Elon Musk’s “Historically Accurate” The Odyssey Not Historical, Not Accurate, Not Even The Odyssey

Some people in this world will complain about problems but never offer a solution. So, let’s give Elon Musk the bare minimum of credit for this: After bitching about his issues with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey — like the fact that it acknowledges the existence of trans and Black people — he came up with a solution. Unfortunately, his solution sucks: A lifeless AI-rendered seven minutes of footage, purporting to be the first “episode” in Grok Imagine and director Dev Walker’s retelling of the epic. Watching this seven-minute sequence of images (it’s hard to say they deserve to be described as “scenes” or “a movie”) reveals that first off, everything from this is actually from The Iliad: Odysseus trying to get out of going to war, followed by the stunt threatening his infant son Telemachus, and then Odysseus leading his men to war, while Telemachus grows up and Penelope starts weaving at her loom. Incorporating Homer’s first epic poem into retelling The Odyssey is understandable — Nolan did it too, since The Iliad is essential setup — but this take shows a remarkably flat understanding of the nuances of the political story being told. Instead, it’s an excuse for big wooden ships,...