Three months after Elon Musk announced the launch of a complete and “historically accurate” film version of “The Odyssey,” Grok has already released seven minutes of content—now referred to by the company as “Episode 1 of our ‘The Odyssey’ series.”

Elon Musk has previously criticized Christopher Nolan's version of "Odyssey" for featuring non-white and transgender actors. In a way, Nolan serves as a perfect contrast to Musk himself – while Musk promotes space data centers extensively and continues to release a large amount of AI-generated content, Nolan considers himself a "technological skeptic" and stated that he had never seen a technology "so thoroughly rejected by the public" before the advent of AI.

Although Nolan's version of "Odyssey" also makes extensive use of visual effects, it is primarily a film completed through actual location shooting. The filming spanned six countries and involved thousands of actors and crew members. After its release in July, the film's box office performance was outstanding; IMAX tickets were sold out for several consecutive months, and it became a hot contender for the next Academy Awards.

As for the Grok version of "Odyssey" (co-produced by Wonder Studios and director Dev Walker), you can watch it yourself.

I admit that it’s not as ugly as I expected, and of course, it’s more impressive than other videos released by Musk recently. If I didn’t know in advance, at some moments I would have thought that real actors were sailing on a real sea surface. As for whether Grok has truly achieved historical accuracy, I can’t evaluate that, but it seems that all the characters have skin tones approved by Musk, and the narration uses a British accent – anyone who has played fantasy video games or watched common Hollywood epics over the past 25 years will find this voice very familiar.

What this video truly lacks is artistry, inspiration, and human touch. The backstory told through the aforementioned narration seems endless, and only towards the end does it switch to one bearded face after another, with each person shouting out stiff lines that make Nolan's dialogue seem like that of Shakespeare.

Although a few individual shots might barely constitute a simulation of reality, the whole presentation lacks vitality altogether. It neither gives the audience a sense of progress nor provides any reason to care about anyone or anything on screen.

While I was able to maintain my attention effortlessly while watching Nolan’s nearly three-hour-long “Odyssey,” I started to check how much time was left halfway through the Grok version. It’s hard to imagine that I would become interested in watching another seven minutes of it, let alone the entire length of the film.