The Verge Calls AI-Generated Odyssey Film Odysseus: The Fall Error-Ridden and Dull

The Verge reported that Fountain 0’s only previous work is an AI film called Dreams of Violets, which made it into Tribeca earlier this year. The Fall is more ambitious on its face, but after watching the entire 2.5-hour production, the reviewer found it constantly worse than expected. To watch it on a living-room TV, The Verge said, the reviewer had to mirror the screen from a phone, because the movie appears to be available only through a web browser.

The review identified consistency as one of the film’s two main problems. Its world changes constantly, with the cyclops’s height shifting from shot to shot, waves moving opposite the wind, mouths failing to match spoken words, oars bending and twisting as sailors row, and one boat in a fleet inexplicably moving sideways, according to The Verge. The AI-generated voice-overs are sometimes incomprehensible, and the names of Odysseus and Zeus are pronounced incorrectly at various points.

The Verge said the errors are so frequent that they become the most entertaining part of the movie. The reviewer watched with a 13-year-old, and the two turned it into a game of finding the weirdest mistakes. The reviewer noticed a sword turning into a dagger, while the child spotted an alien carcass roasting over a spit. The review said the film seems designed to prove why script supervisors exist.

Beyond the mistakes, The Verge described The Fall as dull. Because current AI models can generally generate only a few seconds of scene at a time, the movie feels like a disjointed collection of moments from the Odyssey stitched together with little rhyme or reason, the review said. It explains very little, so viewers unfamiliar with the story would have trouble following it, and Penelope’s suitors do not appear until almost the end.

The Verge found no aspect of The Fall improved by AI. It called the “acting” bafflingly bad, with characters pausing for seconds at a time for no apparent reason and bursts of laughter jolting viewers. The action has no weight, as if physics and gravity were suggestions rather than constants, and the monsters resemble shabby 1930s stop-motion creatures placed beside smooth, hyperreal human characters. The review called the outcome jarring, boring, and ugly.

The Verge also reported that Koosha claims he adapted the story because he “always felt passionately about Homer’s epic tale since [he] originally read it years ago.” The review argued it seems more likely that he was trying to benefit from the hype around Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey film, which The Verge said dominated at the box office and renewed interest in classic literature. The review said that comparison puts The Fall at a disadvantage, especially because Nolan’s film was associated with human craftsmanship and drew audiences and stars partly because of the director’s passion for film. The Verge concluded that the existence of The Fall shows utter contempt for the medium.