Despite Elon Musk’s best efforts to silence Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, the film became a huge smash in its opening week, pulling in more than $264 million – which puts it on track to become Nolan’s biggest hit of his career. Now, Musk has come up with alternate campaigns against the film: creating his own AI version using Grok AI and offering Mel Gibson $100 million to remake it “properly.”
Backlash before the box office
Interstellar. The Dark Knight. Inception. Christopher Nolan’s films have always been huge hits in Hollywood. After all his success, you could even argue that the director’s work is review-proof and backlash-proof, with the only real complaints being his sound choices over the years. But now, The Odyssey has changed all that. For the first time, Nolan is having to navigate backlash from moviegoers who are upset about his casting choices.
Musk’s $100 million Mel Gibson pitch
This week, an X user suggested Musk personally fund Gibson to make his own version of the story, with “painstakingly historically accurate” ships, armor, weapons and casting, and dialogue delivered in Homeric Greek. Musk was on board with the idea and is willing to put up a whopping $100 million to make it happen.
Gibson, who is the director behind some of the biggest historically accurate films, including Braveheart, Apocalypto, Hacksaw Ridge and The Passion of the Christ, has yet to respond to the suggestion. He is of course still busy with post-production on his two-part Resurrection of the Christ films scheduled for next year and the year after.
Then Musk promised Grok AI would do it instead
But if Gibson isn’t available, Musk will turn to his own Grok Imagine tool to make it happen. Sharing a 3-minute AI-generated Odyssey clip, he wrote: “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.”
But, in all this commotion, Musk and his followers seem to clearly forget one painful detail: Homer’s roughly 2,800-year-old poem is a myth, not a historical record. Sirens, a cyclops, and a witch who turns sailors into pigs tend to be the giveaway for most people, but clearly not for others.
A pattern of picking fights with filmmakers
But Musk has a long history of fighting with filmmakers. Remember his feud with the people behind Blade Runner 2049? Or how about his feud with The Boys’ Eric Kripke about the show’s finale?
Surprisingly, the only film he recently pushed was by Uwe Boll’s Citizen Vigilante – a film that has been met with plenty of controversy. Even its lead, Armie Hammer, has called it “hateful” and “disgusting”. After Elon Musk made the film available to watch for free on X for 48 hours, it exploded — landing at #1 on Amazon’s rental charts and #2 on Apple TV’s Top Movies list.
Musk called Nolan a “worm” before the premiere
Right before The Odyssey’s London premiere, Elon Musk replied to a post on X celebrating The Odyssey trailer‘s dislike count and told his followers Nolan had “desecrated Homer” to chase an Oscar. “What a worm,” Musk wrote in a reply that gained thousands of likes within hours. Musk has been negatively commenting on Nolan’s The Odyssey for months now. And it’s clear by his comments that he has a bone to pick with the director.
What’s strange is that Musk has actually been close with Nolan’s brother and Interstellar co-writer Jonathan Nolan for years. But the two don’t seem to agree here, as Jonathan has called his brother’s movie “spectacular” and “an incredible achievement” after an early screening of The Odyssey.
The trailer’s dislike count told its own story
Over the last decade or more, nearly every Christopher Nolan movie trailer has had positive feedback – even Tenet, which is considered by many as his least polished work, had thousands of likes and comments. The Odyssey countdown trailer on Universal’s own YouTube channel shows the shift. It’s been flooded with dislikes and negative comments about casting picks and comments mocking the Helen of Troy.
“I paid nothing to see this trailer and I already want my money back,” one person wrote on YouTube. “The face that emptied a thousand seats,” wrote another. A comment, “I never thought I would see the day when a movie about Greek mythology would come out and I wouldn’t want to see it,” got over 6,000 likes.
The studio’s response, however, says a lot, too. They’ve turned off replies on X and given critics an embargo that’s really close to the release day (July 15, two days before). Those actions are clearly in the hopes of killing all the controversy.
The casting backlash started months earlier
The casting fights, of course, predate the marketing by months. Lupita Nyong’o’s Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra, Zendaya’s Athena, and Elliot Page’s Sinon have all come under fire. Even Greek commentators have been vocal about the production’s representation choices – wanting authentic Greek actors to play the roles.
Musk made the Nyong’o backlash much worse when he called it out in January. By May, he was saying that Nolan desecrated The Odyssey to be eligible for an Academy Award.
The box office proved Nolan right anyway
Still, it’s a Christopher Nolan movie. IMAX 70mm seats for The Odyssey sold out a year in advance. Hardcore fans don’t care about what happens on X. They’ve already bought their tickets. Nolan has always delivered larger-than-life stories with epic visuals and amazing performances from his cast. There was nothing from the trailers that suggested that The Odyssey would be any different.
As many have already pointed out, The Odyssey is a fictional movie about a fictional story. But some people just won’t be convinced.
Whether a Gibson-directed Odyssey or a Grok-made feature ever actually materializes remains to be seen.
of course woke lot wouldn’t have a problem with nolan race swapping Ancient Greeks(whom actually existed>Mycenaean,Spartans & were actually white, as are their descendants=dna), cs are massive liars & hypocrites. they keep talking abt fiction, when Spartans or Mycenaean existed & modern day Greeks are their descendants, Nolan & woke lot are cr** all over an entire nations culture/history with their woke bs & this is not the Odyssey it’s, the damn odeissey.cs as musk rightfully said nolan wants oscars & if you digging in the academy rules he has to hit certain woke rules to get nominated. nolan is another director who became woke lots b** to push their woke agendas.
Let’s see. The fakest backlash ever. Christ the original backlash for Elliot page was that he was playing Achilles, without any idea what they’re talking about. This all boils down to apartheid boy getting his little racist panties twisted up his butt. Most people have zero idea about the odyssey at all, because they don’t read poetry and are following their cult leaders down the sewer.
Gee, the world’s biggest slug called Nolan a worm. I’d take that as a compliment.