I’ve watched a bunch of Elon Musk documentaries (“Elon Musk: The Real Life Iron Man”, Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover” and The Tesla Motors Documentary”).
But, right now, the best Musk doc I’ve seen is “The Problem With Elon Musk” from Johnny Harris (he also did another favorite of mine: Why Switzerland Has 374,142 Bunkers (and likely more)” .
He’s the best documentarian on YouTube I’ve seen.
“The Problem with Elon Musk” is the story of a bullied schoolkid who grows up to revolutionize payments, cars, WiFi, and space.
And it explains why he rigged Twitter/X to make his his own tweets go viral.
This doc is an efficient 42-minute profile of Musk’s background up until early 2024 (note: it doesn’t have anything on his Donald Trump bromance).
Thanks to Jon Youoshaei for pointing Johnny Harris and the Musk doc in “The Rise of Johnny Harris, Explained (Interview”).
FYI — there’s a big Musk doc coming out from Alex Gibney (“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” and “Taxi to the Dark Side”) — that’ll be on HBO’s Max and is due to come out in 2025. Gibney doesn’t mess around so don’t be surprised if I rank that higher than this one.
Watch “The Problem With Elon Musk”
You can watch “The Problem With Elon Musk” for free on YouTube by clicking the video embed above.
Ratings:
- My Rating: 91/100
- IMDB Rating: na
- Rotten Tomatoes Ratings: na
Release Date: July 12, 2024
My Review of “The Problem With Elon Musk”
I love Johnny Harris’s style in this one. He packs in a ton of clips from Musk and those around him. I feel like he doesn’t waste a minute in this one.
Elon Musk’s story isn’t a fairy tale—it’s a storm, complete with rockets, Twitter chaos, and one man’s relentless push against the impossible.
Bullied Kid to Boy Genius
Musk’s beginnings were anything but glamorous. Born in apartheid-era South Africa in 1971, he was relentlessly bullied.
One brutal incident left him hospitalized after classmates beat him so badly he couldn’t walk. To add insult to injury, his father, Errol Musk, berated him for over an hour, calling him stupid for “letting it happen.”
Despite these hardships, young Elon had a secret weapon—an extraordinary knack for programming.
At 12, he designed and sold a basic video game, Blastar, to a magazine for $500.
That was the first step on his path to building a tech empire.
The film also untangles the myth of his family’s emerald mine fortune.
Musk’s father did deal in emeralds but never owned a mine, and the family’s wealth was far from guaranteed.
Musk’s genius and relentless drive—not a trust fund—built his fortune.
You Can’t Make This Sh*t Up
- Rockets on a Budget: After trying to buy decommissioned rockets from Russia (they laughed him out of the room), Musk sketched out a plan to build cheaper rockets on a flight back. That decision birthed SpaceX.
- From Explosions to Orbit: SpaceX’s first three launches failed spectacularly. Musk poured his last $30 million into a fourth launch—it succeeded, saving the company from collapse.
- Tweet of the Year (by Force): Musk was so upset that a Super Bowl tweet from President Biden outperformed his own that he ordered 80 engineers to rewrite Twitter’s algorithm to artificially boost his posts by a factor of 1,000.
A Career Full of Gambles
I know most of Musk’s career history but I gotta say that Johnny Harris puts it all in one place in this one.
At 24, Musk dropped out of Stanford after just two days to start Zip2, an online business directory that netted him $22 million when sold.
He funneled that money into X.com (not the Twitter X (this was instead the precursor to PayPal)).
PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002.
Musk personally walked away with $180 million.
But Musk didn’t hoard his fortune.
Instead, he bet it all on Tesla and SpaceX, even as both companies faced almost certain failure.
Early Tesla cars, like the Roadster, were a nightmare to manufacture, and SpaceX was on the brink of bankruptcy until that fourth rocket launch.
By the 2010s, Tesla’s gamble on EVs had paid off, catapulting it to a trillion-dollar valuation.
SpaceX, meanwhile, pioneered reusable rockets, changing space travel forever.
Obsessions, Drama, and Hypocrisy
Director Johnny Harris packs in insider accounts
One engineer recalled Musk showing up unannounced to question minuscule details, like the thickness of a rocket’s rivets, late into the night.
Musk’s obsession with efficiency drives his success—but it comes at a cost.
Employees describe the “Musk Effect” of condensing impossible six-month timelines into 90 days. They hate him for it but somehow pull it off.
The doc ends with Musk’s recent pivot to social media chaos.
His acquisition of Twitter (now X) for $44 billion is framed as a crusade for free speech.
However, the film exposes Musk’s double standards: banning critics, limiting links to Substack, and amplifying his own voice while claiming neutrality.
The Dark Side
The film doesn’t shy away from Musk’s contradictions. For someone who claims to value free speech, Musk has a track record of stifling dissent.
From banning journalists to complying with authoritarian governments’ censorship requests, his actions tell a different story.
The hypocrisy extends to Musk’s grand vision of uniting humanity.
While Tesla’s open-source patents and SpaceX’s reusable rockets speak to his idealism, his combative Twitter behavior undermines the very progress he claims to champion.
Wrap Up
This doc reveals Elon Musk as a paradox—a genius who redefined industries but seems addicted to chaos and controversy.
His life is a mix of stunning achievements and baffling contradictions, leaving you inspired, frustrated, and questioning what comes next.
I hope Johnny Harris does a follow-up on this with he and his team’s take on Musk’s relationship with Donald Trump.
Still, I rank this the best Elon Musk documentary to date. And it’s free!
Thanks for reading!
Rob Kelly, Chief Maniac, Daily Doc