What's in the Documentary That Made Musk Lose His Cool?

Author: Xiao Jinya, Zimubang

Musk has been lashing out on X again. This time, his target is documentary director Alex Gibney: he "lacks integrity," is a "despicable and shameless person," and made a film that is "boring for a full four hours."

The film is called "Musk," took nearly four years to make, and premiered in Venice on September 8. Musk's lawyers acted faster than the audience: five days before the premiere, a legal letter was sent to the filmmakers, warning of possible litigation.

Gibney is no stranger to such pressure. The Oscar-winning director has covered Enron's financial fraud and investigated how Elizabeth Holmes, dubbed the "female Steve Jobs," attracted investment with promises of blood-testing technology.

He is accustomed to interviewing former employees, partners, and associates to uncover what happened behind the glossy stories. This time, the camera is pointed at Musk.

The premiere went ahead as scheduled. After the screening, the audience gave a standing ovation for about four minutes, and someone even shouted "thank you" to the director.

And the angrier Musk gets, the more excited and expectant the outside world becomes. Most ironically, on September 15, distributor Bleecker Street announced that due to strong audience demand, the release dates in New York and Los Angeles would be moved up from October 16 to October 9.

In fact, when the project was first announced in 2023, Musk immediately labeled it a "hit piece." Now, his ex-wife, former partners, and past business associates have spoken out, and family life, business promises, and political power are all woven into the same film. Revelations and controversies are pouring in, yet many critics are giving it positive reviews.

What exactly is in this documentary that Musk calls "boring for four hours" that has made him attack it for years?

"Musk" has not yet been officially released, so ordinary audiences cannot see the full film for now, but the intensive coverage after the premiere, along with director Gibney's appearances at film festivals, press conferences, and media interviews, has already brought several major revelations to light.

A

1. Influencer ex-girlfriend: After having a child, Musk tried to silence me with $40 million

One of the most talked-about interviewees in "Musk" is conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair. She has a child with Musk.

St. Clair claims that Musk's side offered: an initial payment of $15 million, followed by $100,000 per month for 21 consecutive years, in exchange for signing a non-disclosure agreement. That totals about $40 million. She did not accept it, though—she refused, because she thought, if the offer is this high just to silence me, then my right to speak must be very valuable.

Musk then directly denied it: "I never made her such an offer." He also accused St. Clair of having a history of making false accusations. This arrangement remains a disputed claim between the two parties.

More striking than the amount is St. Clair's description of Musk's views on procreation. She says that during their relationship, Musk would listen to podcasts about Kublai Khan before bed and once messaged her that he wanted a "legion of children" before a "civil war." In her account, having children has been folded into a larger plan about population, war, and the future of humanity.

2. Ex-wife: Musk always glorifies himself when talking about his children

Musk's first wife, writer Justine, brings more family details.

Their first child, Nevada, died in infancy. In 2022, Musk publicly said that the child died in his arms and that he felt the last heartbeat. Justine corrects this in the documentary: she was the one who held the child last. In an article she published back in 2010, she wrote about holding the child to say goodbye.

Another incident happened after Musk's relationship with his daughter Vivian (the transgender one, assigned male at birth) broke down. Justine says Musk asked her to tell their daughter that he would always love her. But the next day, he removed Vivian from his health insurance.

3. Why was he so certain on election night?

Another interview with St. Clair shifts the controversy from family to the U.S. election.

She recalls that on election night in 2024, Musk left the Mar-a-Lago party early and later told her that he knew all along Trump would win. That kind of certainty about the outcome was something she had never seen before.

She also mentions that before the election, Musk said he wanted to "release anomalies in the Matrix" and told her, "I have ten thousand lasers in space." St. Clair says she did not press further because she did not want to be subpoenaed over it later. Musk's response was: "Wise."

This became a key target of the legal letter. Musk's lawyers argue that the film, through its arrangement of material, implies that Musk used Starlink to influence the election and therefore knew the result in advance. Musk's side denies this implication and has asked the filmmakers to preserve interviews, research, and internal communications in preparation for possible litigation.

4. "Godfather of AI" Hinton: DOGE is concerning

Another interviewee, computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, raises concerns about the future.

In the film, he says that if someone wants to use AI to influence political outcomes, detailed citizen information would be a key resource, and DOGE's access to government data makes him wary.

His remarks are a risk assessment, but they undoubtedly deepen the documentary's critical perspective. The question remains: when an entrepreneur simultaneously owns a social platform, an AI company, and has been inside the White House, how should the outside world understand the relationships among these powers?

5. Tesla co-founder settles old scores: If I could do it over, I wouldn't hand over so much control

Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard also gave an interview. What bothers him most is that many people now think Tesla was founded by Musk.

Eberhard thinks Musk is too egotistical and says in the film that if he could do it over, he would not have handed over so much control of the company to Musk.

6. Musk's greatest ability: making an unfulfilled future generate value now

Gibney's explanation of Musk's business prowess is that he is especially good at making the outside world believe that the future has already arrived. That belief, in turn, brings investment, orders, and valuation to his companies.

Autonomous driving is a key case the film dissects. Gibney juxtaposes Tesla's 2016 self-driving demo video with dashcam footage from a fatal 2019 accident: a car using Autopilot in Florida killed one person and seriously injured another. The promises in the tech demo and the consequences in real-world use form a direct contrast here.

Tesla's cars and SpaceX's rockets have real results, which earned Musk years of trust. The film asks: when that trust is used for the next promise, can the public tell which technologies have already been realized and which are still just his goals?

Gibney has previously covered Enron and "female Steve Jobs" Elizabeth Holmes, and now he sees a familiar pattern in Musk. At the Venice press conference, he directly used the term "confidence man" to describe Musk, arguing that this is not a new tech story: accumulating wealth and power by hyping stock prices is an old story he has already filmed. (Note: "Confidence man" is a fixed expression referring to someone who first gains others' trust and then exploits that trust to deceive—i.e., a con artist.)

However, he also acknowledges a key difference. Holmes's machine could never deliver on its promises, while Tesla has been mass-producing cars for years and some people genuinely like them. In an interview with Vanity Fair, he boils down the common thread among Musk, Enron executives, and Holmes as creating a fantasy that makes people willing to invest. What he questions is not that Musk's companies have no results at all, but how many unfulfilled promises beyond those real results have been sold to investors as reality.

Incidentally, a core criticism from Musk's supporters about this documentary is that Gibney puts Musk on the same level as Enron or Holmes—after all, Musk really did put electric cars on the road, launch and recover rockets, and build massive AI clusters.

B

Musk's power is not only reflected in the stories told in the documentary; the filming process itself was already dramatic.

Gibney says that during filming, many people close to Musk were afraid to speak publicly, especially on camera.

These included critics, insiders, and even Musk supporters. Some who could have said good things about him replied: "I can't talk to you without Musk's permission."

Musk himself labeled the project early on. In 2023, as soon as the film was announced, he called it a "hit piece." Gibney shot back at the time: "How do you know?" After all, to this day, it is still unknown whether Musk has ever watched the documentary in full.

Three years later, the two have still not sat down for an interview, but their clash has extended from social media to legal letters.

The two sides even disagree on whether Musk was given a chance to respond.

Musk's lawyers say the team tried to contact the filmmakers to request a response but was refused.

Gibney, at an event in Toronto, said they formally invited Musk multiple times and received no response other than online comments. He also stressed that the film was reviewed by lawyers and independently fact-checked.

And the documentary was not originally this long.

Gibney says that before Musk pivoted to Trump, he was preparing a two-hour documentary and was close to finishing it. But the election changed the plan: Musk was no longer just an entrepreneur running car, rocket, and social media companies—he had entered the White House. To explain all that, the original length was no longer enough.

HBO supported additional filming, and at one point a six-hour cut was assembled before being compressed to four hours.

There is also a controversial point—Musk never agreed to an interview, so Gibney ultimately arranged for a "Musk stand-in" to appear on screen.

It is a CGI-created stand-in combined with AI voice synchronization technology.

What it says is not fictional dialogue written by screenwriters, but actual words Musk has said in past interviews and other settings, rearranged into a simulated interview.

Gibney explains that this is deliberate satire, echoing Musk's view that humans may be living in a simulated world. The production team also consulted lawyers before adopting this approach.

But just because the words are real does not mean the presentation is uncontroversial. NPR reporter Bobby Allyn, after watching it, felt that the virtual Musk was distracting and actually weakened the weight of a serious investigative work. The gamified visuals in the film have similar issues—for example, showing a chainsaw-wielding Musk hacking at federal agencies, which in his view is too on-the-nose as satire.

Widespread praise for the documentary does not mean universal acceptance. Allyn, who has long covered Musk, believes the film offers little truly new information; its value lies more in bringing together material scattered over the years. When it comes to "space lasers" and using DOGE data to interfere in elections, the film goes beyond what existing evidence can support.

Of course, overall, external reviews are quite positive. Time Out gave it four stars, saying that despite running nearly four hours, it remains compelling, and particularly praising the breadth of material covered. The review's subtitle bluntly states: "Musk hates this documentary. You won't."

C

Musk is not the first tech mogul to dislike his on-screen portrayal. Sixteen years ago, "The Social Network" made Zuckerberg very uncomfortable.

Directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, the 2010 film turned Facebook's founding story into a tale of friendship betrayal, equity battles, and lawsuits. It is certainly not an inspirational startup story, but the conflicts mainly occur among the founders and those around them, and the focus is on the startup itself.

What bothered Zuckerberg most was that the film invented a motive for his entrepreneurship. In 2014, during a public Q&A, he said the filmmakers fabricated the plot that he created Facebook to attract girls, which he found hurtful.

In his view, the real startup process had far less drama—it would just be him sitting there writing code for two hours straight.

Gibney himself has encountered such controversy before. In 2015, he made "Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine," interviewing Jobs's former colleagues and ex-girlfriends to examine the control freak behind the product achievements and the costs borne by those around him.

By 2022, the ups and downs of the tech startup world were being turned into TV series one after another.

"The Dropout" tells the story of the aforementioned "female Steve Jobs" Holmes. She claimed that with just a small blood sample, multiple disease tests could be performed, and she secured massive investment on that promise. But the company never delivered the advertised technology, and the startup star's story ultimately became a fraud scandal.

"Super Pumped" focuses on Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick: through expansion at any cost, he turned a startup into an industry giant, but that same management style plunged him into crisis, and he was eventually ousted from the company he founded.

In "WeCrashed," the Neumanns turned the co-working business into a mission to change how people work and live. Their company WeWork was once valued at $47 billion, then lost about $40 billion in less than a year. The series shows both how the couple encouraged each other and how they lost judgment amid ever-expanding ambition.

Even from the plot summaries, it is clear that compared to the tech startup dramas of a decade ago, epitomized by "The Social Network," the focus of recent tech mogul screen adaptations has shifted—delving deeper into "after the startup," into ambition and deception, dreams and human nature.

"The Social Reckoning," set for U.S. release on October 9, is written and directed by Sorkin, with Jeremy Strong playing Zuckerberg.

Sony calls it a "sister film" to "The Social Network," and from the official synopsis, the story's focus has shifted to two other people: Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, played by Mikey Madison, and Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, played by Jeremy Allen White.

Together, they expose the platform's internal secrets it does not want to make public.

Another new film, "Artificial," is set to premiere at the New York Film Festival on October 5, covering the 2023 turmoil in which Sam Altman was fired by OpenAI's board and then reinstated.

But it does not just depict those chaotic days. According to the festival's description, the film will also trace Ilya Sutskever's journey from studying neural networks under Hinton to meeting Altman, placing the story within the past two decades of AI development.

The change over these dozen or so years is not that films suddenly stopped celebrating tech geniuses—"The Social Network" was never gentle. The more obvious shift is that the costs to be reckoned with in these stories keep growing: at first it was friends betrayed and partners pushed out, then employees, investors, and consumers harmed, and now it involves people who never invested in these companies or even use their products.

Tech moguls always say they want to change the world. Now, the camera is increasingly concerned with what kind of world they have actually made—and whether anyone else has room to say "no."