AI slop movies are the new direct-to-video cash grabs

Rogers wasn’t exactly suggesting Odysseus: The Fall will be able to hold a candle to The Odyssey , but he was saying that Fountain 0’s projects represent the best kind of “films” that AI firms are capable of making. Rogers might genuinely believe that his company’s features are good, but when you watch Dreams of Violets — which plays like a collection of prompted clips — it’s hard to imagine theatergoers would agree with him.

Seeing the visual grandeur and studied artistry of Nolan’s The Odyssey makes you appreciate how it is the product of hundreds of humans tirelessly working together to make a truly epic piece of art. Fountain 0 has made a big deal out of the fact that Koosha and his brother Pooya did most of the work on Odysseus: The Fall themselves, but that isn’t really the sort of thing that convinces people to buy movie tickets.

Though there was a (dubious) argument to be made that Dreams of Violets was trying to raise public awareness about Iran’s history of human rights violations, it’s hard not to see Odysseus: The Fall as yet another AI-hyping stunt that has little to do with the celebration of art. This was similarly true of ElevenLabs’ recently released The Odyssey audiobook narrated by an AI-generated facsimile of Michael Caine . It’s also the entire ethos behind studio / startup Particle6’s repeated attempts to convince everyone that “AI actress” Tilly Norwood is a thing that we should all spend time thinking about.

Like Fountain 0, Particle6 recently announced its own plans to put out a feature-length movie starring an avatar. Both of these companies seem to think that they can troll their way into relevance before becoming widely accepted parts of the entertainment industry. But what they don’t seem to realize is that the thing that gets people eager to see a film like Nolan’s The Odyssey is the way it embodies the deeply collaborative human elements of traditional filmmaking.

The effusive praise and hateful backlash that The Odyssey has drawn both speak to Nolan’s ability to craft works of art that elicit genuine emotion from audiences. Those powerful feelings are what drive film discourse and get people buying movie tickets, which keeps major studios like Universal in business. For all the promises that gen AI is going to fundamentally reshape the entertainment industry, the technology’s boosters have yet to release a film or series that comes anywhere close to drumming up the excitement Nolan’s fans have for The Odyssey . And they never will if stunts like the one Fountain 0 is trying to pull are all they have to offer.