Pretty much every movie you see has main characters meeting and interacting. On the one hand, you can have two protagonists that come together to advance the story of the movie. On the other hand, you can also have a protagonist come face to face with the film’s antagonist, be it introducing the character, building suspense or even setting up a climax. Anyway, in most movies, these kinds of characters get directly personal in one way or another. However, that’s not to say that every movie you see will have some of the main characters facing each other or meeting in person.
In many cases, some movies won’t even meet at all because they just don’t meet or because they interact in a different way than being in the same room together. Let’s take a look at ten of these movies where some of the main characters never meet.
10 Enemy at the gates – Vasili and Konig
Enemy at the gate takes on the brutal Battle of Stalingrad and focuses on a sniper duel between Russian sniper Vasili and his German opponent Konig who was sent to take him out. Enemy at the gate also uses Vasili as the film’s protagonist, and the story follows the sniper who becomes the face of the Russian war effort with his propaganda campaign.
The film is based on true events where we see Vasili navigating treacherous terrain as he tries to avoid being killed by Konig. Much of the film is spent with the two snipers watching each other from a distance through the reach of their weapons, never coming face to face. The closest the two come to meeting is when Konig meets his demise. Konig is led into a trap, believing Vasili to be dead. When Konig emerges from hiding, he is met with Vasili’s rifle pointed at him only a few feet away. He accepts defeat and is killed instantly. So while the Vasili and Konig certainly almost met, they never got that chance as they were enemies on the other side of a brutal war.
9 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan – Kirk and Khan
In Khan’s wrath, Kirk and Khan eventually interact, but they never come face to face. The two communicate with each other from their own locations, essentially communicating via video call. Kirk and the entire crew of the Enterprise face Khan to rescue some captured crew members and stop Khan from taking control of the powerful Genesis device and using it. For all the action, suspense, and high stakes throughout the film, a video call between the hero and villain is as close as the two have met in person.
Technically, Kirk and Khan had previously met on a television episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, but they are never in the same room together during the entire movie.
8 The Fifth Element – Dallas and Care
In the far future, The fifth element sees taxi driver Korben Dallas embark on a world-saving mission when a young woman named Leeloo falls into his taxi. To save the world, Dallas must find four stones representing the main elements of water, fire, air and earth and combine them with Leeloo, the living embodiment of the Fifth Element. At the same time, the great evil is also after the stones, looking to use them to destroy the earth. At the head of the attack of the Great Evil is Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg, the main adversary of the film.
Despite the fact that Dallas and Zorg search for the same stones and Zorg tries to destroy Leeloo, the two forces never come face to face. In fact, they don’t communicate with each other in any way, and the closest they come to each other is when Dallas enters one elevator and Zorg exits another a few seconds later.
7 Braveheart – William Wallace and King Edward
Historical epic Brave heart is loosely based on the story of Scottish revolutionary William Wallace as he and his countrymen fight back against the English invasion of their homeland. William Wallace symbolized a free Scotland before finally being conquered by the English. He is subsequently found guilty of high treason and executed, and even in the face of death, Wallace refuses to give in to the English, encouraging future Scotsmen to fight back against the oppression they faced.
On the other side of the battle between the Scots and the English, however, was King Edward, also known as Longshanks. Edward was the one who had invaded and conquered Scotland in the first place, so a battlefield confrontation between Wallace and Edward seemed inevitable. However, the two leaders would never meet, as Edward had sent others to Scotland to deal with Wallace.
6 Traffic – Rodriguez and Gordon
Some of the main storylines in Traffic follow Mexican police officer Javier Rodriguez and DEA agent Montel Gordon. Both have the same goal, which is to bring down powerful drug cartels and drug leaders. Despite the two being protagonists, they both work towards a similar goal, and both have questionable methods for how they try to get their jobs done.
Even with all these similarities and with an intertwined story, the two never run into each other. Rodriguez spends the film’s entire run in Mexico, while Gordon’s part of the story takes place in San Diego. While many of the movies on this list seem like some of the characters should have met at some point, Traffic story approach makes it much more believable why these two characters would never meet.
5 Mad Max: Fury Road – Max and Immortan Joe
Maximum inside Mad Max: Fury Road spends virtually the entire sequence of the film trying to outrun Immortan Joe and his fleet of henchmen as they ride across the Wasteland on the massive War Rig. During the film, Max teams up with Imperator Furiosa and the five women she helped escape from Immortan Joe in one of the most critically acclaimed action films of all time. Despite the movie feel like Immortan Joe and his men are on Max’s heels all the time, Max and Joe never actually meet. However, Joe comes face to face with Furiosa shortly before Furiosa uses a harpoon to rip off the opponent’s mask, killing him.
4 No Country for Old Men – Ed Tom Bell and Anton Chigurh
Sheriff Ed Tom Bell was always one step behind ruthless psychopath Anton Chigurh No country for old men, as the elderly police officer would always arrive at the crime scene just a little too late to make any impact. Throughout the film, Chigurh pursues another man, Llewelyn Moss, who stole a briefcase of cash from a drug deal gone wrong. At the same time, Bell is also looking for Moss, hoping to protect him. However, Chigurh proved to be too much for both Moss and Bell, as Chigurh eventually kills Moss and gets away with it before Bell can do anything to catch him.
Since Chigurh was always one step ahead, he and Bell never meet. The fact that Bell never got close enough to catch a glimpse of the killer shows that he’s just getting too old to keep up.
3 The Truman Show – Truman and Christof
By means of The Truman Show, Truman Burbank’s whole life is one big broadcast, with nothing but actors and a giant TV set surrounding him, completely oblivious to what his life has been. This entire production, and essentially all of Truman’s life, was overseen by the show’s executive producer, Christof. Of course, Truman eventually comes to understand the charade going on around him, which eventually escalates to Truman trying to escape the fake Seahaven island he’s been living on all his life.
Truman is clearly the main focus of the movie, but Christof also takes center stage as he does everything he can to keep Truman from discovering his behind-the-scenes reality. Christof speaks directly to Truman at the end of the film, but the two never actually meet.
2 Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope – Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader
Of course, we all know that Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader come face-to-face in the iconic duel revealing that Vader is actually Luke’s father in The Empire strikes backbut when the original Star Wars came, the closest the two came to meeting was when Luke witnessed the duel between Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi on the Death Star. And at the time, Luke believed that Vader was someone else who actually killed his father, so a confrontation between the first two in the original movie didn’t even really seem necessary, especially since Luke barely knew he was a Jedi at the time. the time.
With everything we now know about the world of Star Wars, it feels like we should have at least seen the two meet properly in the first movie, but their actual first meeting on Cloud City was made that much better as a result.
1 Once upon a time in Hollywood – Cliff Booth and Sharon Tate
Finally we have two of the protagonists of Once upon a time in Hollywood who never met, Cliff Booth and Sharon Tate. The storyline between Sharon Tate’s and Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth’s doesn’t really seem to have much to do with each other, except that Rick and Sharon are neighbors. The stories don’t even seem to intersect much, at least until the end of the movie.
After Rick and Cliff dismantle the Manson killers, Cliff is taken to the hospital after some injuries. Rick is left at his house, but is invited to Sharon’s after hearing all the commotion. So if Cliff hadn’t suffered so much damage after brutally killing the invaders, he probably would have gotten to know the lovely Sharon Tate. But instead he missed her by a minute.