The Most Memorable Movie Friendships

There are a few shortcuts we can use as filmmakers to quickly gain audience buy-in, and telling a story about friendship is one method. It can be the driving force of a narrative regardless of genre and often is. Or it can just add emotional texture. Either way, you can hang a lot on friendships, whether they're just developing or long-established, because of what it reveals about characters and backstories.

Buddy comedies, romance films, enemies-to-friends tales—so many stories rely on characters having this most fundamental relationship. You can build an entire universe around friendship.

Today we're taking a look at some of the most iconic movie friendships and what they can teach us. Come on, buddy!

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Sam and Frodo in The Lord of the Rings

Trust me, you could pick almost any duo from Peter Jackson's trilogy as an example of strong friendship. Merry and Pippin, Legolas and Gimli... Saruman and Wormtongue. But the most iconic pair has to be Sam (Sean Astin) and Frodo (Elijah Wood), the Hobbits who saved Middle-earth.

Astin told The Wrap that the emotional scene when Sam runs after Frodo at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring wasn't even in the original script.

"When Frodo and Sam go off on their own at the end of the first film, that scene wasn't written until well into the production. Like well, well, well into the production. And Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens wanted Elijah [Wood] and I to come and have a meeting with them, and we were like, 'Well, this is new.'"

What emerged from that scene was the beginning of a brotherly devotion between the pair. If you're finding a friendship, maybe the biggest moments come out of rewrites when you're already shooting. Jackson did this often as he was cutting and keeping from J.R.R. Tolkien.

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Butch and Sundance in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

William Goldman's screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is pretty much the template for the buddy movie. Butch (Paul Newman) and Sundance (Robert Redford) don't really have backstory but share a bond that comes alive in their scenes together.

George Roy Hill, the film's director, talks about the making of the film in a documentary from producer Robert Crawford (via INSP). He said:

Most actors can sometimes be a terrible pain in the ass, where they're jealous of each other. But on thth iis one, even though they didn't know each other before they started, Bob and Paul consciously established a relationship that was excellent. It included Redford having to laugh at all of Newman's God-awful jokes.

We wrote recently about one of Butch's key lines from the film and how it reveals their viewpoints.

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Harry and Sally in When Harry Met Sally

Can men and women just be friends? This film argues that question and ultimately loses the fight, but it's worth it to see Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan) talk for 10 years before they fall in love.

The late Rob Reiner told CNN's Chris Wallace that the film originally ended with the pair walking away from each other (via The Hollywood Reporter). "I met my wife Michele, who I've been married to now 35 years. I met her while we were making the film, and I changed the ending."

The emotional finale works because Reiner had been on both sides of the argument and could sell friendship and romance. Nora Ephron's script is one of the best ever written.

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Thelma and Louise in Thelma & Louise

Two women (Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon) drive off for a weekend away and end up in over their heads, wth the bond between them sustaining their journey.

Writer Callie Khouri told Variety at the film's 30th anniversary screening that the finale was like a lightning bolt. "It literally just appeared in my head. And I knew that that was the ending."

Of the characters' kiss, Sarandon said:

“I just felt by that time that they were finishing each other’s sentences and that they loved each other and this was a big moment and the sun was going down. We had one take because they spent all day with the helicopters and everything else. It just felt right… it was just an intuition thing.”

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Molly and Amy in Booksmart

Booksmart was Olivia Wilde's celebrated directorial debut, and it follows two high school best friends (Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever) as they're about to graduate and move on to college. As overachievers, they decide to use the night to party hard and make up for lost time. Some call it the femme Superbad, but the female friendship gives it a totally different tone.

Wilde told NPR:

Society gives us so much context for the romantic relationship—there are so many love songs about romantic relationships ... beginning the middle and the end. We have very few love songs, movies, stories about friendship — platonic friendship—and yet it is in so many ways deeper. ...
People realize this later in life after maybe romances come and go—that those friendships are incredibly significant. And I hope that this film allows people to look around them and value those friendships even more.

Bottoms has a similar pair in a high school setting if you need a recommendation for a double feature.

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Bill and Ted in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

Is there a more quotable '80s film with a more bodacious couple of dudes? I think not. Bill S. Preston Esq. (Alex Winter) and Ted "Theodore" Logan (Keanu Reeves) go traveling through time in this teen comedy to pass their history final and go on to become rock stars. The two characters love and support each other through all their dumb mistakes.

Writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon told Flickering Myth that part of what made the movie work was the chemistry between the actors. Matheson said, "We got so monumentally lucky with those two guys. We really did. Not only that, but these two guys really legit like each other. And they're not Bill and Ted, but the depth of their friendship is real. You feel that, and it's beautiful."

It's one of Reeves' best.