‘Musk’ Review: Gibney Doc is Essential Viewing

Grounded, entertaining, and uncompromising in its analysis of its central subject, Alex Gibney’s documentary explores Elon Musk’s rise, influence and power and urges us to think for ourselves.

Clocking in at nearly four hours, Musk not only succeeds at providing an answer, but also raises enough questions for viewers to want to investigate further and draw their own conclusions. Somehow, the film manages to be both the supremely entertaining satire of a man who celebrated the first successful launch of a rocket by yelling “America, f*ck yeah,” and a grounded, thought-provoking analysis of the very serious impact his actions have had on U.S. and global politics, and even on human lives.

Unsurprisingly, Musk himself refused to participate, but Gibney and co-writer/editor Michael J. Palmer (Citizen K) find a creative solution that perfectly sets the tone for what’s to come, replacing him with a computer-generated artificial intelligence avatar that, from his futuristic spaceship, utters Musk’s own words from past appearances. The narrative itself moves at a swift pace, structured to reflect the film’s subject with references to video games, health bars, and various creative devices that will make you laugh as you come face to face with the absurdity of Musk’s various personas.

And that’s exactly how the documentary introduces them all. First, we meet the Engineer, moving from Tesla autopilot accidents and legal disputes to SpaceX failures, where rocket launches went horribly wrong but Elon’s brother was happy “just to watch them explode.” “Hello, my baby X,” Musk says affectionately not to the social media platform he owns but to an actual child he had with Canadian musician Grimes: it’s with a superimposed Kublai Khan image that we move to the ‘Playboy’ chapter. That’s when we delve into the magnate’s obsession with procreation, and influencer Ashley St. Clair tells us all about his “legions of children”. Next, we explore the AI side of things, from data servers to the birth of Grok, and ultimately, to his online presence.

Up to that point, the movie remains lighthearted, while still managing to present us with the insightful analysis of a man who’s been “selling us dreams,” disguising money, power, and the ability to bullsh*t as access to knowledge the rest of us don’t have. But it’s when the film begins to look at the acquisition of Twitter and Musk’s work at DOGE that resulted in deadly USAID cuts – two very different ventures that the titan approached in frighteningly similar ways – ithat this movie starts to assume much darker undertones, and rightly so.

Alex Gibney’s approach to the documentary is only deceptively simple. Instead of using the film’s runtime to tell us what to think of its central subject, he offers a grounded, intelligent exploration of Elon Musk and the impact he’s had on several aspects of our present-day culture and politics, letting us make up our own mind. If the various devices and inside jokes used to tell this story help keep viewers absorbed throughout, the narrative itself focuses first and foremost on the facts, urging us to think for ourselves and not be manipulated by smoke and mirrors. This gives the movie the potential to reach an even wider audience, and given the current state of the world, makes Musk essential viewing.

Musk will be screened at the BFI London Film Festival on October 9, 2026. The film will be released in select U.S. theaters on October 16.