Teaser trailer for Musk, a 3h45m-long documentary film on fascist businessman Elon Musk, directed by Alex Gibney. “He’s chaotic, random, capricious. He is manifestly cruel and selfish. In a science fiction novel, he would not be a hero.”
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Yikes! I am so done with that man, I don’t know who, but Elon sycophants would want to sit through nearly 4 hours of Musk content. As “unflinching” as it gets, my moments to hours to days improve with zero Elon mentions. That is too long. The trailer was good tho.
I don’t envy people trying to expose and define people like Trump and Musk. We see time and again that the world has changed and that saying “This man is cruel” just makes their supporters say “Good! Those idiots he was ‘cruel’ to are losers.”
But I’m sad to see a trailer like this. I have the completely uneducated feeling that when you use the medium and messages of Hollywood and explosions and drama and adventure to speak to this kind of topic, all you do is give his supporters 90% of a meal they know they already like. Saying “He wouldn’t be the hero in a superhero movie” after opening with quotes about how he’s amazing and playing that music and showing rockets and fire and explosions — that’s just surrounding his name with awesome things and then saying “But ignore all that, ignore your adrenaline, ignore the century of culture that have told your body and brain to react to these images and sounds, just listen to the words at the end that said ‘But not all that’.”
Maybe the full film will be different, but I think that trailer undermines any attempt to make a serious point.
I definitely see your point, but I do think the trailer reflects a truth about Musk: he's both the most important and influential inventor of our time, and also a childish wannabe-fascist idiot. Both of those sides of his story should be told in any reasonable documentary.
Slightly tangential -- a friend sent me the trailer for the new movie Artificial about Sam Altman and OpenAI coming in December (https://youtu.be/rDZplZFnbOk?si=GdpnIEmnanZdTjip). Including the sequel to the Social Network and the Elizabeth Holmes doc, it seems like a lot of film coming up features tech executives as subjects.
I'm seeing this in October. Bought tickets today. I hate Musk with a passion and am delighted to hear that he's nervous about this film. Gibney is an excellent documentarian (I know people who've worked on his films and hold him in high regard as well). This will absolutely not be flattering.
I don't like to watch trailers, but Musk has been having a fairly elaborate tantrum in his echo chamber apparently, which has sold me on the movie.
I do hate it that these people are worthy of attention though: I have not come across a single one who was in any way interesting as a human being: the only thing that makes them interesting is the vast pile of money they sit on.
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