Elon Musk promised one million kronor for a "historically correct" AI version of Christopher Nolan's blockbuster film. The result leaves some to wish otherwise – including historical accuracy, writes DN's Kristofer Ahlström.
A print from Dagens Nyheter, 2026-09-18 21:33
Article's original address: https://www.dn.se/kultur/kristofer-ahlstrom-elon-musks-the-odyssey-film-ar-ett-rejalt-haveri/
Kristofer Ahlström: Elon Musk's "The Odyssey" film is a huge failure
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There are roughly two types of people: those who see ideological problems with Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey," and those who want to party.
So sing now, oh goddess, for the rage that burns in Elon Musk and his cultural crusade for ethnic cleansing of the summer's blockbuster. Musk accused the British director's cast of "bowing to Homer and groveling on their knees to meet the woke rules required to win an Oscar."
So Musk announced a competition, with a prize of one million kronor, for whoever uses his AI model Grok to create a new, more Homer-true and "historically correct" version.
Which of course raises the question: What?
But now it has happened. We have a winner. Who, one might say, means a loss for the world otherwise.
The AI-created contribution is modestly described by the creator as "The Odyssey as Homer intended it" and the genre is somewhat contradictorily defined as a "five minute epic," meaning a mammoth film in five minutes, an impressive compression in these times of scarce attention spans.
Since "historically correct" in the assignment description is mostly a code for "get rid of everything that is black and trans," one might expect that the entire European antiquity fits into the same costume box, as when the Greek soldiers in the clip wear Asterix-Roman legionary armor.
Harder to forgive is the Cyclops Polyphomedes. A figure whose most distinctive feature is that he has one eye, endowed in the clip with the even more norm-critical number of three. The scene where he swallows Odysseus' men seems to be based on training data where people swallow pasta. I am not an expert on this matter of eating, but it looks most like the heroes being sucked into his face as reluctant tagliatelle.
Overall, the ensemble carries the common signal that AI always creates when beautiful people are depicted: an average looks-maximised beauty ideal that really tests your facial recognition.
The sea god Poseidon, which was missing in Nolan's version, appears here in a creature reminiscent of TV game bosses from the early 2000s. Overall, the ensemble carries the common signal that AI always creates when beautiful people are depicted: an average looks-maximised beauty ideal that really tests your facial recognition. Athena is impossible to distinguish from Calypso, while Penelope ages back and forth in strange random stages of greying.
And there you can stay, with faulty and fine-grained objections.
But what Grok does wrong is less interesting than what Nolan did right. His film is a craft. It is created by tangible special effects on real shooting locations with actual props, things have been built and carried, which gives a physical weight and credibility that the usual blockbuster mush's digital landscape has long lacked.
Our senses perceive and appreciate it, the knowledge of the actual work is part of the experience and makes the human endeavor particularly impressive; the reality of the storytelling is as important as the result on the canvas.
In his eagerness to cleanse Nolan's film of unfortunate people, Musk has also cleansed humanity from the creation itself. What remains is just a hallucination, of both a film and film production.
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