Grok releases the first seven minutes of its AI-generated ‘Odyssey’

Three months after Elon Musk declared that Grok would release a full-length, “historically accurate” movie version of “The Odyssey,” Grok has published a whole seven minutes — what the company is now calling “Episode 1 of our Odyssey series.”

Musk had previously lashed out at 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 SpaceX and Tesla CEO hypes up data centers in space and posts an unending stream of AI-generated content, Nolan has described himself as “a techno-skeptic” and said that before AI, he’d never seen a technology “so completely rejected by the public.” 

And while Nolan’s version of “The Odyssey” certainly used plenty of visual effects, it’s primarily a feat of practical filmmaking, with a shoot spanning six countries and a cast and crew of thousands. After its release in July, the film became an extraordinary box office success, selling out Imax screenings for months and becoming the likely front-runner at the next Academy Awards.

As for the Grok version of “The Odyssey” (created in collaboration with Wonder Studios and director Dev Walker), well, you can watch for yourself.

I’ll admit it’s not as spectacularly ugly as I’d expected, and certainly more impressive than other videos that Musk has posted recently. If I didn’t know better, there were moments when I might have thought these were real actors sailing across a real sea. And while I can’t speak to Grok’s historical accuracy, it does seem that all the characters come in a Musk-approved skin color, while the narrator uses a British accent that will sound familiar to anyone who’s 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 via the aforementioned 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, 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.

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It’s hard to imagine being interested in another seven minutes of this, much less a full movie’s worth.