John Oliver rips Elon Musk for resembling every type of movie villain

Elon Musk may have lost out to Taylor Swift for the honor of TIME’s 2023 Person of the Year, but other commentators see him as central to the past 12 months. John Oliver devoted most of Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight (the last of 2023) to chronicling Musk’s many messes — and hurling some classic insults. 

To begin with, Oliver noted that Musk has at various times resembled many different varieties of movie villain. Among the many barbs include such quips as “Lex Luthor on the cover of Metropolis Maniacs Monthly"; “Why no, Mr. Bond, my child bride and I expect you to die"; “I just bought your media company and am about to strip it for parts"; and “space’s first racist sheriff.” 

But Musk’s villainy is not just cosmetic, Oliver argues. Though the CEO of Tesla, Twitter, SpaceX, and other companies has long styled himself as a real-life Tony Stark, Musk’s various technological gambits don’t seem to be saving the world — or really helping anyone but him. 

Oliver described Musk’s erratic management style, quoting a SpaceX employee who said he was required to keep his phone next to his bed for angry 3 a.m. phone calls. But in addition to psychologically tormenting his employees (“he’ll definitely find the weakness in your personality, in your character, in your spirit, and you’ll definitely crack,” the former employee said), Musk has also reportedly put his workers in physical danger through lax safety standards. Oliver quoted a 2018 report by Reveal that found one Tesla factory where “workers have been sliced by machinery, crushed by forklifts, burned in electrical explosions and sprayed with molten metal.” 

Musk’s ownership of Twitter (now called X) has also changed how people can communicate on one of the world’s largest media platforms. Now that Starlink satellites are utilized by the governments of the United States and Ukraine, Oliver argues that his whims can affect not just his own companies’ workers, but the outcome of military conflicts and therefore the lives of people across the globe. 

Bookending the segment, Oliver points out that far from being a unique visionary, Musk is really just an archetypal villain. 

“He waves away the damage that he does at the cost of innovation and saving humanity, but the truth is that way of thinking isn’t remotely original,” Oliver said. “We’ve seen it so many times before. The least surprising thing on Earth is a middle-aged billionaire CEO with self-serving libertarian views, increasingly racist politics, and a Messiah complex. It is long past time that he face the kind of accountability that should come with that.”

Watch Oliver’s full segment above.  

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