Musk promises “historically accurate” AI Odyssey movie after accusing Christopher Nolan of diversity washing

Elon Musk says his AI image and video generation tool will create a full-length film rivaling Christopher Nolan’s latest feature by the end of this year.

In the wake of Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, tech billionaire Musk claims his text-to-image and video model, Grok Imagine, could do just as good a job.

Heavy Pulp, an artist who’s seemingly preoccupied with computer-generated art, posted a 3-minute scene to X showing how they created a version of Homer’s The Odyssey using Grok Imagine.

Musk promptly reposted Heavy Pulp’s clip, confidently announcing the release of Grok Imagine’s The Odyssey.

“Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey,” said Musk.

The billionaire tech mogul adds that this version will be “historically accurate” and “true to the art of Homer.”

One X user said that Musk should “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film a historically accurate The Odyssey adaptation,” taken “straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” to which the billionaire replied, “I’m down.”

While users are seemingly excited over Musk’s plans, those outside the X bubble aren’t likely to welcome it with open arms.

An AI feature film likely won’t be received well

Despite Musk’s ambitions, directors and audiences alike are increasingly skeptical of AI-generated content.

Nolan has heavily criticized the use of AI in storytelling, as “after years of driving towards heavily virtual environments, we’re seeing a renewed interest in more tactile, more real forms of storytelling.”

Similarly, director Guillermo Del Toro, known for his film Pan's Labyrinth (2006) and recent box office adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (2025), said that he’d “rather die” than use AI in filmmaking.

In the wake of AI actresses like Tilly Norwood taking center stage, audiences are less impressed by artificial effects and are wowed by old-school practical effects.

In The Odyssey, Nolan and his crew built a 60ft puppet for shots featuring the cyclops and tasked actor and physical comedian Bill Irwin with bringing the monster to life through dialogue, cues, and terrifying vocalizations, according to No Film School.

Throughout filming, Nolan aimed to create an environment where organic, realistic reactions could flourish, making the acting as authentic as possible.

This style seems completely antithetical to AI-generated media, which prioritizes polished visual realism that ends up looking like a cheap imitation of blockbuster films.

Nolan’s budget for The Odyssey was around $250 million, and just 5 days later, it had recouped roughly $300 million.

But Musk still thinks Nolan, known for blockbusters like Oppenheimer (2023) and Interstellar (2014), prioritized liberal politics over historical accuracy when directing the film.

Musk agrees Lupita Nyong’o shouldn’t have played Helen of Troy

Musk has been highly critical of Nolan’s on-screen adaptation of The Odyssey, accusing the director of caving to the diversity, equality, and inclusion pandemic sweeping Hollywood.

Particularly, Musk criticized Nolan’s decision to cast Lupita Nyong’o, who won an Oscar for her role in 12 Years a Slave, as Helen of Troy.

In Greek mythology, Helen of Troy is regarded as the most beautiful woman in the world, and many people were outraged that Nolan cast Nyong’o, a Mexican-born woman of Kenyan heritage.

Musk stoked the fire by responding to far-right American political commentator and self-proclaimed “theocratic fascist,” Matt Walsh’s X post.

“Not one person on the planet actually thinks Lupita Nyong’o is the most beautiful woman in the world,” but Christopher Nolan “knows he would be called racist if he gave…the role to a white woman,” Walsh declared.

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Walsh believes that while Nolan is “technically talented,” he is a coward who is “too afraid to do anything that even slightly challenges the spirit of the age.”

Musk simply responded, “True.”

It’s likely that Nolan’s decision was based on a majority of different factors rather than the reductive DEI angle right-wing commentators are desperately clinging to.

In the movie, Nyong’o plays two characters, Helen of Troy and her sister Clytemnestra.

Technically, playing two completely separate characters within the same movie is challenging, but Nyong’o has experience playing a dual role in Jordan Peele’s 2019 horror film Us.

However, this isn’t the only reason Nolan cast Nyong’o, as her striking aesthetic also represents “underlying narrative pressure” based on Greek mythology, one Reddit user argued.

“This isn't some forced diversity quota. It’s actually a brilliant use of an unreliable, subjective POV.”

Musk calls historian and classicist Tom Holland a “cuck”

Tom Holland, a historian and classicist, has praised Nolan’s film as being “the best cinematic adaptation of a Greek myth (he has) ever seen,” according to Entertainment Weekly.

Holland, who studied classics at the University of Cambridge and Oxford, is an expert on Greek and Roman literature who says that the film “honors Homer while simultaneously making something new of him.”

Despite the expert opinion, Musk decided to side with a former Democrat and medical doctor who criticized public health organizations for “overstating the evidence” of COVID-19, who said that Nolan’s film “might be the worst movie ever made.”

Musk replied in the comment section, compared Holland (the historian, not the actor who played Telemachus in Nolan’s film) to a man who receives pleasure from seeing his partner having sex with another person while he watches.