  Scientology, Going Clear, Scientology in the Prison of Belief, and Elizabeth Holmes,
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  the Inventor, Out for Blood in Silicon Valley. Gibney initially approached the
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  film as something of a Musk fan, an owner of a Tesla
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  energy storage system and solar panels. But over the course of his
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  research, it's clear that he becomes skeptical of Musk's mythic image, eventually
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  equating his fan base with cultists. Musk refused to participate in
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  the film so the filmmakers made a macho looking artificial intelligence avatar
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  of the tech titan that delivers lines pulled from archival interviews. It's
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  an uncanny but effective way of working around the lack of access.
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  Debuting in theaters nationwide on October sixteenth, the film generously includes a
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  much needed intermission. Although Musk's father does make an appearance, his childhood
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  in South Africa is largely glossed over, instead tracing Elon's career beginning
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  with his earliest enterprise, the online city guide website Zip two. Its
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  sale to Compoq Computer in 1999 earned him his first big payout,
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  twenty two million dollars. Next comes the early payment platform X.com Comma,
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  which Musk was edged out of but still earned him another massive
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  payday, to the tune of 180 million. Then came SpaceX, followed by
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  Tesla, Starlink, Twitter, XAI, and the Department of Government Efficiency, with running
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  themes that Musk overpromises, underperforms, takes credit for others work, and somehow
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  keeps failing upward. If you're the type of news addict who's followed
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  Musk's career closely over the past decade, there won't be much breaking
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  news here, but seeing the full arc of Musk's triumphs and ineptitudes
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  hammers home his immense power and underlying darkness. His environmental influence via
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  Tesla is undercut by the irresponsible rollout of autonomous driving and shady
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  abuse of carbon credit programs. One of his superpowers, according to the
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  filmmakers, is his uncanny ability to milk money from the federal government.$21
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  billion in government funds for SpaceX alone. Dodging government regulation is another
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  one of his biggest strengths, with Doe's cuts coincidentally overlapping with agencies
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  investigating his companies. However, when it comes to saving the government money,
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  his doge project fails miserably, ending up inflating The
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  deficit due to the firing of thousands of IRS officers. Prominent featured
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  talking heads include Musk PayPal colleague and LinkedIn co founder Reed Hoffman,
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  and former friend neuroscientist Sam Harris, plus tech journalists Kara Swisher and
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  Zoe Schiffer. The all offer damning perspectives on Musk, evolution over the
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  years, from engineering wondergind to mad technoking, and ruthless dismantler of the
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  federal government. The most compelling voices are Musk's former romantic partners. The
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  father of fourteen children that we know about, Musk has remarked that
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  he wants a legion of offspring. Grimes and Shivon Zillis, with whom
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  he had a recent public falling out, are not interviewed, but the
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  filmmakers speak extensively with Justine Musk, the mother of his first five
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  children, and Ashley Saint St. Clair a conservative influencer who recently revealed she
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  also had a child by Elon. Justine remarked how she’s came to
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  understand the term gaslighting from her husband, how he'd tell her fifteen
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  things wrong with her and once said that if she were his
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  employee, he would fire her. She also goes into details regarding the
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  death of their first child, and his reprehensible treatment of their transgender
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  daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson. Saint Clair offers the most salacious details. She
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  describes Elon's DMs on X as a gaitling gun of sperm, insinuating
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  that she's far from the only woman he's pursued online. She turned
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  down a massive forty million dollisclosure agreement, freeing her to share messages
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  from their early courtship, as well personal texts, many of which are
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  shown on screen. Although candid, she dodges some lines of questioning, including
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  Elon's reported drug use. But she does go so far as to
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  question the certainty with which he viewed President Donald Trump's re election.
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  Stopping just short of implying a conspiracy, Elon has threatened the film
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  with a defamation suit, but has not filed one. Overall, Musk is
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  an expertly crafted documentary and feels like a definitive portrait of a
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  man who at just age fifty-five has had unparalleled influence on American
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  life. For those who've followed his career over the years though, there
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  won't be many fresh revelations, and the four-hour runtime makes watching it
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  feel like running a marathon. The film concludes just like it begins,
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  with an exploding image of Earth. For all his power, the film
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  implies, Musk is no longer aiming his influence at saving the planet,
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  he's much more likely to lead to its demise.