<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a striking moment near the end of\u00a0Musk, a new documentary by Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney,\u00a0when the world\u2019s richest man is asked why he considers it important to develop X into\u00a0what he calls a global platform for collective consciousness.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess \u2026\u201d Elon Musk replies to his questioner, the billionaire Indian entrepreneur Nikhil Kamath,\u00a0before his voice trails off. There\u2019s a pause of several seconds in which\u00a0neither man says anything. Eventually, after a\u00a0couple of false starts, Musk settles on: \u201cTo increase our understanding of the universe.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Musk is a trillionaire again<\/p>\n
The exchange \u2014 originally\u00a0broadcast\u00a0as part of Kamath\u2019s\u00a0People by WTF\u00a0podcast in November 2025 \u2014 stands out because it follows more than three and a half hours of a film in which\u00a0Musk is rarely short of words or solutions.<\/p>\n
We see his early successes during the dot-com boom, followed by his stewardship\u00a0of Tesla Inc.\u00a0and SpaceX, the acquisition of Twitter\u00a0and, ultimately,\u00a0his alliance with President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
At every step, Gibney depicts Musk\u00a0as relentlessly accumulating\u00a0money and power, shrugging off a string of controversies \u2014 business and personal \u2014 along the way.<\/p>\n
The section on the Department of Government Efficiency, the Trump administration initiative\u00a0ostensibly created to identify and cut waste, is especially troubling to watch, particularly when\u00a0it focuses\u00a0on cuts to the US Agency for International Development and their\u00a0impact on projects in Africa.<\/p>\n
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But when asked to articulate his deeper purpose, the tycoon is lost for words.<\/p>\n
Musk\u00a0represents a prominent example of a shift\u00a0in contemporary cinema:\u00a0While multibillionaire tech tycoons\u00a0have made for\u00a0convenient villains in the past, recent\u00a0portrayals are more frequent and less ambivalent.<\/p>\n
Prolific filmmaker<\/p>\n
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Gibney, 72 \u2014 a prolific filmmaker who won the 2007 Academy Award for best documentary feature\u00a0for\u00a0Taxi to the Dark Side, about\u00a0abuse by American soldiers\u00a0\u2014 paints a picture of ruthlessness, cynicism\u00a0and\u00a0a chronic lack of regulatory oversight.<\/p>\n
Musk\u00a0is designed to leave the viewer feeling bleak about the world. As Gibney asks by way of a mission statement: \u201cHow could Musk assume so much power, and why had we given it to him?\u201d<\/p>\n
That question,\u00a0to which there is no straightforward\u00a0answer,\u00a0speaks to a growing sense of public discomfort with the way superrich\u00a0tech leaders and their companies have come to dominate the corporate, political and\u00a0media landscape \u2014 as well as our personal lives.<\/p>\n
Musk seen with US President Donald Trump at a rally. Image: Brandon Bell\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
The release of\u00a0Musk\u00a0came\u00a0just months after its subject became\u00a0the world\u2019s first trillionaire following SpaceX\u2019s\u00a0record-breaking initial public offering, an unheard-of level of wealth that is\u00a0helping to fund Republican campaigns ahead of the midterm elections.<\/p>\n
According to a Pew survey\u00a0conducted last year, more than half of Americans have an unfavourable view of Musk, while two-thirds had a negative perception of Meta Platforms Inc\u2019s CEO Mark Zuckerberg.<\/p>\n
The Artificial version \u2026<\/p>\n
Another version of Elon Musk appears in\u00a0Artificial,\u00a0which screened at this month\u2019s London Film Festival\u00a0ahead of its release\u00a0this winter.<\/p>\n
The film, directed by Luca Guadagnino, charts the early years of\u00a0OpenAI, which Musk co-founded in 2015. Musk left\u00a0the company in 2018 and has\u00a0tried unsuccessfully\u00a0to sue its present incarnation, allowing writer Simon Rich to make the film version played by\u00a0Ike Barinholtz\u00a0a form of comic relief \u2014 all facial tics and self-importance \u2014 rather than anything more sinister.<\/p>\n
The role of tech tycoon villain instead goes to Andrew Garfield, who plays OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The film portrays him as the ultra-ambitious and unscrupulous driving force behind the company that gave us ChatGPT \u2026<\/p>\n
The movie\u2019s conscience is represented by co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever (played by Yura Borisov \u2014 best known as the kind-hearted henchman in Anora).<\/p>\n
There\u2019s an early scene around a private dining table where Sutskever excitedly shares his vision for artificial intelligence as something that can end pain, suffering and loneliness. \u201cWe\u2019ll be free!\u201d he tells his boisterous, all-male audience. The camera pans from face to face \u2014 Musk, Altman and others \u2014 and they look more like slavering vultures than people focused on humanity\u2019s best interests.<\/p>\n
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Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. Image: SeongJoon Cho\/Bloomberg<\/p>\n
Artificial goes on to tell the story of Altman and Sutskever\u2019s eventual falling-out, with Altman fired and swiftly reinstated with the support of Microsoft Corp., OpenAI\u2019s main investor. Garfield plays Altman as increasingly cold and manipulative, swatting aside any concerns about AI safety and the people who get in his way. \u201cI didn\u2019t invent teen suicide!\u201d he yells\u00a0at one fellow executive, when warned of ChatGPT\u2019s darker potential.<\/p>\n
Altman and his sycophantic entourage wildly celebrate various OpenAI milestones and chant \u201cfeel the AGI,\u201d meaning artificial general intelligence \u2014 at one point around a bonfire \u2014 delighting in a creation that many warn could destroy the human race. Sutskever, cast\u00a0as the good guy who cannot lie, is pushed out.<\/p>\n
(Altman\u00a0told\u00a0Vanity Fair\u00a0this month that he didn\u2019t expect the film to be an\u00a0\u201caccurate depiction,\u201d given Guadagnino was just \u201ctrying to make a good movie.\u201d)<\/p>\n
A fictional tech billionaire features in another film\u00a0screened at the London Film Festival:\u00a0Bunker,\u00a0directed by Florian Zeller, which is slated for release in early 2027. The movie stars real-life couple Javier Bardem and Pen\u00e9lope Cruz as upwardly mobile Spaniards living in London, where their 17-year marriage has entered a rocky phase.<\/p>\n
Bardem\u2019s character, Miguel, is an architect tempted by an unusual and lucrative commission: An unnamed tycoon wants him to build a luxury bunker in Hawaii\u00a0in preparation for a predicted societal breakdown. People in his position tend to map out scenarios, his potential client\u00a0(Paul Dano) tells him, and dystopia is now a distinct possibility.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is everything that\u2019s wrong with the world!\u201d Miguel\u2019s wife, Sofia (Cruz), retorts at home, protesting that those with the resources to hide from the collapse of civilisation are the very people most likely to cause it. When the couple fret over their teenage daughter\u2019s phone use, Sofia wryly reminds Miguel that his new client designed the app she is addicted to.<\/p>\n
While\u00a0Bunker\u00a0is more about marriage than billionaires, Zeller is able to tap into what he knows will be the audience\u2019s negative perception of Dano\u2019s character to drive a wedge between his two protagonists.<\/p>\n
Zuckerberg\u2019s Hawaii bunker\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Facebook founder\u00a0Zuckerberg\u00a0is building\u00a0a real-life $100 million compound\u00a0in Hawaii that includes an underground shelter, although he\u00a0has\u00a0denied\u00a0it is intended\u00a0as a doomsday\u00a0bunker.<\/p>\n
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Zuckerberg and the origins of Facebook were the subject of David Fincher\u2019s acclaimed 2010 movie,\u00a0The Social Network, and it feels apt that writer Aaron Sorkin should return with a de facto sequel some 16 years later.<\/p>\n
In the original movie, the action revolves around a litigation\u00a0against Zuckerberg during Facebook\u2019s early years.<\/p>\n
In this fall\u2019s\u00a0The Social Reckoning, he\u2019s now well-established \u2014 and it\u2019s\u00a0Wall Street Journal\u00a0reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) and Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) who are out to get him.<\/p>\n
The story shows how the duo worked together on Horwitz\u2019s award-winning reporting\u00a0on Facebook and its algorithm in 2021,\u00a0with a particular focus on how users can\u00a0become radicalised and pushed toward extremist groups. In this film, Zuckerberg is played by Jeremy Strong rather than Jesse Eisenberg. But unlike in The Social Network, Zuckerberg is not a character we can explore and analyse \u2014 much less sympathise with.<\/p>\n
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg Image: David Paul Morris\/Bloomberg<\/p>\n
He\u2019s a straightforward villain: rude to employees, concerned only with company growth and seemingly uninterested in user safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey only point out problems,\u201d Zuckerberg grumbles about Facebook\u2019s civic integrity team, where Haugen works, shortly before it\u2019s disbanded. \u201cWe\u2019re a corkboard, we don\u2019t control what\u2019s pinned to it!\u201d he later shouts. The implication: These bosses create \u2014 and become extraordinarily wealthy from \u2014 this technology, but they don\u2019t want to be held responsible for how it\u2019s used.<\/p>\n
The rather unsubtle point of\u00a0The Social Reckoning\u00a0is that\u00a0Facebook and Zuckerberg are terrible, while journalists and whistleblowers are good. It wasn\u2019t as binary when Sorkin was writing\u00a0The Social Network,\u00a0where\u00a0the\u00a0Facebook founder could be seen as a misfit simply trying to get his own back on the alpha males\u00a0and women he believed\u00a0looked down on him.<\/p>\n
Some may see Facebook as a product of the past, with the stakes around\u00a0the technology developed by OpenAI and rival Anthropic PBC\u00a0now\u00a0much higher.<\/p>\n
The drunk woman\u00a0who delivers a racist diatribe at police officers at the start of\u00a0The Social Reckoning \u2014 radicalised by Facebook, Haugen deduces \u2014 may\u00a0seem\u00a0trivial\u00a0compared with the potential for AI to overpower humanity, as is threatened in\u00a0Artificial.<\/p>\n
The power of technology to turn people against each other, only for us all to be overpowered by robots, drives the fear coursing through all these films. \u201cWe\u2019ll have to build a bunker,\u201d Geoffrey Hinton (Mark Rylance), Sutskever\u2019s early mentor, warns him early in\u00a0Artificial. \u201cAnd hide from the Terminator.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a9\u00a02026\u00a0Bloomberg L.P.<\/p>\n
#Alex #Gibneys #Musk #escaping #tech #tycoon #villains #movies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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