The AI-Generated Odysseus: The Fall Is a Glitchy Mess That Fails to Live Up to the Hype

While Christopher Nolan’s engrossing take on The Odyssey has thoroughly dominated the global box office and unexpectedly spurred a newfound interest in classic literature among filmgoers, a very different kind of cinematic adaptation has arrived to test the limits of audience patience. A new retelling of Homer’s foundational epic made entirely with artificial intelligence is so poorly executed that it might just make viewers hate the original tale altogether.

The new film, titled Odysseus: The Fall, comes via the AI film firm Fountain 0. It is written and directed by company cofounder Ash Koosha, who also bizarrely lent his own likeness to the title character while creating all of the music for the production. Naturally, because of the automated nature of the workflow, the film’s official credits are exceptionally short. The studio’s only previous notable work is an AI-generated film called Dreams of Violets, which managed to secure a spot at Tribeca earlier this year.

However, The Fall is, on its face, a much more ambitious project. It has been aggressively marketed and billed by its creators as “the first completely AI-generated film produced at the level of a Hollywood blockbuster.” In reality, it is nothing close to the level of a Hollywood blockbuster. That outcome may not necessarily come as a surprise to industry watchers skeptical of generative video technology, but after watching the entire two-and-a-half-hour production, viewers will likely find themselves constantly surprised by just how much worse things could get as the runtime drags on. Far from offering a triumphant glimpse at the future of AI filmmaking, The Fall will likely make audiences wonder if there is really any viable future in it at all.

The movie is currently available to rent for $9.99, and as far as accessible viewing options go, it appears users can only stream it via a standard web browser. For anyone hoping to view it on a modern living room television, that means resorting to mirroring the screen from a mobile phone—an experience that is not exactly comparable to watching IMAX in 70mm. Things certainly did not get any better once the play button was finally pressed.

From a technical standpoint, The Fall is plagued by two main issues, starting with a disastrous lack of internal consistency. The visual world of the film is constantly morphing before the viewer’s eyes to the point that it becomes incredibly distracting. For instance, the height of the iconic cyclops that traps Odysseus and his men changes wildly from shot to shot. Waves in the background frequently move in the opposite direction of the prevailing wind, character mouths routinely fail to match the spoken words, and at times mouths move without producing any sound at all. Oars on ships magically bend and twist as the sailors row across the water. In one particularly bewildering scene, a huge fleet of boats is shown racing through the ocean while one of them is inexplicably moving sideways. Compounding these visual anomalies, the AI-produced voice-overs can be entirely incomprehensible, and at various points throughout the script, the names of both Odysseus and Zeus are mispronounced.

If these instances were merely the odd hiccup, they might be understandable as growing pains for a nascent medium. However, there are so many fundamental faults in The Fall that it becomes remarkably hard to focus on anything else happening on screen. Watching the movie often turns into an accidental game of spotting the weirdest errors. For example, a standard sword can be observed magically turning into a dagger mid-scene, while other background anomalies might include bizarre artifacts like an alien carcass roasting inexplicably over an open spit. Ultimately, The Fall feels like a feature-length film specifically designed to prove why human script supervisors are so vital to the filmmaking process.

The fundamental irony of the project is that while all of the AI-induced errors are deeply distracting, they are also easily the most entertaining part of the movie. There is not really much of substance to distract from in The Fall because the narrative pacing is so overwhelmingly dull. Because current generative AI models are fundamentally only capable of generating coherent scenes that last a few seconds, the movie feels like a disjointed, chaotic collection of isolated moments from the Odyssey that have been haphazardly stitched together with little rhyme or reason. If a viewer did not already know the overarching story going into the screening, they likely would not have any idea what was actually happening on screen, because the film explains very little of the plot. Crucial background details are entirely glossed over; for instance, audiences do not even learn about Penelope’s suitors until the movie is almost over.

Furthermore, it is difficult to think of a single aspect of The Fall that feels genuinely improved or elevated because of artificial intelligence. The performances are bafflingly bad, featuring characters who pause for agonizing seconds at random for no apparent narrative reason, punctuated by sudden bursts of erratic laughter that jolt viewers out of the experience. There is no physical weight to the action sequences, as if the entire movie takes place in a surreal alternate universe where physical laws like gravity are merely optional suggestions rather than constants. Similarly, there are no cool or impressive visual effects that would be physically impossible without the technology. Instead, the monsters look remarkably like shabby, low-budget stop-motion creatures from the 1930s, which looks all the weirder when they are placed directly beside the smooth, hyperreal human characters that AI models typically spew out. The contrast is not just visually jarring; it is both boring and genuinely ugly to look at.

Koosha has previously claimed that he adapted this particular story because he always felt passionately about Homer’s epic tale since he originally read it years ago. However, it seems much more likely that the creators are simply trying to skate by on the massive cultural hype and energy created by Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film, effectively turning AI-generated slop into a modern-day iteration of direct-to-video cash grabs.

Unfortunately for the filmmakers, this timing puts the project at an incredible disadvantage from the very beginning, directly inviting unfavorable comparisons to one of the most critically and commercially successful movies of the last few years. Nolan’s film was especially beloved by audiences and critics alike because of the director’s steadfast insistence on genuine human craftsmanship and practical filmmaking. Nolan is widely recognized as a filmmaker who cares deeply about the medium of cinema, and his personal passion and enthusiasm are precisely why top-tier stars want to work with him and why millions of viewers eagerly flock to theaters to see his movies.

The existence of The Fall, meanwhile, demonstrates an utter contempt for the medium of film, attempting to boil down the collective creative work of hundreds of skilled human workers into automated slop produced by a tiny team of tech developers. Ultimately, the project is so terrible that it will likely make audiences appreciate authentic, human-made art all the more.