Three months after Elon Musk declared that Grok would release a full-length, “historically accurate” movie version of The Odyssey, Grok published “Episode 1” of its Odyssey series: seven minutes, made in collaboration with Wonder Studios and director Dev Walker. The episode arrives against Musk’s earlier attack on Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which he criticized for casting nonwhite and transgender actors. Nolan, a self-described techno-skeptic, said before AI he had never seen a technology so completely rejected by the public. His film was primarily a practical filmmaking feat, shot across six countries with a cast and crew of thousands, and after its July release it sold out Imax screenings for months and became the likely front-runner at the next Academy Awards.

Reviewing the Grok footage, TechCrunch’s Anthony Ha writes that it is not as spectacularly ugly as expected and occasionally looks like real actors sailing on a real sea, but it lacks artistry, inspiration, and human interest. All characters come in a “Musk-approved skin color,” the narrator uses a British accent familiar from fantasy games and generic Hollywood epics, and a long voiceover backstory eventually gives way to bearded figures shouting stilted dialogue. A few individual shots offer a reasonable simulacrum of reality, yet the whole feels airless, with no momentum or reason to care about anyone on-screen. Ha says he watched Nolan’s nearly three-hour Odyssey without trouble but was listlessly checking the remaining time before halfway through the seven-minute Grok version, and he doubts another seven minutes—let alone a full movie—would hold his interest.