Every week, The Lemur’s editors-in-chief handpick a few things worth holding on to. Consider this your quick break from the incessant pull of Instagram Reels.

We are loath to announce we’re discussing AI in film again. And yet, an entire AI-generated movie created to siphon success from the cinematic event of the year, Odysseus: The Fall, is too good to pass up. Some odysseys, it seems, won’t end. Here are our thoughts. 

A single person (“director” Ash Koosha) generated a 135-minute Odyssey film for the price of a used car. Is this feat appalling, or kind of impressive? What do you make of this?

CE:  I think some will find this thing impressive and genuinely enjoy it as a film. While it’s hard to call a lot of things “appalling” nowadays—in a world where people literally have AI “partners”—this is certainly a troublesome cog in a machine that just won’t quit. And this cog is entirely synthetic: actors, sets, cinematography; a sort of dilution of last week’s AI “actress” whose cog was a different (though no less headache-inducing) animal.

I think it’s a matter of ethics to refuse to engage with such products, especially when you have Nolan’s human-dreamt, human-acted, and human-directed counterpart in theaters. I understand the appeal of such a soulless retelling for viewers who have problems with Nolan’s Odyssey (like its “woke” casting, though I think that’s a foolish complaint for reasons that should be palpable). But I’m not saying you have to engage with Nolan’s film at all. You certainly should not engage with this one.

The technology may be impressive, but the soul of this thing is dispiriting, if not exactly appalling. That’s all I can say until AI “films” become truly endemic.

AND: There are many things to be appalled by—the lack of human integration and the uniformity of rendering in some scenes within the trailer. The distance between humans and traditional film is appalling. I agree with Cara that these AI films represent a troublesome cog in a “machine that won’t quit”. However, throughout history, humans won’t stop using machines. Relationships between humans and machines are ever-changing. Thus, AI films are not severing the relationship between man and film; rather, it is undergoing a metamorphosis. 

Whether we choose to engage with this transformation or not is a matter of ethics. I believe that if AI films become endemic, it is fair to engage with them. Watch it. Be absolutely impressed or reviled by the new cinematic experience.  The impressive part is how they are using AI to create such cinematic experiences, even as they believe this is much bigger than Koosha using the budget of a small car to reproduce a Greek classic. 

Homer’s Odyssey has survived nearly three millennia of storytelling. Odysseus: The Fall came from a chatbox prompt. What does it mean that this retelling is one created without the type of human ingenuity we typically associate with art?

CE: There’s a much lower bar to not only who we consider as artists, but who assumes the role of the artistic consumer. AI, by nature, is formula-dependent, and those who have seen multiple AI videos will notice aspects of these products that become repetitive. And here’s the thing: Odysseus: The Fall isn’t actually devoid of human ingenuity. It focuses on an angle of the Odyssey that has the potential for genuinely novel ideas and storytelling: Odysseus’s reckoning with his journey, “the fractured memory of a drowning man in his final minutes,” or so its IMDb synopsis reads. An idea with potential is squandered by the intercession of AI, which is bound to take Koosha’s possibly interesting plot points and render them uninteresting. That’s the nature of AI. 

There’s a chain that becomes weakened, even severed, by The Fall. The operatic, theatrical, and literary traditions that humanity has molded around Homer’s Odyssey are a testament to human creativity. This version is merely a poor reproduction of those more human forms, with no real human writer or performer around to bestow cunning on Odysseus or cleverness on Penelope. You know, human traits. The change of hands that delicately handles this story loses its meaning, even if the bones of the story itself remain.

AND: Such is the nature of Homer’s Odyssey; we have always been rewriting and retelling the story, and the thought of AI interceding in this conversation genuinely excites and worries me at the same time. 

I agree with Cara’s point that AI, by nature, is formula-dependent. This means that the sprawling human ingenuity that already exists on the Internet precedes such AI creation, reinforcing the human need for creativity. Koosha’s foray into prompt engineering Odysseus: The Fall is a different type of human ingenuity. As our relationship with machines blurs the boundaries between ingenuity and banality, I think AI cinema will demand more human creativity,y not less. This will require more people to know how to use AI to shoot a scene this way, to insert something like this, etc. My optimistic belief is that what would take CGI experts months could, in the future, take them weeks or days. 

The conversation around this also reminds me of the tirades Elon Musk has taken recently in using Grok to create a “historically accurate” rendition of the Odyssey (which means using more Greek or European casting as opposed to racial diversity). How will AI change the way we view films and who gets to control those levers? 

Odysseus spends the whole epic trying to travel home. Is cinema losing a “home” if films can now be generated virtually anywhere, by anyone with access to AI?

CE: There’s a wider cultural je ne sais quoi diminished upon consumption of a film as unnatural as this one. Cinema requires a commitment—it costs money, time, and resources to create, and it demands likewise from its consumers. Products that demand nearly nothing from their creator or audience simply cannot be included in this schema. There is no universal requirement to partake in cinema, but that doesn’t mean the discipline should be reduced to, for lack of rhetorical elegance, readily available “slop.” Cinema is an awe-inspiring “home” for those who want one. 

There’s a litany of activities you can do this weekend that don’t come with the same price tag or planning required to see Nolan’s Odyssey (it’s hard to find decent seats without looking days in advance, and forget about seeing it in IMAX as Nolan intended), but that doesn’t mean you should yield to watching whatever the hell this is. Online services like Tubi and Plex are legal, free, convenient, and host a ton of legitimate films that are teeming with humanity. You can watch Full Metal Jacket or American Psycho on Tubi, or read Homer’s original Odyssey on Project Gutenberg for FREE. RIGHT NOW. Please don’t opt for Odysseus: The Fall.

AND: This is a very fascinating question because the idea of cinema having a “home” alludes to Odysseus’ journey. Like The Odyssey, in the modern age, cinema is constantly searching for where it belongs. From vaudeville theatres to drive-in projections and now IMAX showings, cinema’s proverbial home has always shifted. I see AI simply being the next stage on this journey. Despite cinema’s ever-changing mediums, cinema’s home has always been the human desire to tell stories. AI and the emergence of clankers may decentralize where films are made, but they cannot entirely replace why films are made.

The human experience of film is exactly the thread Christopher Nolan weaves in so intricately. His ambitious films that bend time and physical laws, audacious guidelines to view movies a certain way (much like Oppenheimer in 70-millimeter theatres a few years back), and a penchant for cinematic stardom have made Nolan quite the contrarian filmmaker—and the perfect person to touch humans in this generation. AI cannot emulate this, and it only serves a mediary purpose to enhance the experience, not replace it wholly. If you are to watch a movie with the raw human intensity, watch The Odyssey. Hell, Shutter Island is free on YouTube. Odysseus: The Fall should be watched at your own discretion—but don’t be disappointed when it falls flat.

There’s your *Monday. Keep an open mind and let us (or, better yet, a friend!) know if anything resonates. No Lemur is an island. We’ll see you next week.