Meaningless as a laptop screensaver: reviewers slate Musk's AI-made Odyssey film

Elon Musk has released the first seven-minute instalment of an AI-generated adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, made with Grok Imagine and London-based startup Wonder Studios. The project followed Musk’s criticism of Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster, particularly its casting, and his promise to create a version faithful to Homer and historically accurate. The episode follows Odysseus as he wrestles with joining the Greek campaign against Troy, leaves Ithaca with his men, and reaches the battlefield. It ends after a decade of war, with Odysseus holding a wooden horse. Although Musk had promised a feature-length film by year’s end, the work is being released episodically.

The response has been sharply negative: critics faulted the episode’s weak drama, grim visuals and rushed storytelling, describing its scenes as emotionally empty and its movement as visually sloppy. Wonder co-founder Xavier Collins said a three-person team completed it in under two weeks, at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars - a striking contrast with Nolan’s $250m production, filmed over 91 days and earning $1.8bn. Collins said the team was not instructed to make an anti-diversity version, but to test the technology and identify its strengths and shortcomings. It plans to consider feedback, including concerns about the boats’ historical accuracy and the pacing, and make later instalments substantially better.