Elon Musk just gave us a great reminder that flying cars, not killer robots are the bright future ahead

This fall, Hollywood’s favorite villains are tech CEOs trying to build the future.Out now, “The Social Reckoning,” portrays Mark Zuckerberg as a man destabilizing the world; Alex Gibney’s nearly four-hour documentary “Musk,” has been described as a “hit piece”; and Nathan Fielder’s “You Can See Everything” spotlights a deranged Elizabeth Holmes.

A new CBS show, “Cupertino,” follows the lawyers taking on the Silicon Valley elite.Next month, Netflix’s The Altruists focuses on Sam Bankman-Fried defrauding FTX customers, while December’s “Artificial,” paints Sam Altman as a manipulative sociopath.

While, some of the criticism is fair, some billionaire founders deserve to be celebrated as heroes for creating a brighter future.On Thursday night at a SpaceX facility in Texas, Elon Musk offered some spectacular counter-programming with the introduction of the long-delayed Roadster — a flying, thruster-equipped car.Before the demonstration began, Musk admitted he wasn’t sure it would work, saying “success is not guaranteed.” Then, the Tesla Roadster drove up a curved ramp until it was hanging upside down, held in place by underbody suction fans.

From there, it launched off the ramp, flipped in the air with the help of SpaceX cold-gas thrusters, and used those same thrusters to lower itself gently to the ground.Later, it accelerated from 0 to 60 mph in under a second and leaped over a lineup of Teslas, including a Cybertruck and a Semi.“Turns out the future does have flying cars,” Musk posted on X afterward.

On stage he described the Roadster as a collaboration between “the world’s best car company and the world’s best rocket company.” He was smart to do it in front of a live audience.In this day and age, anything too badass is assumed to be fake.

Musk said as much on stage, “We need an audience to prove that it’s not AI.”A single clip Musk posted of Thursday’s event on X has racked up 47 million views as of...