The BBC2 documentary Elon Musk Show is tricky in its quest to pierce the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s public image. As Elon Musk’s riches and influence grow, we need to learn more about the guy whose initiatives are changing the world. However, as a recent documentary shows, engaging with the reality of someone with such divergent labels as a hero, monster, or superhuman brilliance is difficult.
Elon Musk, then an entrepreneur interested in space, addressed aerospace engineer Jim Cantrell about his “ultimate ambition of making humanity a multi-planetary species” in the new BBC2 series The Elon Musk Show. Discovering what celebrities were like before they were famous might be exciting – or it can just be a biography of a person when they were ordinary. The latter is the first episode of The Elon Musk Show (BBC Two).
This documentary attempts to assess the poster boy for capitalism through the eyes of his former coworkers – and his mother. “Aren’t you entertained?” Elon Musk remarked, channeling Russell Crowe in Gladiator, when this paper’s editor, Roula Khalaf, brought up his market-moving Twitter antics in a recent interview. The Elon Musk Show, a three-part BBC documentary series, now poses that question to the rest of us.
In reality, “entertained” may not be the first word that springs to mind. We’re more likely to feel exhausted after three hours of watching a pathologically restless individual attempt to revolutionize the motor business, launch a private space program, and cultivate a cult of personality all at the same time. Then there’s the sense of being sick of Musk himself.
This documentary series provides a really excellent glimpse into Elon Musk’s universe, background, emotions, and obviously everything he has done over the last decades, which is mind-boggling. This documentary is of high quality, and it includes several interviews with family and coworkers, as well as insight into how emotional he is.
Steve Jobs may have been cold and aloof, but Elon Musk is not. His candor is refreshing. It depicts his transformation from a young boy to one of the world’s most innovative engineers and entrepreneurs in a very expressive and detailed manner. It’s an exciting ride. The show is informative and mainly fascinating as a tour of Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX firms’ growth and inner workings.
However, as an attempt to capture Musk, the guy (as opposed to Musk, the entrepreneur, self-proclaimed visionary, or Twitter troll), the series may be elusive and noncommittal. While revealing biographical facts, such as those about his terrible beginnings, regularly punctuate his professional history and hint at what motivates his voracious desire and ego, they may sometimes appear scattered and hurried.
Meanwhile, interviews with former coworkers provide firsthand accounts of their former boss’s infantile outbursts and demandingness, although clichés frequently mitigate them about work ethic and leadership. Unsurprisingly, his mother, Maye Musk, is on hand to laud her son’s intellect, but with no personal insight.
More interesting are Musk’s two-time ex-wife Talulah Riley’s recollections, which reveal a hitherto unseen tenderness and emotional intelligence. In a concert that touches on, but mostly skirts around, many topics, his first wife, Justine (whom he abruptly left after years together), does not appear in person.
So everything is OK. Musk is a poster child for aspirational capitalism, a success story that, on a bad day, could have joined the ranks of the many entrepreneurial outliers who have crashed and burned. The harshest observations in the show come from former top workers who discuss the cost of Musk’s success as suffered by others. They depict a man on a mission who is frightening and domineering and who will eventually use you up and throw you out.
Many of those who have helped Musk pursue his aspirations could not bear the anguish. But it is labor. That’s how it works. If you’re going to spend your prime years sweating 18 hours a day trying to transform a crazy concept into a billion-dollar corporation, make sure you’re the one who gets a billion bucks.
What those billions do to Musk, a wacky man given unsettling power, is where things may become interesting. Before that time, at least according to The Elon Musk Show, Musk is unimpressive. Finally, the most enlightening insight on Musk comes from the guy himself, in a tape from a conference when he’s asked about how someone may become him. “I’m not sure I want to be myself,” he replies, his face troubled. That isn’t enjoyable in the least.
When to watch The Elon Musk Show Episode 3?
By 2016, Elon Musk is moving quickly with various new business concepts, including constructing subterranean tunnels, developing chips that can be implanted into people’s brains, and constructing the world’s largest battery factory. Meanwhile, he is getting closer to realizing his goal of transporting humans to Mars.
Elon’s popularity increases as his firms achieve unprecedented levels of success, but his behavior comes under increasing criticism. The Elon Musk Show Episode 3 will air on BBC iPlayer on 26th October.