Depending on who you're talking to, Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" is either an incredible achievement or an absolute disaster of a film. One thing I think we can definitely parse from the conversation is that it's not as popular as the critic outlets like to pretend.
It seems Rotten Tomatoes is cooking the books in some ways. As streamer Asmongold shows, the overwhelmingly high audience scores (not critic scores) being given to movies that clearly lacked popularity and were, in fact, controversial didn't sit right, as universally beloved movies sit somewhere near or even below the scores of bad movies.
Asmongold compares Rotten Tomatoes scores and accuses them of cooking the books
— Asmongold Updates (@Asmon_Updates) July 20, 2026
"They can just delete reviews? So they're just making it up. How does anybody take this seriously then?"
"The Woman King was rated a 6.9 on Metacritic, but it has a 99% on Rotten Tomatoes. So let me… pic.twitter.com/xsYPKv5jCI
Asmongold compares Rotten Tomatoes scores and accuses them of cooking the books
"They can just delete reviews? So they're just making it up. How does anybody take this seriously then?"
"The Woman King was rated a 6.9 on Metacritic, but it has a 99% on Rotten Tomatoes. So let me get this straight, this random movie has a higher rating than Lord of the Rings? Fight Club is at 96%, this is lower. The Matrix at 85%. Gladiator at 87%."
"So this random movie and The Odyssey are getting better reviews than Gladiator, Lord of the Rings, Fight Club, and Inception. I think there's something wrong here."
As I write this, Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" has a 97 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Meanwhile, on Metacritic, the film sports 5.1 out of 10.
The film is clearly not as liked as pop culture is claiming, but you don't need the scores to understand how divisive Nolan's take on the story was. You can just look at the reactions from movie-going audiences who are getting excited about any suggestion of a better director making another attempt at it. Literal headlines were made when Elon Musk agreed that he'd shell out $100 million to Mel Gibson if he wanted to take a crack at it.
I’m down
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
Gibson hasn't agreed to anything as of yet, and his thoughts on the matter haven't been voiced either, but while that's a proposition still in the air, what Musk is promising is the fact that "The Odyssey" will be created, in full, by Grok Imagine by the end of the year.
Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer https://t.co/bVHzUmY9WN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
And I believe him. In fact, it's something I've predicted would happen for some time. As I wrote back in February:
I would not be surprised — and I'd put my money on — hit movies and serials hitting platforms like YouTube that are completely AI-generated, and made by people like little Timmy, who put the film together between homework and dino nuggies. A housewife may create one of the greatest rom-coms ever after she puts her kids to bed for the night. A sitcom created by a blue-collar worker could spring up that takes the world by storm.
Hollywood will have nothing to do with it. It'll be all regular people like you and me.
Read: The AI Entertainment Wave Is Inevitable and It Will Change Everything
What signals this is coming on fast to me isn't the eruption of hope and encouragement from the internet around this; it's the fact that major entertainment websites decided to cover it. A number have, but I'll focus on the chief exemplification of integrity in entertainment journalism, Variety:
Given the presence of cyclops, six-headed monsters and a witch who turns sailors into pigs in “The Odyssey,” a nearly 2,800 year old epic considered to be a work of fiction, how “historically accurate” any retelling — AI generated or otherwise — can be is likely to be called into question.
Presumably, Musk is referring to the racial element, with him having been the most prominent voice attacking the casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy. In March he wrote that “Chris Nolan is an anti-White racist,” claiming that he only cast Nyong’o because “He wants the awards.” While not confirmed, the all-white AI cast of the short film he posted on X would appear to be more in line with what Musk would prefer.
Musk had also supporting transphobic posts about Elliot Page, who many initially asserted was playing Achilles. Page was later confirmed as playing Sinon.
I think it's pretty clear that Variety, and everyone else who zeroed in on the "historically accurate" comment, was missing the point. "The Odyssey" takes place at a certain time in history, with specific technologies, languages, cultures, politics, and mythologies. Nolan was accurate to very little of it, which takes one out of the movie.
But I digress.
I think the media and Musk's detractors are sneering at this because they know Musk's prediction will come true, and it will become just as much of a beachhead in the culture war, if not more so, than Nolan's Odyssey.
But my prediction doesn't stop there.
"The Odyssey" will be the beginning. Soon, people will be remaking the "Star Wars" sequels, "The Little Mermaid," "The Rings of Power," "Cowboy Bebop," "The Chronicles of Narnia"... all of it. They'll use AI to "fix" and "repair" the damage done to the reputation of these stories by Hollywood. These AI films, while controversial, will be celebrated in many ways.
This will trigger a wave of AI filmmaking that won't just stop at AI remakes, but original ideas that Hollywood wouldn't have ever thought of. As I said in my previous article about this wave, most of the AI creations that come out will be absolute garbage with horrible editing, nonsensical dialogue, and incoherent plots. But among those thorns there will be roses.
The age of AI filmmaking is right around the corner, and Hollywood is driving us right into it.
