Elon Musk names his favourite movie of all time
Business mogul and tech investor Elon Musk is arguably one of the most notorious people on the planet. He’s the founder and CEO of the spacecraft manufacturer SpaceX, the CEO and product designer of the automotive company Tesla and now the CEO and owner of the social media giant Twitter.
In addition to those ventures, Musk also founded the tunnel-building company The Boring Company and co-founded the neurotech company Neurolink and the recently widely-publicised OpenAI, which has drawn attention and controversy for potentially taking away millions of creative jobs from human individuals.
It all began in South Africa for Musk, where he was born in 1971. At 18, he moved to Canada after gaining citizenship through his mother and subsequently studied at Queen’s University in Ontario before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania. After studying at Stanford for just two days, he dropped out and founded the Zip-2 company, which later sold for $307million, marking the start of Musk’s fortune.
Knowing Musk’s interest in space and technology, it’s unsurprising to learn that his favourite movie of all time is a true science fiction classic. The film was released back in 1977 and would go on to become one of the biggest media franchises ever devised. It is, of course, the original Stars Wars film.
“I suppose it would probably be, like, the original Star Wars, but part of it is, like, that’s the first movie I ever saw in a theatre,” Musk once said on the Full Send podcast. “I think I saw it when I was six years old, something like that. So it really made an impression; maybe that’s why I like rockets, maybe that’s why I like space. It’s probably had an effect, yeah.”
The original Star Wars film, written and directed by George Lucas, would eventually be renamed Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, seeing as two movies followed shortly after, Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 and Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi in 1983. There have since been six further mainline Star Wars films, three directed by Lucas and three made under the Disney banner.
For Musk, though, it’s all about the 1977 original, which set the scene for the franchise in sum. It introduced us to the galaxy ruled by the Galactic Empire tyrants and the group of freedom fighters known as the Rebel Alliance, who do everything in their power to prevent the Empire’s domination. We also found for the first time the Jedi, the Sith and the Force, all dear memories of a young Musk in that South African cinema.
