Film Review: Musk

Musk
Director: Alex Gibney
HBO Documentary Films, Jigsaw Productions, Anonymous Content
In Theaters: 10.16.2026

It’s “spooky season,” which means that among other things, it’s a month when we celebrate scary movies. I get a lot of people asking me for recommendations, and if you’re looking to be frightened out of your wits, October is delivering true-life horror stories that dwarf anything that Stephen King or Ari Aster could dream up. If a big-screen Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t enough to make you wet yourself, the only monster more terrifying is hitting the multiplexes this weekend in Alex Gibney’s blistering documentary, Musk.

Musk takes an expansive, deeply skeptical look at Elon Musk’s extraordinary rise from internet entrepreneur to one of the most powerful and controversial figures on Earth. Tracing his journey through PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter/X, the documentary examines how Musk transformed himself from a tech visionary into a billionaire with unprecedented influence over business, media, politics and even warfare. Drawing on interviews with former colleagues, associates, journalists and people from Musk’s personal life, Gibney challenges the mythology surrounding his success and investigates the motivations behind his relentless pursuit of power.

Gibney’s blistering documentary is less interested in uncovering some great hidden secret about Musk than it is in assembling the familiar pieces of his story into one coherent narrative, painting a picture of how “the world’s greatest inventor” got to where he is, despite a dearth of real inventions to his name. Over its expansive running time, the film traces Musk’s transformation from ambitious entrepreneur into a figure with extraordinary influence over technology, politics, media and the future itself. Gibney’s strongest weapon is the archive: Musk’s own words and actions repeatedly provide the most revealing portrait of all, along with interviews from former colleagues, associates and the misled mothers of some of his many offspring. It all brings the blurry mythology surrounding him into focus, with one clear message: the emperor has no clothes, but we still need to have him turn out his pockets. 

The film occasionally strains under its length, and some of its more elaborate flourishes feel unnecessary, but Gibney ultimately makes a compelling case that Musk’s story is not simply about innovation or eccentricity: It is about what happens when immense wealth and unchecked power become concentrated in one person.

One of the most interesting devices that Gibney employs is sequences from the 1937 Lothar Mendes film, The Man Who Could Work Miracles, which is based on a short story by H. G. Wells. The story is about an ordinary man, played by Roland Young, who is given the power to make anything he wants happen simply by willing it to be so. The result is a man who didn’t learn the lesson of Jurassic Park: Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should. The parallel between the film and Musk’s unchecked power, including his disastrous (as well as amoral and self-serving) time at DOGE, is hardly subtle, but it’s not meant to be. Gibney’s film is about pulling away the curtain and showing us who Musk really is, how he got to where he is, what drives him and issuing a warning — Musk’s upward momentum is like a SpaceX rocket: spectacular but volatile, and he couldn’t care less if he sets the launchpad and everyone on it ablaze, as long as he continues his ascent to nowhere in particular. 

As far as the use of an AI-generated Musk, I found it to be eerily effective in presenting a more handsome and debonair version of the tech trillionaire who seems too good to be true, because he’s neither good nor true.   

If there’s a major flaw to Musk, it’s that for the most part, it’s just preaching to the choir. Those who see it won’t need any convincing that this man is a real threat to our future. But if even a few fence-sitters are swayed by what this movie has to say, it’s more than worthwhile. —Patrick Gibbs 

Read more film reviews by Patrick Gibbs:
Film Review: You Can See Everything
How Mu Zhengyang Made All Wishes Come True!

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