Parents' Guide to Musk

"How had Elon Musk acquired so much power, and how had we given it to him?" This is the ultimate question underpinning Alex Gibney's sprawling, four-hour-long documentary MUSK, which focuses on the infamous tech billionaire and futurist who, in the last 10 years, Gibney argues, has transformed from a largely celebrated man of the future to a divisive, self-described internet troll obsessed with tearing down the bureaucratic state and government regulations to enrich himself and inflate his own ego. The film combines archival footage, interviews with those around Musk, and, most controversially, an AI avatar of Musk himself trained on his collected interviews (as Musk would not sit down for an interview for this documentary) to chart Musk's rise from Silicon Valley firebrand to taking over Tesla to his eventual alliance with President Donald Trump during the 2024 election and his subsequent running of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Over the four-hour run time, Gibney systematically builds his thesis that Musk's wealth has been built not on the strength of his ideas but on the myth that has been carefully built around him—a myth, Gibney argues, that hides some pretty dark skeletons in Musk's closet, from drug use to potential election interference to reported spousal abuse and corporate malfeasance. Along the way, Musk is shown falling deep into a "mind virus" far different from the one he projects onto his political enemies, as COVID-19 lockdowns and his daughter's transition pull him even further to the right.