Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard remembers having dinner with Elon Musk in the early 2000s, when the billionaire became a key investor in the fledgling electric car company. Musk uttered words that Eberhard would never forget: "One thing that nobody can take away from you is that you're the founder of Tesla."
It left a real mark on Eberhard's mind, since Musk would later take unconditional credit for Tesla's runaway success and anoint himself its sole founder, setting off litigation and an eventual settlement that allowed Eberhard and Musk, along with three others, to all claim the title of co-founders of Tesla Motors.
Director Alex Gibney believes those remarks provide a glimpse into who Musk really is: A confidence man who will deceive, gaslight and fabricate to get what he wants.
Eberhard is one of many people who fell in and out of Musk's world who are featured in Gibney's new documentary, Musk, which never drags despite its three hour and 45 minute runtime (which includes a 10-minute intermission). It opens in theaters on October 16.
The film traces Musk's path from his early days as a dot-com-era entrepreneur in Silicon Valley to the present, as one of the world's wealthiest people, exerting extraordinary influence over politics and culture around the world. While many people may be familiar with the general outlines of Musk's story, Gibney taps pivotal characters at crucial moments for the tech mogul to infuse this biography with new life.
Along the way, the Oscar-winning filmmaker, whose past documentaries have taken on corporate greed and government malfeasance, explores Musk's many bitter feuds and contradictions. Gibney attempts to explain how Musk is seen as both a once-in-generational business genius and an impulsive and deranged chaos agent.
I've covered Musk for years, and have been the target of his attacks, so I was initially interested in whether Gibney would dredge up any new revelations, or connect the dots in ways obscured by the steady stream of news about Musk and his many ventures.
While there were very few nuggets of new information, the sheer breadth of the film makes for a stunningly comprehensive accounting of a man Gibney considers a danger to society. We hear from Musk's father, Errol, reflecting on how his son was bullied as a child, there are interviews with Musk's scorned exes, including his first wife, Justine Musk, prying journalists and former business associates who once occupied his orbit.
Early in the film, a far younger Musk is seen on a television program declaring his three animating principles as developing the internet, transitioning the economy to sustainable energy and exploring space. That trio of objectives has remained remarkably consistent for someone whose views and business goals seem to be in a perpetual state of flux.
Gibney first began the project in 2023, thinking it would be a tighter and more focused look at the tech titan. But then Musk barreled his way into Donald Trump's sphere during the 2024 campaign and soon entered the White House, taking a wrecking ball to swaths of the federal government through his cost-cutting effort, DOGE. It led to some observers describing Musk as the "shadow vice president." So Gibney retooled the film as a more ambitious and much longer project to convey just how many facets of modern life are being influenced by one man.
"Particuarly in this bewildering world of inputs that we all live in," Gibney said at a news conference at the Venice Film Festival, where the documentary premiered on Tuesday, "a lot of incidents happen, and there are so many trees, but sometimes it's useful to stitch together a narrative that shows the forest."
Gibney saw parallels between Musk and his past film subjects, including his documentary on the Enron scandal, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and the downfall of the Silicon Valley blood-testing startup executive Elizabeth Holmes in The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley.
"The story of Musk was not in a way a new tech story," Gibney said in Venice. "His story is the story of old wine in a new bottle. His story turns out to be the story of the confidence man, the stock pumper, his wealth and power comes from inflated stock."
Musk did not agree to be interviewed by Gibney, so the filmmaker dove into the archives. (Musk's lawyer claimed in a letter to the film's production company that Gibney "refused" to fact-check the documentary with Musk's team, saying Gibney defamed the billionaire. Musk accused Gibney on X of "fabricating a false film.")
Without Musk's participation, Gibney made a risky choice when it came time to address the many claims and allegations leveled by the billionaire's former exes and business partners: He uses a creepy AI-generated avatar of Musk talking directly to the camera. It's impossible to get used to it.
Appearing svelte and wearing a black leather jacket, AI Musk sits in a gaming chair in front of red and blue lights and echoes words actually spoken by him in podcast appearances and speeches.
Gibney has described his use of AI as "intentionally ironic," but for a project that tackles all the big weighty subjects of our time, the deepfake Musk only serves to cheapen and distract an otherwise serious film.
I felt similarly about other stunts that Gibney deploys. Near the end of the film, Gibney decides to ask Musk's AI tool, Grok, whether robots will save us, an avoidable ask-the-chatbot cliché that doesn't add much.
There are also scenes that transform the film into a first-person- shooter-style video game, including one with a chainsaw-wielding Musk slicing up federal agencies, a far too on-the-nose reference to DOGE that takes the film's narrative off course.
In defending these choices, Gibney wrote in a director's statement handed out to press at a recent screening in Los Angeles that his aim was to subvert "Musk's favorite tropes of video gaming and simulations," in an effort to showcase "the dangers of becoming like the 'Game Master' in Ready Player One."
Yet the moments that are the most damning of Musk's character are when Gibney lays bare the gulf between Musk's words and reality.
In a section of the film about the safety of Tesla's full self-driving software, Gibney shows footage from a deposition in which a company engineer reveals that a promotional video claiming to show a Tesla driving fully autonomously was staged. The engineer said when the car was filmed trying to park itself, it crashed into a fence.
Even as Musk has repeatedly celebrated the self-driving technology, 65 deaths have been linked to car crashes where Tesla's software was a contributing factor, according to a public database that tracks National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports, court records and news reports. (Tesla says its "Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability are intended for use with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment.")
In February 2025, Musk bragged on X that DOGE had fed the United States Agency for International Development "into the wood chipper." Gibney speaks to the agency's former administrator, Samantha Power, who gets choked up with emotion as she explains how the closure of USAID is projected to result in more than 14 million preventable deaths. The film then cuts to heart-wrenching footage of families and children in Africa who have learned nutritional aid was being cut off.
As the repercussions of Musk's actions are tallied, Gibney keeps coming back to the same question: How does his wealth keep growing despite it all?
Lawrence Fossi, a longtime critic of Musk and Tesla, appears on screen to offer an explanation: investing in Musk's companies is not a bet on corporate America, "it's investing in a religion."
This observation gets to the heart of Gibney's central argument about Musk: that he is a hype artist whose highest skill is making financiers and the public believe in him.
"His motives may have been pure at the beginning. But over time, in an attempt to get his companies to succeed, he ruthlessly broke the rules many of us live by. Musk is just the latest example of what I call noble cause corruption. Essentially, it's a belief that you're justified in breaking the rules because you think you are a force for good. Over time, as you begin to imagine you can get away with anything, the corruption becomes as total as the zealotry," Gibney said in promotional materials provided to the press.
Ashley St. Clair, formerly a pro-Trump influencer who has turned against the MAGA movement, plays a major role in the film. She's Musk's ex and the mother of one of his children.
In the film, St. Clair says one of the more outlandish and confounding claims Musk made to her was that he would "unleash the anomaly in the matrix" ahead of the 2024 presidential election to ensure Donald Trump would win. She said Musk texted her that he has "over 10 thousand lasers in space." (NPR obtained and authenticated the texts between Musk and St. Clair.)
Gibney asked St. Clair if she understood this to be a reference to Musk's SpaceX. St. Clair replied, "I don't know where else he has lasers," before dwelling on the moment, as if to force the viewer to think hard about Musk's sci-fi gibberish.
Election officials repeatedly debunked the false narrative purporting to show a connection between SpaceX's Starlink satellites and the November vote count. Nonetheless, the theory ricocheted online in the days after the 2024 election.
Musk's legal threat to Gibney seized on that moment with St. Clair, saying the film elevating a disproven theory is problematic. Musk's lawyer wrote that "the insinuation is false" and "the material refuting it is public."
While most of Gibney's film is rooted in solid facts, he does dabble in conspiratorial thinking in the scene about the "lasers in space," and later in the film when he raises the specter of Musk using DOGE data to somehow interfere in the November midterms, another idea without any evidence.
Throughout the film, other Musk texts emerge.
After The Wall Street Journal published an article detailing Musk's alleged recreational drug use, which was raising concerns among leaders at SpaceX, St. Claire said Musk personally called News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch in hopes he would intervene to stop the reporting. He did not.
Musk then texted St. Clair that the Journal's articles were "saying that I'm high all the time."
Musk added in a separate text: "I mean, I'm high a little … sure," punctuating the message with a shrugging emoji.
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