Elon Musk is one of the most polarizing figures of our time, between his business ventures, his multiple (uniquely named) children and his current foray into politics. All aspects of the world’s richest man are explored in Musk, the upcoming documentary from Oscar winner Alex Gibney. The film premiered at the Venice International Film Festival this week ahead of its release on the 2026 movie calendar next month, and critics say the 225-minute movie is straight-up scary.
Also, yes, you read that right. Musk clocks in at an astonishing 3 hours and 45 minutes, which basically rounds up to 4 hours when you add in the 10-minute intermission (I’m in full support of all long movies having an intermission). So what are reviews of the Elon Musk documentary saying? Bilge Ebiri, of Vulture, says Musk left him aghast at how much money and power one man has accrued. The movie is “absorbing and often infuriating,” he adds, writing:
Who will be its audience? Will it speak primarily to the converted? Could it actually convert anybody? It’s a gripping work, in part because it’s so long. … It’s hard at times to imagine MAGA types tuning into watch a movie like this, even though they’re probably the ones who most need to see it. Simply as a character study, though, Musk is fascinating. As a tale of modern business, it’s revealing. And as a warning about our future, it’s terrifying.
The word “damning” has also come up a lot in the reviews I’ve read, including from Matthew Carey of Deadline. Of all of Alex Gibney’s documentaries, Carey writes, Musk is his most important. The critic says:
The film depicts the world’s richest man as petty, narcissistic, megalomaniacal, cruel, detached from humans at a personal level (including various ex-partners and many of his children) while purporting to want to save humanity by colonizing Mars. A real prince. Musk, in my view, gives Elon the takedown he richly deserves.
Ben Croll of The Wrap writes that Musk is meant to spur audiences’ nightmares, though it takes some time to get there. The most searing portions come when Elon Musk joins the Trump administration, which is past the 3-hour mark. Croll quotes the mother of one of Musk’s children who participated in the documentary (after allegedly being offered $40 million not to). His review reads:
‘Elon is a nuke,’ says Ashley St. Clair, forcing us to reckon with the current, unprecedented reality of a single man wielding vast military, telecommunication, legal, commercial, financial and cultural power. For his part, Gibney, who started work on this film well before 2024 and did not stop adding to it until hours before the Venice screening, offers no easy endings. Returning to his pet image of the planet engulfed and inflamed, the filmmaker closes on an apocalyptic note that not so subtly reframes all that came before.
Owen Gleiberman of Variety says Musk paints its subject as a genuine but flawed tech visionary and something of a crackpot. What should scare us most about this documentary, the critic suggests, is how Musk is shown to coddle his own interests by passing them off as the world’s. Gleiberman continues:
What makes Musk such a lacerating and important watch, grounded in Alex Gibney’s supremely insightful but user-friendly mastery of the documentary form, is that it takes this flamboyant and in many ways elusive figure, with his tech ambitions and cosmic dreams and malignant megalomania, and puts him together, letting us see how one chapter of his life led to the next, and how the Musk dream wasn’t always so grandiose.
At that runtime, however, Siddhant Adlakha of IGN wanted more. The critic gives Musk an “Okay” 6 out of 10, admitting that while there’s little in the documentary that will surprise you, it’s “quite unsettling” to see everything laid out end-to-end. Adlakha says:
Much like Elon himself, Gibney simply re-assembles existing ideas into something marketable — even though selling people on four hours on someone who comes across as a vapid, awkward huckster (with a white supremacist streak) is an uphill battle. Rare are the moments where Musk digs deep into the issues it broaches, remaining content to weave a fabric about how Elon is perceived, and will be perceived for years to come, without getting to the cultural or psychological root of why.
The critics who attended the screening at the Venice International Film Festival seem sobered by the project, but what was it like sitting through the 4-hour movie?
Let’s Talk About That 4-Hour Runtime
There have been some worthwhile movies surpassing the 3-hour mark in recent years, like Oppenheimer and The Brutalist, but what did critics have to say about spending 4 hours with Elon Musk?
- Matthew Carey of Deadline: At 225 minutes, some will deem it too long a haul, but I found the film engrossing from the start and a necessary length to confront Musk’s immense impact on contemporary life and politics, sprawling businesses, and complex personal life.
- Ryan Lattanzio of IndieWire: Musk is well-paced across its four hours, even if it’s hard to imagine audiences sitting through it in a theater over absorbing it piecemeal in the safety of home over a couple of nights of streaming TV, when you’re allowed to yell and throw stuff at the screen.
- Bilge Ebiri of Vulture: The length allows Gibney to give the story a nice, dramatic sweep instead of rushing through a selection of headlines, which is usually the kiss of death for political documentaries. (I was never, ever bored, despite knowing many of these stories.)
- David Rooney of THR: It’s legitimate to wonder how healthy it is for anyone to sit in simmering outrage for 225 minutes, but I simply could not look away.
It sounds like the length of the movie doesn’t bother those who attended the film festival screening. In fact, from the 12 early reviews posted to Rotten Tomatoes, Musk currently stands at 100%. That’s very likely to change in the weeks until the film hits theaters. If you want to see 4 hours of Elon Musk on the big screen, you can do so starting Friday, October 16.
