Posted on 07/24/2026 5:50:46 AM PDT by Cronos
"Chris Nolan desecrated the Odyssey so that he would be eligible for an Academy Award …" said Musk
Now that Nolan's film is out to rave reviews from both critics and audiences, Musk has taken to X once again to share his plans to make a more "historically accurate" version of the film.
"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," said Musk in a July 21 X post.
That same day, he replied "I'm down" to a tweet asking him to give Mel Gibson $100 million to film a "painstakingly accurate" Odyssey adaptation.
Gibson might have been chosen for previously directing the historical epic Braveheart — and for having a number of famous controversies centered around the actor/director's alleged antisemitism, racism and homophobia, making him an "anti-woke" pick.
"The whole controversy around the Nolan film has been a little head-scratching," said Daniel Mendelsohn, a classicist with a published translation of The Odyssey, in an interview with The Times. "There is no such thing as a historically accurate version of The Odyssey."
Mendelsohn says that The Odyssey is a hodgepodge of different eras from Greek history.
"The armor, the modes of fighting, the courtship rituals — it's a mixed bag from all different periods of civilization, and so there is nothing to be historically accurate to," he says.
Musk's announcement of a Grok-driven Odyssey adaptation was itself a quote retweet to a three-minute Grok-generated scene of The Odyssey, which Mendelsohn said also contained historical inaccuracies.
"I do wish they would stop putting these guys in sleeves," said Mendelsohn in the same interview. "The Greeks didn't have sleeves. That was a sign that you were a foreigner."
(Excerpt) Read more at uk.finance.yahoo.com ...
In fact, Elon should dewokify the whole marvel universe.
Businesswise, that’s a terrible idea. Wait 10 years and maybe it would work.
Newt Gingrich has a wonderful gift for historical fiction.
We have to assume it would be in English, like the modern translations.
Yeah. These stories change constantly. That’s the real hallmark of western civilization, it’s not the preservation of these old stories, it’s constantly finding new modern themes to discuss using those old stories.
I saw a great tweet yesterday that, in jest, said Nolan’s Odyssey is really about life in LA, and then paralleled various story beats to LA culture. It was hilarious. And part of what was so funny was that it could be true.
“Spending another nickel on “an accurate” version is silly.”
By accurate, most people, and I assume Musk is one, would define accurate as closely following the narrative written down by Homer. For example, Helen is described by Homer as white, and the warriors were not pint-sized trannies.
The story doesn’t need an interpretation.
That is my only issue with Apocalypto was the Spanish did not show up in Central America for 600 years later. I said it to my wife right at the end of the movie.
Then I said, heck its just a movie. It was great other than that.
I never understood the interest in the Odyssey. Live pagan gods and imaginary places. I guess you could consider it a form of antique science fiction. Ditto, super heroes.
But Alexander Pope’s version is like that guys version of the Rubaiyat - it’s quite different from teh original but works BETTER in English.
I never understood the interest in the Odyssey. Live pagan gods and imaginary places. I guess you could consider it a form of antique science fiction. Ditto, super heroes.
The Christian devotion to truth brought about science as we know it. The idea that God ordered the universe, and we can discover his rules was a great achievement.
In Christianity, God is faithful. God does not lie. God keeps his promises.
You do not find such in the Pantheon of Greece or Rome.
Homer does not describe Helen's skin as "white" in a modern racial sense -- he uses the epithet leukōlenos, which translates literally to "white-armed" or "fair-armed" - i.e. not tanned (meaning she didn't work in the fields). Homer leaves Helen's specific facial features, skin tone, and hair color largely unstated, focusing instead on the overwhelming impact of her divine beauty.
homer DOES say she is the outcome of when her mother is seduced by Zeus in the form of a swan - so accurately she ought to be some half-human, half-swan hybrid :-P
It was very close in how the Oberammergau Passion play is done.
You cannot make a “painstakingly accurate” 3 hour movie of such an epic. It would require an entire TV series. I saw the 1980s BBC adaptation of Bleak House, and they really tried (in those days, BBC respected the source material of the many British great writers like Dickens), but characters got combined, and entire subplots got dropped (goodbye Mrs Jellyby). It still clocked in at six hours.
No, no, Mel has to finish the Jesus sequel.
We need to stop being emotional about stuff that doesn’t matter.
The Patriot has a Francis Marion Swamp Fox vibe but the hero is really an amalgamation of several Southern patriot guerilla leaders such as Marion, Thomas Sumter, Nathaniel Greene & Andrew Pickens, etc. The final battle is based on Cowpens, the leader there was Daniel Morgan. Morgan was more a western Virginian then Deep South. The character Chris Cooper played was based on Light Horse Harry Lee. Robert E. Lee’s father. I guess that couldn’t be highlighted!
The thing that irritated me about the movie was here was a chance to educate America about some forgotten heroes Gibson didn’t do it!
The book is still out there. We should encourage our kids to read the damned book.
(I could barely stand getting through it in Jr High.)
Getting worked up because Hollywood made a version we might not like is laughable.
Completely laughable if you actually respect Western literature and its sources! If you don’t then it doesn’t matter.
Might as well do Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu: Often considered the world’s first novel with Swedes!
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