Grok has released the first seven minutes of its AI-generated take on The Odyssey, three months after Elon Musk promised a full-length, “historically accurate” film. The Grok Odyssey clip went up on October 23 through the Grok Imagine account on X, which calls it “Episode 1 of our Odyssey series.”
The project arrives with a rival already in theaters. Christopher Nolan‘s adaptation of the Homer epic opened in July, and Musk publicly attacked that film over Nolan’s casting of nonwhite and transgender actors. Grok made its own version with Wonder Studios and director Dev Walker. Grok Imagine is the video generation tool built into xAI‘s Grok chatbot.
What the Grok Odyssey footage shows
The episode opens with a long voiceover from a British-accented narrator, who lays out the backstory before the action moves to the ships. After that, the clip cuts between bearded sailors shouting their lines across the deck.
The characters speak English rather than ancient Greek, so the “historically accurate” label has limits from the start. Seven minutes is also a small slice of the full-length movie Musk first described.
Early reaction from TechCrunch
TechCrunch writer Anthony Ha reviewed the clip and found it less ugly than expected. According to Ha, some shots could pass for real actors on a real sea, and the footage looks better than other AI videos Musk has posted recently.
Still, the overall verdict was negative. The review says the clip lacks “any sense of artistry, inspiration, or human interest” and calls the dialogue stilted. Ha also found the voiceover backstory too long and the pacing flat, with no reason to care about anyone on screen.
The comparison with Nolan came up again. Ha watched Nolan’s nearly three-hour film without trouble, but was checking the remaining runtime before the Grok Odyssey reached its halfway point. “If it was a video game cutscene, I would have hit the ‘skip’ button,” Ha wrote.
Nolan’s practical Odyssey sets the bar
Nolan’s version used visual effects, but it relied mainly on practical filmmaking. The shoot covered six countries and involved a cast and crew in the thousands. Since its July release, the film has sold out Imax screenings for months, and TechCrunch calls it a likely front-runner at the next Academy Awards.
Nolan has also spoken openly about AI. He has described himself as “a techno-skeptic” and said that before AI, he had never seen a technology “so completely rejected by the public.” Musk, meanwhile, posts a steady stream of AI-generated content and has promoted plans for data centers in space.
As a result, the Grok Odyssey now sits in direct comparison with one of the year’s biggest box office hits. Episode 1 is available to watch on the Grok Imagine account on X.