Elon Musk says he'd be 'down' to give Mel Gibson $100M for an adaptation of 'The Odyssey' to counter Chris Nolan's 'woke' version

“Chris Nolan desecrated the Odyssey so that he would be eligible for an Academy Award …” said Musk in a May 15 X post, over a month before the movie’s premiere.

He’s likely referring to the idea that filmmakers need to meet cast diversity quotas to be eligible for an Oscar. The Academy does require that films meet certain diversity standards to qualify for a Best Picture award, but the standards are broad; films without any people of color in their cast, for example, are still able to qualify.

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.

But what does it mean for an Odyssey adaptation to be historically accurate? And is $100 million enough to make a film rivaling Nolan’s?

Musk calls for a “historically accurate” Odyssey. What does that even mean?

Nolan’s film has been under fire for being “woke” ever since it was announced that Lupita N’yongo was cast as Helen of Troy, a Greek figure known for her beauty. Other cast members, such as trans man Elliot Page, have also faced backlash for not being white or cisgender.

“Just saw The Odyssey… The movie is just as woke as you fear, if not more so,” said right-wing internet personality Matt Walsh, who identifies as a theocratic fascist in his X bio. “The DEI casting is atrocious.”

Musk has used the words “historically accurate” to refer to his version of The Odyssey, presumably in contrast to Nolan’s film. But is a historically accurate version of the mythic tale even possible?

“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.”

Musk’s call for historical accuracy, contextually, is more about Nolan’s casting choices than his costuming ones. But Musk’s focus on race isn’t reflective of how Greeks at the time saw the world.

Ancient Greeks did not understand race the same way modern Americans do, and even their words for color can be difficult to translate accurately. In an article for Aeon, AG Leventis Professor of Greek culture at the University of Cambridge Tim Whitmarsh says you could translate The Odyssey such that Odysseus has black skin and blue hair — although that likely wouldn’t be accurate to Homer’s intent.

“So to ask whether Achilles and Odysseus are white or black is at one level to misread Homer,” says Whitmarsh in the article. “His color terms aren’t designed to put people into racial categories, but to contribute to the characterization of the individuals. Greeks simply didn’t think of the world as starkly divided along racial lines into black and white.”

$100 million is a healthy budget for a movie — but it’s less than half what Nolan spent

The X post Musk responded to called for a $100 million budget for a Gibson-led Odyssey adaptation. That’s a sizable budget — just enough to be considered blockbuster-worthy and well ahead of the industry average $64 million production budget.