Three months after Elon Musk announced that Grok would release the entire length of a “historically accurate” movie version of The Odyssey, Grok has released a full seven minutes. The company is currently calling this episode 1 of the “Odyssey” series.
Musk previously criticized Christopher Nolan’s version of “The Odyssey” for casting non-white and transgender actors. And Mr. Nolan is, in many ways, the perfect foil for Mr. Musk. While the CEOs of SpaceX and Tesla tout their space data centers and post a steady stream of AI-generated content, Nolan described himself as a “tech skeptic” and said that before AI, he had never seen a technology “so completely rejected by the public.”
While Nolan’s version of The Odyssey is certainly heavy on visual effects, it is primarily a feat of practical filmmaking, shot across six countries and involving thousands of cast and crew members. After its July release, the film was a phenomenal success at the box office, selling out IMAX screenings for months and becoming a front-runner for the upcoming Academy Awards.
Check out Grok’s version of “The Odyssey” (a co-production between Wonder Studio and director Dev Walker) for yourself.
I’ll admit it’s not as spectacularly ugly as I was hoping for, but it’s certainly more impressive than other videos the mask has posted recently. If I didn’t know better, there were moments where I might have thought they were real actors sailing real oceans. I can’t speak to Grok’s historical accuracy, but I do know that all of the characters are Musk-approved skin tones, and the narrator seems to use a British accent that will be familiar to anyone who has played a fantasy video game or watched a typical Hollywood blockbuster from the past 25 years.
What this film really lacks is any sense of artistry, inspiration, or human interest. The backstory, conveyed in the aforementioned voiceover, seems to go on forever, until finally a series of bearded faces appear shouting stilted lines that make director Nolan’s dialogue sound like Shakespeare.
While some individual shots may offer a reasonable imitation of reality, the whole thing is completely airless, giving the viewer no sense of momentum or reason to care about anyone or anything on screen. And while I had no problem paying attention to the nearly three-hour running time of Nolan’s The Odyssey, I found myself languidly checking how much time was left before the Grok version was halfway through.
It’s hard to imagine anyone being interested in the next seven minutes, much less a movie’s worth.
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