Elon Musk is a really familiar figure to Ars readers, offered his huge impact (for much better and even worse) on the innovation sector over the last 20 years. Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney’s newest biographical documentary– merely entitled Musk— covers a great deal of widely known ground and challenges the thoroughly crafted public image of Musk as a visionary tech titan.

Gibney’s documentary provides Musk as more of a Gilded Age self-confidence guy, rejiggered for the 21st century: a financier cosplaying as a creator whose genuine genius is pumping stocks and amazing financiers and the general public alike with visions of a state-of-the-art utopian future. The movie is bound to press all the ideal outrage buttons, whether one is a Musk fan or a critic– that makes it quite an item of the strange social media-driven period in which we live.

Gibney has actually been making documentaries given that the 1980s, covering such different topics as Jimi Hendrix, Hunter S. Thompson and gonzo journalism, WikiLeaks, Scientology, Steve Jobs, Elizabeth Holmes (the topic of another upcoming documentary, You Can See Everythingincluding comic Nathan Fielder), Boris Becker, The Sopranos developer David Chase declared Russian disturbance in the United States 2016 governmental election, the opioid epidemic, and bicyclist Lance Armstrong. He snagged his very first Oscar election for 2005’s Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Roomand won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature 2 years later on for Taxi to the Dark Side

Dealing with the topic of Elon Musk appears like a natural development from those earlier works. Gibney has actually never ever been one to avoid debate, however even before Musk’s release, the movie drew the ire of its subject and risks of a libel suit. There were even (yet unproven) reports that Universal Pictures was getting cold feet about theatrically launching the movie in global markets.

There’s definitely no lack of product for Gibney to deal with and the movie covers the most widely known elements of Musk’s life: Tesla and the deaths connected to its driver-assistance systems, SpaceX, Starlink, his purchase of Twitter, his shift from alerting about the threats of AI to totally accepting it with Grok, his welcome of Trump, the development of DOGE, his declared substance abuse, and his 14 (potentially more) kids. Those talked to consist of ex-wife Justine Musk, Kara Swisher, Martin Eberhard, Geoffrey Hinton, previous MAGA influencer Ashley St. Clair (who bore a kid by Musk), Cory Doctorow, Adam Becker, and Sam Harris. David Byrne co-wrote and carried out an initial tune for the soundtrack, “Let Me Sell You a Dream,” integrating more of Musk’s words.