musk can generate a rebuttal

and cite it as an example on https://grokipedia.com/page/hit_piece

I... just don't understand your confusion? Of course it's a "hit piece". There's a market for hit pieces because there are people willing to pay to see content aimed at their favorite targets. And the trailer starts with Musk sniping to substantiate what it's about and clarify who its for.

Maybe it's that you think "hit piece" means "illigitimate?". Documentary cinema is absolutely allowed to have perspective. Musk's own communication is hardly unbiased or coolly considered, and he's been known to engage in some "creative advocacy" of his own. Would you apply the same logic there?

My own opinion is that he's a complicated guy and a seemingly textbook bipolar case with a lot of good technical instincts and a really destructive egomaniacal streak. He could do with some hit pieces, honestly.

Funny, for me it's the opposite: I get extremely irritated when Musk or someone else says the future of humanity is to colonize Mars. If you think you can turn a bare rock into a livable planet, please do something about Earth and global warming first.

No one doubts that the work is difficult. The criticism, as the trailer makes clear in context, is not that the company is not making adequate progress, but rather that the public statements made by Musk about the progress of the company are not honest.

There are, I think, two things that the documentary is trying to do with this statement. The first is to remind people that even visionaries selling their actions on a noble cause must still be evaluated for the negative consequences of their actions. In this case, Musk is known to be the cause of quite a few deaths in the world thanks to things like eliminating USAID [1]. People like him need to be fairly evaluated not just on the good they might potentially unlock in the future, but the evil they are unlocking today.

The second thing is to point out that Musk may not be entirely honest about trying to colonize Mars, just as some politicians may campaign on a promise to make a country great again while robbing blind the rubes who vote for them.

[1] Although I think Mark Zuckerberg still beats him in the deadliest tech CEO race, given the role that Facebook plays in the Rohingya genocide.

They are chipping away but their real motive is not mars colonization; that is a story designed to serve the venture capital needs of here and now.

That's the truth and that is what is being said here; it is not a denial that the chipping away is happening, it is a characterization of the why and how.

Musk collects investment money for those dreams, but the dreams change every round. Now it’s AI data centers in space, Mars is old news.

HBO owns the rights, and it is intended to end up on HBO/HBOMax as a four part series. Interestingly, HBO's parent company is merging with Paramount, owned by David Ellison. Ellison is asking Musk for money to invest in this new company. So, Musk might end up owning it in the end...

misguidedly so.

kind of sounds like even you don't know what you want

they've reversed this decision https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/youtube-...

Does it count if your warlord was Dolly Parton, who could have easily been a billionaire if she wasn’t so busy investing back into her community?