In July, Elon Musk set an audacious target: a full-length, “historically accurate” adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey by year’s end, positioned against Christopher Nolan’s film. His criticism of Nolan’s casting — particularly Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra — framed the project as both a technological challenge to Hollywood and another front in a culture-war argument.¹

Nolan’s version, meanwhile, had already established the commercial benchmark. Built around practical effects and real-world locations, it grossed $1.79 billion worldwide after its summer release, according to Fortune.¹

Then came Musk’s answer: a seven-minute opening episode made with Grok Imagine, SpaceXAI’s image-and-video tool, in collaboration with AI filmmaker Dev Walker and Wonder Studios. Rather than the promised full feature, the release landed as an early instalment with no stated total episode count.¹

The immediate reaction was unforgiving. Viewers pointed to abrupt cuts, plastic-looking character models and contemporary English dialogue — details that made the production’s automated origins conspicuous and its authenticity claim harder to sustain. One commenter summed up the historical objection bluntly: “It supposed to be historically correct. Why are they talking in English?”¹

A separate assessment catalogued the visual issues still more sharply: “Just ignore the inconsistency of the character’s faces, historically inaccurate armor, non-functional shield wall, etc…”² Critics read those flaws as a gap between Musk’s rhetoric and the current limits of generative video.

Yet the reaction was not uniformly dismissive. Some users argued that, however awkward this debut looked, AI-made filmmaking remains a developing category: “There’s a lot of room for growth, but the good news is there will be growth.”¹ That leaves Musk’s experiment caught between two readings — a failed bid to outdo a blockbuster, or a conspicuous prototype for a medium still learning how to tell a story.