That seems to be exactly what viewers are responding to, turning “The Odyssey” not just into a hit but a cultural phenomenon, with some people traveling by plane for the chance to see it in IMAX 70 millimeter. (As The New York Post reported, Manhattan’s only theater to show the film in that format is sold out for every screening through Aug. 19.) There might seem to be a contradiction between its absence of eye candy and its success as a spectacle. But A.I. has rendered eye candy cheap. Viewers long for the visceral.

One of this year’s few pleasant surprises is that people are going back to the movies. During the pandemic, there were many predictions that movie theaters were dying, replaced by the comforts of streaming video. While the gloomiest forecasts proved overwrought, in recent years, the trend has still been one of decline. American box office sales were lower in 2024 than they were in 2023, and continued to disappoint in 2025. This year, however, is on track to be the best one for ticket sales since 2019. Young people, eager for communal experiences, have been flocking to theaters; according to a study by Fandango, Gen Z is now the most active moviegoing demographic.

What’s striking, though, isn’t just that people are returning to theaters, it’s the sort of films they’re going to. Recent movies that look artificial — including “Supergirl,” the live-action “Moana” and “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu” — have flopped. By contrast, the low-budget horror movies “Obsession” and “Backrooms,” which rely on frightening premises rather than otherworldly imagery, have been enormous hits. “Audiences in 2026 are sending a clear message to filmmakers: We want movies to look real — and for you to sweat while making them,” wrote The Hollywood Reporter’s James Hibberd.

There is no greater champion of hands-on, analog filmmaking than Nolan, who doesn’t even own a smartphone. Speaking to The Telegraph’s Collin, he celebrated young people’s rejection of A.I. “I’ve never seen a more rapid wholesale dismissal of a supposedly foundational jump in technology in my lifetime,” said Nolan. As a result, he said, “after years of driving toward heavily virtual environments, we’re seeing a renewed interest in more tactile, more real forms of storytelling.”

It is this ethos, more than multiracial casting, that makes “The Odyssey” a rebuke to Musk’s ideology, with its video game-derived visions of grandeur and conviction that algorithms can make art. He’s probably right to hate it. He’s wrong that his machines could ever conjure anything close.