Elon Musk has never directed a feature film. Yet this week, he confidently announced that Grok Imagine would create a “historically accurate” adaptation of The Odyssey. He says that it will be completed before the end of the year. Not only that, he feels that it will compete right alongside Christopher Nolan’s take on the ancient epic.
In a post shared on X, Musk claimed his AI film would be “historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
That’s an interesting statement considering Homer’s work is mythology and not a historical document. I would even go as far as to say that Musk has never read any Greek Mythology to begin with. And his claim isn’t just boisterous and stupid, It also reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what art is. Art is interpretation, perspective and most importantly, art is a filmmaker choosing which moments to emphasize and why.
This isn’t to say AI has no place in filmmaking. Visual effects artists, editors, and studios already use machine learning tools in various ways. Mostly built into editing software that engineers use to create VFX and CGI. But audiences aren’t lining up for algorithmically assembled movies. They want films with intention. They want to know why Christopher Nolan chose to shoot The Odyssey on IMAX film. Why actors spent months preparing for their roles. They want to know everything about the themes the director wanted to explore.
Nolan’s film wasn’t created overnight. It took years of development, location shoots across multiple countries, custom IMAX cameras, and the efforts of hundreds of craftspeople. That’s what cinema is: collaboration in service of a vision.
Musk’s comments feel like another attempt to reduce human creativity to a product pipeline. The idea that an AI can generate a feature-length masterpiece in a few months ignores everything that makes movies meaningful in the first place.
People don’t spend hours driving to see films in 70 mm because they’re chasing efficiency. They do it because they want an experience, want to feel something and want to sit in a dark theater with strangers and witness the result of thousands of artistic decisions coming together on screen. Part of the experience is connecting with the audience and feeling the emotions of the crowd, the cheers, gasps and laughs all make it worth seeing on the big screen.
For someone who talks so much about innovation, Elon Musk seems remarkably uninterested in the one ingredient that has powered storytelling for thousands of years. The humanity of it.
“Historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.” — Elon Musk on X
You can read more about Musk’s comments via The Hollywood Reporter
