Three months after Elon Musk said Grok would release a full-length, “historically accurate” movie version of “The Odyssey,” Grok published seven minutes — what the company now calls “Episode 1 of our Odyssey series.”
Musk had previously criticized Christopher Nolan’s version of “The Odyssey” because Nolan cast nonwhite and transgender actors. And Nolan is, in many ways, a perfect foil for Musk: while the SpaceX and Tesla CEO promotes data centers in space and shares an ongoing stream of AI-generated content, Nolan has described himself as “a techno-skeptic” and said that before AI, he had never seen a technology “so completely rejected by the public.”
And while Nolan’s version of “The Odyssey” certainly used visual effects, it was primarily a feat of practical filmmaking, with a shoot spanning six countries and a cast and crew of thousands. After its July release, the film became an extraordinary box office success, selling out Imax screenings for months and becoming the likely front-runner for the next Academy Awards.
As for the Grok version of “The Odyssey” (created in collaboration with Wonder Studios and director Dev Walker), viewers can watch it for themselves.
I’ll admit that it is not as spectacularly ugly as I expected, and that it is certainly more impressive than other videos Musk has posted recently. If I did not know better, there were moments when the footage might have seemed like real actors sailing across a real sea. And while I cannot speak to Grok’s historical accuracy, it does seem that the characters come in a Musk-approved skin color, while the narrator uses a British accent that will sound familiar to anyone who has played a fantasy video game or watched a generic Hollywood epic from the past 25 years.
What the footage really lacks is any sense of artistry, inspiration, or human interest. The backstory — delivered through the voiceover — seems to go on forever, finally giving way to one bearded face after another, each shouting stilted lines that make Nolan’s dialogue sound like Shakespeare.
While a few individual shots might provide a reasonable simulacrum of reality, the whole thing feels completely airless, offering viewers no sense of momentum and no reason to care about anyone or anything on screen. And where I had no trouble paying attention for the nearly three-hour runtime of Nolan’s “Odyssey,” I was listlessly checking how much I had left before the Grok version was even halfway through.
It is hard to imagine being interested in another seven minutes of this, much less a full movie’s worth.