Jump to content

The Odyssey (2026 film)

From Wikiquote, the free quote compendium
For other uses, see Odyssey (disambiguation).

The Odyssey is a 2026 British-American epic fantasy action film about Odysseus' long and perilous journey home after the Trojan War and his encounters with mythical beings as he attempts to reunite with his wife, Penelope.

Directed and screenplay adapted by Christopher Nolan, based on Homer's Odyssey.
Defy the gods.

Odysseus

[edit]
After years of war, no one could stand between my men and home. Not even me.
  • The power of the sacrifice is in the cost of the person making it.
  • Don't look for gods in men; you'll always be disappointed.
  • Ten years on this fucking beach. Let's go home!
  • After years of war, no one could stand between my men and home. Not even me.
  • Hunting's nothing but fighting with stealth.
  • Fortune favors the brave.
  • Help me go home.
  • The clearest view of a man is from below.

Penelope

[edit]
  • [to Odysseus] What if we ran? Took you past the ship, the brightest crew, headed for the horizon. Held hands on deck as we rode west at dusk, chasing the escaping sun. There's a world beyond these walls.
  • [to Melantho] Servant, your place is down there.
  • Promise me you will come back.
  • The structure's nothing without people's respect for its meaning.
  • Love's not a sacrifice.
  • I don’t want Odysseus’s song, I want Odysseus!

Telemachus

[edit]
  • Zeus's law tells us to treat strangers as we be treated because they might be gods in disguise. I think we've established Antinius, that you are not a god.
  • [Grabs the beggar about to see Penelope] Just don't try to give her any false hope. She has some way of knowing whether a someone has actually seen Odysseus. [referring to Eumaeus] You see that man? He can't see much anymore, but that doesn't stop him beating travelers to death in exchange for lies about my father.

Calypso

[edit]
  • The lotus clouds the mind, saps the will, but doesn't change who you are. You weren't ready to go home for whatever reason.
  • You're a man who needs to control his fate. But you cannot control this. You must give yourself to the storm, give yourself to Poseidon. And take your punishment. Give up the fight, give up control and live. It is a leap of faith you haven't yet made, Odysseus.

Melantho

[edit]
  • [to Penelope, after being caught scheming with Antinous] My Queen, surely your place is up there!

Menelaus

[edit]
  • Perhaps you've heard of Helen? Face that launched a thousand ships. Maybe now just five hundred.

Sinon

[edit]
  • If I never make it home, take this back to my father. Tell him everything I did. [pause] Odysseus! Feel free to add some stuff.

Circe

[edit]
  • I didn't turn your men into anything! Look at them. This is what they are. Look at them! Beasts!

Antinous

[edit]
  • You’re pining for some daddy you didn’t even know, like some sniveling bastard.
  • I need everyone in this party dead, in a ditch, throats open.
  • Somebody get these BEGGARS out of here!

Polybus

[edit]
  • [last words before dying] You're Odysse...

Eumaeus

[edit]
  • [to Telemachus in sword combat training] You don't need eyes to hear a hasty combination.
  • You can't win with a perfect defence.
  • [before locking Melanthius in the armory] I told you! Too loud, cowherd!

Other

[edit]
  • Opening Text: A time of apparent magic...
  • Bard: A face... a fleet... a war... a man... a thought... a trick! A trick to break the walls of Troy... and burn it, screaming to the ground!

Dialogue

[edit]
Sinon: [dying by the Trojan Horse ] A gift. For Athena.
Trojan calvaryman: [thwarts a comrade's sword blow] Common Gods. Respect their offering. [to calvary] Save it from the waves! Take it to Athena's temple! The war is over!
Telemachus: [walks up to mother at banquet] I want to remind them of whose wine they're drinking.
Penelope: I don't want Odysseus' song. I want Odysseus!
Telemachus: Then why do you entertain suitors in his house night after night?
Penelope: In this world, a man does what he chooses. I do what I can.
Telemachus: I am a man now, mom.
Penelope: So throw them out. Break Zeus's law and see what they do to you if you give them that excuse. I've already lost a husband. I don't want to lose a son.
Telemachus: My dad's coming back.
Penelope: Where is he? Eight years since Troy fell. Almost twenty years since he left us.
Telemachus: [walks up] He deserves the same welcome as all of you!
Polybus: Are you calling us beggars?
Telemachus: I'm saying you've been welcome here for three years.
Antinous: We've only enjoyed your hospitality for so long. Because your mother won't choose.
Telemachus: She's already married.
Antinous: Odysseus is dead.
Telemachus: What do you know about my dad?
Antinous: I know he kept stringing cattle in bad wine.
Telemachus: You had the best of it the first two seasons.
Antinous: I know he never came home.
Telemachus: Not yet.
Antinous: [leans in] You're pining for a daddy you didn't even know. Like some sniffling bastard.
Telemachus: Well, since none of us can really know who our fathers are. Don't cling to one.
Antinous: But I did know him. As boys. We watched him hunt. I tried to volunteers for his expedition to Troy. He told me to stay here and keep an eye on you.
Telemachus: Oh, me and my mother?
Antinous: You can't blame me for looking.
Telemachus: My dad is coming home. And his hospitality won't be as generous as hers.
Antinous: So he doesn't follow Zeus' law then?
Telemachus: Zeus' law tells us to treat strangers as we should be treated because they might be gods in disguise. I think we've established to Antinous that you were not a god.
Polybus: This one doesn't smell like a god.
Telemachus: Wouldn't be much of a disguise if he did. [the beggar restrains Polybus] Careful. He might strike you down right now. [thunder claps]
Beggar: [walking with Telemachus] That thunder was luck.
Telemachus: I don't know. You have wise eyes. Athena's eyes.
Eurylochus: Do we have enough provisions?
Odysseus: We've taken enough from Troy. Another stop or two won't kill us.
Odysseus: Come back as a prince, call a banquet. I'll be there.
Telemachus: What will you do at the banquet?
Odysseus: Beg. The clearest view of men is from below.
Odysseus: Why can't gods speak in ways we understand?
Athena: Who doesn't understand thunder? Fire? A child's smile? A good harvest?
Polyphemus: [sobbing and turned away from Odysseus and his men] Father Poseidon, they blinded me... Vengeance, father, vengeance for me... Poseidon, vengeance for me...!
Polites: [observing the Cyclops' cries to Poseidon ] It can talk. Why didn't it talk before?
Odysseus: Do you talk to ants?
Odysseus: Are there any loyal servants?
Telemachus: Some. When Odysseus shows himself, all.
Agamemnon: Odysseus.
Odysseus: How are you here? We won the war; you headed for home.
Agamemnon: Odysseus, the most brilliant of all my generals. You would never be snared as I was.
Odysseus: Were you cast adrift, like us?
Agamemnon: No. My misfortune was to make it home. Be welcomed by my beautiful wife. Bathed, anointed, made soft. To learn the hardest lesson. That I left a poison in her heart years before. A good part of her heart had gone to another. She and her lover had plotted my murder for years. Odysseus.
Odysseus: Yes.
Agamemnon: My son Orestes, did he avenge me?
Odysseus: My lord, how could I know? I'm still trying to get home.
Agamemnon: Don't make my mistake. Don't walk in the front door expecting garlands and praise. Come in disguise. Take your time. Assess.
Tiresias: Your men don't want you to defy the gods. But the gods say only you make it home.
Odysseus: Then I defy the gods.
Eurylochus: What was the song of the sirens like?
Odysseus: All the things you wanted to be and then all the things you wished you never wished for. It was a delicious itch you want to scratch but you find it under the skin and can't reach it. So the delicious itch becomes unbearable. It told you what you most want is what you most can't have and that the most you can't have is what you already had and lost. It was a song of all the promises I failed to keep. And it told me I don't really want to go home.
Penelope: Lock the door, set a fire, and burn the bastards. Do you think if I remarry, life goes back to the way it was? That world is gone. And in this one? They're not giving up power to you or Odysseus! If he'd return, he'd have to kill them. Like you will.
Telemachus: If I kill them, their families will demand revenge. I'd be exiled. And without me, the throne will be lost--
Penelope: Because only a man can sit on it? Empty throne? I've been sitting on that empty throne for twenty years! My knowledge, my years of experience, that's all nothing compared to the bristles on your chin!
Telemachus: Do you want peace, or do you want revenge?
Penelope: I WANT ODYSSEUS!
Odysseus: What if... when he left the belly of the horse... and opened the gates of Troy... he saw ten years of rage pour into that city in one night. We left them a gift in offering of peace that they took into their home... We violated all that's ever sacred between people... and turned the fight into a hunt. To burn the walls of Troy was to burn the world entire. Including his home. What if he knew that very night as he walked through fires of anarchy and pain... And in the days of sweaty celebrations that followed, what if he knew exactly what he'd done?
Penelope: What all of you had done.
Odysseus: One man's idea, one man's trick... to break Zeus's Law forever. We live in a world of palaces, trades, language, blind to its beauty... until we broke it.
Odysseus: Antinous cheated you?
Sinon: As he's no doubt cheating you.
Odysseus: How?
Sinon: Who's in Ithaca looking after your wife and son?
Antinous: [on Melanthe] You can't expect her to be loyal to Odysseus, someone she's never seen before.
Penelope: What about her loyalty to me?
Penelope: Promise me you will come back.
Odysseus: What if I can't?
Antinous: Bring me part of Telemachus as proof. His nose!
Irus: Would you know him only by his nose?
Antinous: ... His ears, too.
"Sinon" / Odysseus: What happened to Ithaca?
Eumaeus: Darkness. Zeus' law smashed to pieces. A kingdom without a king since my master died.
"Sinon" / Odysseus: Your master?
Eumaeus: Odysseus.
"Sinon" / Odysseus: Hero of the Trojan War. But Odysseus is alive.
Eumaeus: Beggar, that is a false hope! No more, no more! NO MORE, no more, no more...!
Eumaeus: Telemachus... Telemachus, Telem-
"Sinon" / Odysseus: Telemachus.
Eumaeus: He needs you. He's in danger and I can't help him...
"Sinon" / Odysseus: There must be others in Ithaca that would help Odysseus' son.
Eumaeus: The palace is controlled by suitors... No one is still loyal to Odysseus...
"Sinon" / Odysseus: What about the queen?
Eumaeus: Beautiful wise Penelope... Held hostage by the worst men, soon to be forced into marriage. What can she do without even her son?
"Sinon" / Odysseus: Here, drink. [gives Eumaeus a drink of water] What's the danger to Telemachus?
Eumaeus: He's on his way back from Sparta. The suitors sent bandits in the palace to ambush him in the temple.
"Sinon" / Odysseus: Give me food for the road.
Eumaeus: You'll- You'll never catch up with the bandits...
"Sinon" / Odysseus: If I can get to Pilos before Telemachus arrives, I can warn him.
Eumaeus: Why are you helping?
"Sinon" / Odysseus: If I tell you, don't be angry. I served with Odysseus at Troy.
Eumaeus: Really?
"Sinon" / Odysseus: He was a harsh taskmaster.
Eumaeus: Ah, but fair. Fair and worthy of following.
"Sinon" / Odysseus: You loved him.
Eumaeus: Like a son.
"Sinon" / Odysseus: Well... He's not dead.
Eumaeus: Is- Is he coming home?
"Sinon" / Odysseus: [about to leave] Soon.
Eumaeus: Bringing vengeance?
"Sinon" / Odysseus: ...Bringing it all.
"Sinon" / Odysseus: What if the Odysseus you knew lost his way? What if... one night, in a strange city, he saw things that made him think the home he knew couldn't possibly be there anymore. What if... when he left the belly of the horse, and opened the gates of Troy, he saw ten years of rage pour into that city in one night? We left them a gift, an offering of peace, that they took into their home. We violated all that's ever sacred between people. It turned a fight into a hunt. To burn the walls of Troy was to burn the world-entire. Including his home. What if he knew, that very night, as he walked through fires, anarchy, and pain -- and in a daze of sweaty celebrations that follow -- what if he knew exactly what he'd done?
Penelope: What all of you had done?
"Sinon" / Odysseus: One man's idea. One man's trick to break Zeus's law forever. We lived in a world of palaces and trade, language, blind to its beauty, until we broke it.
Penelope: You are the people from the sea.
"Sinon" / Odysseus: Yes, my queen. The breaking of Zeus's law, spreading like plague. Our age of bronze is collapsing, and maybe he couldn't bear to see the ruins of what he'd done. Anywhere. Least of all, his home.
[last lines]
Penelope: [cradling Odysseus as he reunites with her, seeming as if he is dying] Odysseus, my love! Odysseus... My love... You came back...
Odysseus: At last... The end... To see my beloved Ithaca, one last time...
Penelope: No, no... Oh, no, no, you can't, you can't, you can't, not now! Not now, please, I've waited so long... [sobs] You can't die!
Odysseus: Not death... Exile. Telemachus will be King. We'll head into the unknown west, to honor my men, together.
Penelope: Take your fastest ship and brightest crew and head for the horizon.
Odysseus: Chasing the escaping sun.
[on the ship]
Penelope: Why will the stories only be sung?
Odysseus: Because songs will be all they have to remember those of us who could write.
Penelope: Civilization will rise again.
Odysseus: A new dawn will break over the darkened world. And our mistakes will once again be forgotten.

Cast

[edit]
[edit]
Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia has an article about:
Commons
Commons
Retrieved from "https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=The_Odyssey_(2026_film)&oldid=4002180"