Elon Musk’s AI ‘The Odyssey’ Gets Brutal First Reviews, and the Word “Zombie” Keeps Coming Up

Elon Musk’s feud with Christopher Nolan over ‘The Odyssey’ has been one of the strangest sideshows of Hollywood’s summer. Nolan’s film became a box office phenomenon, grossing more than $1.78 billion worldwide and becoming the highest-grossing movie of his career, even as online critics tried to paint it as a failure.

Musk spent months attacking the film, repeatedly criticizing its casting choices and calling it woke. In July, he escalated by promising that his AI tool, Grok Imagine, would make a full-length movie of the epic that was faithful to Homer and historically accurate before the end of the year.

That promise has now produced something real, and the reviews are in. Musk’s Grok-fueled version of ‘The Odyssey’ has been getting a rough reception since its first episode dropped over the weekend, with one critic describing it as zombie-like.

The first episode runs about seven minutes. It was made with Grok Imagine in collaboration with AI specialists Wonder Studios and director Dev Walker, and was billed as the start of an ‘Odyssey’ series rather than a finished film.

There is no confirmed release schedule for further episodes. It also remains unclear whether the full-length movie Musk promised will ever materialize.

Watch Episode 1 of our Odyssey series made with Grok Imagine. Let us know in the comments if you’d like a full breakdown of how it was done! Creative collaboration with @WonderStudiosX and director Dev Walker @glumlot_ https://t.co/xpgpkqSCpq

— Grok Imagine (@imagine) October 23, 2026

The harshest assessment came from Ed Power, who reviewed the footage for The Telegraph. He said the glassy-eyed characters and expressionless voices give the episode a “zombie-like quality”, and described the result as unsettling in its sloppy gruesomeness.

Power also pointed out a clear AI giveaway: Penelope looks completely different from scene to scene. His review concluded that this take on the tale of Troy deserves to be put to the sword, burned to the ground and hidden forever beneath the sands of time.

He had a few kind words for the action, saying the battle sequences have some of the epic quality of Zack Snyder’s Spartan romp ‘300’. The review also joked that the Grok version is one of the few films this year not to feature Tom Holland and Zendaya, who star in Nolan’s film.

The pushback wasn’t confined to critics. The most upvoted viewer response on the official post was a blunt dismissal of the episode, and Dark Horizons noted the clip was being ripped apart even on Musk’s own platform.

Viewers’ complaints ranged from the lack of the promised historical authenticity to obvious AI glitches like Penelope’s shifting face. Other commenters on The Hollywood Reporter’s coverage dismissed it as soulless, and one joked that it was the flop Musk had predicted for Nolan.

Not every response was negative. Some commenters praised the relative photorealism of the footage, a sign of how quickly AI video generation has advanced in just a few years.

The timing makes the comparison inevitable. Nolan has been an outspoken critic of generative AI in filmmaking, telling The Telegraph in July that younger audiences are quick to recognize and reject so-called AI slop.

Nolan’s film is a very different beast, made with practical filmmaking and a famously analog approach. Matt Damon stars as Odysseus in a cast that also includes Zendaya, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway and Lupita Nyong’o.

Critics at the time argued the Grok project was set up to lose that comparison. One opinion piece suggested the real hit of Nolan’s film is that it represents a revolt of the human in a world overstuffed with AI slop.

Musk’s campaign began with attacks on Nolan’s casting and a series of posts about the film being a failure. Instead, the film broke records, and the AI alternative has now arrived to a very different kind of response.

For Wonder Studios and Walker, the release is an experiment in what Grok Imagine can do. Independent filmmakers might eventually use such tools to create ambitious visuals without massive budgets, but for now the first outing looks like a cautionary tale about the distance between a promise and a finished film.

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