Did Not Get The Girl / Live-Action Films

As this is an Ending Trope, umarked spoilers abound. Beware.

Times where the protagonist doesn't get together with whomever they've been pursuing in Live-Action Films.

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• (500) Days of Summer. It's right there in the title. and the narrator spilled it at the very beginning.
  Narrator: "This is a story of boy meets girl, but you should know up front, this is not a love story."
• In Adam (2009), a young man with Autism meets a young teacher and aspiring children's author. They strike up an awkward friendship, which becomes an awkward romance, which eventually results in a break-up and a Bittersweet Ending.
• The Amazing Spider-Man Series: Gwen Stacy dies near the end of the second film, and Peter's reappearance in Spider-Man: No Way Home reveals he never got over her death and doesn't have anyone back at his universe despite the introductions of both Felicia Hardy and Mary Jane Watson (Spidey's other prominent love interests in the source material, though MJ is ultimately omitted) prior to Gwen's death.
• Annie Hall ends with the main characters realizing they're Better as Friends.
• Another Earth: The film begins with protagonist Rhoda Williams getting into a car accident which kills a mother and a child and renders the father comatose. After getting released from prison years later, she begins working as a cleaning lady and eventually gets involved with John, one of her customers who is a reclusive and depressed man. Turns out John is the widower from the movie's prologue, and when she comes clean to him, their budding relationship is predictably torpedoed.
• Toward the end of Harold Ramis' remake of Bedazzled, the hero finally finds the courage to ask out his love interest. As it turns out, she's seeing someone. This is actually a plot point: at the beginning of the movie the main character mentions that she's recently split up with her [unseen] boyfriend, and his final wish, that she have a happy life, apparently undoes the break-up. He handles it admirably, given what he's been through. Although, bizarrely, the hero does then end up with another, kookier, more down-to-earth girl who is played by the same actress.
• The beginning of Barbie quickly establishes the current state of the relationship (or lack thereof) between Stereotypical Barbie and Beach Ken: he desperately wants to impress her and have her pay attention to him, and she mostly ignores him. Near the end of the movie, after the main plot has been resolved, Barbie ends up telling Ken that she still isn't in love with him and never has been, and that what Ken really needs to do is create an identity for himself that doesn't revolve around her.
• In Tim Burton's Batman Returns, Batman did not get to be with Catwoman in the end, though she is hiding right behind his back.
  Catwoman: Bruce...I'd love to live with you in your castle forever, like in fairy tales. NO! I just couldn't live with myself! So don't pretend this is a happy ending!
• Jack Burton inverts this by rejecting the advances of the girl and returning to being a loner after getting his truck back at the end of Big Trouble in Little China. As Ol' Jack Burton puts it: "Sooner or later, I rub everybody the wrong way."
• In Brick Brendan's first love interest dies at the beginning, and his second turns out to have orchestrated her murder.
• An unusual version is done in The Brothers Grimm - both of the brothers love Angelika and both get a kiss with her at the end, but she never actually hooks up with either of them. This is even lampshaded.
  Jacob: I always thought that you would end up with the girl.
  William: Well you see that? (Points up.)
  Jacob: What, the sun?
  William: The day is not over yet!
• In the theatrical ending to The Butterfly Effect, after many failed attempts to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, Evan realizes the only way for Kayleigh to be happy is to prevent them from ever befriending each other so that she and her brother would choose to live far away with their mom instead of their sexually abusive father. Evan runs into Kayleigh in a downtown street in New York, but he ignores her after hesitating for a moment.
• Casablanca, although this is a case where the guy could have the girl but gives her up.
• In Cast Away, when Chuck returns, his girlfriend is already married to another man, since Chuck had been missing, presumed dead for several years. But the film ends with him meeting a possible love interest.
• There's a subversion in the dance movie Centre Stage. Peter Gallagher's character has married Ethan Stiefel's ex-girlfriend, and at one stage he snarks: "I got the girl." Later on, Stiefel wins over a rich, elderly woman who promises to fund his own dancing company and in doing so, allows him to leave Gallagher's theatre. He tells Gallagher: "I guess this time, I get the girl."
• Charlie Chaplin's The Circus is an early film example.
• The budding romance between Salvatore and Elena in Cinema Paradiso is cut short by her disapproving parents and the behest of Alfredo. At the end of the film, the two reunite in their late forties, and though they confess they are still in love, Elena cannot bring herself to leave her husband and daughter.
• Clerks has Dante having trouble choosing between his current girlfriend Veronica or his ex Caitlin. Ultimately he realizes that Veronica is the one he loves, but thanks to Randall's interference she believes he loves Caitlin and breaks up with him. Although the ending implies he'll try to clear things up with her, related material and future films have made it clear they never got back together (or if they did, it didn't last). Ultimately averted in the sequel where he gets together with Becky Scott.
• The original Conan the Barbarian (1982) film has Conan gain wealth, vengeance, and the favor of a king... but in doing so he lost Valeria, his love. Even the epilogue, showing him as a king in the distant future, reveals he is still alone.
• Daredevil: Due to Bullseye killing the woman he loves, Matt and Elektra don't end the film together. A deleted scene in her spin-off shows she still loves him and wants to reunite, but by the end, she still doesn't go back to him.
• The Dark Knight Trilogy:
  • Batman Begins, in which Rachel Dawes decides that Batman's commitment to Gotham won't allow him a fulfilling relationship with her. This door slams shut for good when she is murdered in The Dark Knight. However, before she was murdered she decides to leave Bruce, a fact he doesn't learn until The Dark Knight Rises from Alfred.
  • Later, in The Dark Knight Rises he meets a new love interest, who turns out to be the real antagonist of the film. The trope is finally averted when he gets together with Catwoman.
• In Darkman, Peyton leaves Julie immediately after rescuing her. Not because he's disfigured (which she has faith he'll be able to fix), but because he's done so many terrible things for the sake of revenge that he now feels unworthy of her love or anyone's.
• Don't Think Twice: Although the couple were together at the beginning of the film, Sam breaks up with Jack at the climax, seemingly highlighting what his success has done to distance him from everyone. It's clear that this breakup has hit him the hardest, although they are all still friends at the end of the movie.
• Drinking Buddies: Or rather, Did Not Get The Guy. Luke still has Jill, but Kate, the female lead does not get either love interest.
• In Dumb and Dumber, the "hero" doesn't get the girl (as she turns out to be married), and kills her husband in a rage-filled Indulgent Fantasy Segue before leaving quietly.
• The original ending to Euro Trip, as a subversion of the standard formula for teen comedies; the writers eventually went with a more traditional ending.
• In Every Which Way but Loose, Philo finally finds Lynn, but after discovering she's a hustler and having her slap him repeatedly, he simply walks away, leaving her crying on the ground.
• In the Evil Dead series, Ash's love interests invariably either die or get turned into Deadites, forcing Ash to kill them. This goes doubly so if you include the video games. Sheila from Army of Darkness is just about the only girl who got better after turning into a Deadite, and Ash still has to leave her behind in the Middle Ages to return to his own time period.
• In "Experiment in Terror" FBI agent Glenn Ford does not wind up with victim Lee Remick. They never have a moment, they do not have sex, there is nothing between them. This is the rare example of Truth In Television because it's his job and just being in a stressful situation together doesn't lead to two entirely different people who did not know each other before falling in love and living their lives together.
• Brian O'Connor seems to be on the receiving end of this trope in The Fast and the Furious (2001) after learning that (a) his love interest Mia's brother is the crook he's after and (b) blowing his cover as an undercover cop. It gets resolved by Fast Five though.
• A Few Good Men. Once the case is over, Kaffee and Galloway don't get together. They just leave. The pair were only brought together due to the legal case the plot follows. Though they have chemistry, it is noted that they have no grounds for a dedicated relationship once the trial is over.
• First Girl I Loved: Anne loses Sasha by the end of the film, but at least she came to terms with her sexuality.
• The romantic comedy/road movie Forces of Nature, where said forces seemingly conspire to make single mom Sandra Bullock and Ben Affleck a couple, but which ends with them going their separate ways.
• Free and Easy: Elmer's Cannot Spit It Out problem leads to One Dialogue, Two Conversations when he's telling his feelings to Elvira, leading her to think he's The Matchmaker and accepting Larry's proposal instead. The film ends with Elmer brokenhearted.
• Free Guy: Guy is a Benevolent A.I. who falls in love with a human, Millie. She also has feelings for him, but doesn't realize it's not a human on the other end of the screen at first. When she finds out, she's understandably not happy. In the end, she goes to try and let Guy down easy, but he's already figured out that an actual romance between them wouldn't work, and gracefully steps aside, encouraging her towards her human Love Interest Keys.
• Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. Their last conversation with each other goes as follows:
  Scarlett O'Hara: Rhett, if you go, where shall I go? What shall I do?
  Rhett Butler: Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.
• Good Boys: Max does get to kiss Brixlee, but their relationship is short-lived, they break up and he ends up with her friend. This didn't last too, as said friend breaks up with Max and Brixlee ends up dating her in turn. He does get Scout near the end, though.
• The Green Hornet, refreshingly, has neither of the lead men getting with Cameron Diaz's character despite repeated attempts to woo her, because (sensibly) she is not crazy about being treated like an object for them to use and fight over. Also the fact that he's a vigilante posing as a criminal.
• Because they are superheroes who weaken each other in proximity, Hancock can't stay with his girl Mary. She's also married the next time he sees her. Of course, by this point, he has amnesia of who he is and didn't really care about it, even after he discovered the truth.
• Happy Together: Boy in this case. While Ho and Lai are together at the start of the film, they break up roughly two-thirds into the movie and stay broken up by the end of it. Lai and Chang also don't get together.
• Unsurprisingly, it happens in He's Just Not That into You. Surprisingly, it's played straight, and out of the three relationships followed, only two of the three result in a relationship in the end.
• Charles Laughton didn't get the girl in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939).
• In I Shot Jesse James, Cynthy Waters leaves Robert Ford after she realizes she's more scared of Bob than in love with him. To rub salt in the wound, she dumps him for John Kelley, throwing Bob into madness and leading to his death.
• Indiana Jones gets the girl in each movie except Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade; though he would've liked it if his love interest, Elsa Schneider, hadn't lost her life. She finds herself in a Literal Cliffhanger, holding onto Indiana with one hand and reaching for the holy grail with the other. Indy can't persuade her to give up the prize and she falls to her death when her hand slips from its glove.
• James Bond:
  • Skyfall: The Bond Girl dies halfway in the movie. In fact, across all Bond movies, thirty percent of the girls die before the end of the movie, and the rest are never seen again after the movie is over.
  • Quantum of Solace: Nothing romantic develops between Bond and Camille Montes.
  • No Time to Die gender inverts this. Madeleine Swann survives the events of the film, despite a few suggestions to the contrary. Instead, it's Bond himself who dies.
• In John Tucker Must Die, Kate changes her mind about humiliating the titular character but the other girls play the pre-recorded "I'm Dumping You" video. Defying genre convention, he doesn't take Kate back either and they remain as friends.
• Lady Bird: The protagonist has two love interests, one of whom turns out to be gay, and one who turns out to be a total asshole who she angrily breaks up with after losing her virginity to. By the end of the movie, she's gotten over it though.
• In La La Land, Mia and Sebastian reunite five years after their break up, in which time Sebastian has achieved his dream of opening a jazz club and Mia has become a successful actress, married, and had a daughter. There's some awkwardness between them, but they both smile after they see that they have finally achieved their dreams.
• Happens in a majorly depressing way in The Last American Virgin. It's unusual in that it was supposed to be a light teen comedy, but ends with the protagonist buying a gift for the girl that he thought loved him and going to a party to give it to her only to see her making out with the jerk who dumped her after knocking her up. He angrily leaves the party without saying a word to either of them, and the last shot of the movie is him driving home alone through the night, heartbroken, completely defeated, and silently sobbing. According to The Other Wiki, this is the only film of the kind where it happens.
• In Last Train from Gun Hill, Linda clearly has a past with Craig Belden, but she is the only one in town to actually help Morgan. They have some chemistry, but as the last train pulls out of town, she stays in Gun Hill, kneeling over Craig's body.
• Liberal Arts: The male protagonist ultimately rejected the female protagonist because of their sixteen-year age difference (he's 35, she's 19), believing she has her whole life ahead of her. The two eventually reconciled as friends.
• In the second to final scene of Little Manhattan, Rosemary feels she's too young for a relationship and turns Gabe down. However, she acquiesces to dancing with him.
• Love Actually - Part of the Bittersweet Ending, Sarah and Karl don't end up together. A lesser extent is with Mark. He cares deeply for his friend Peter and was in love with Peter's girlfriend/wife Juliet for some time (to the point he even pushed her away out of loyalty for Peter and to save himself from the pain) but couldn't reconcile his feelings towards both because they were getting married. Mark never expected to get Juliet from Peter and she gave him a pity kiss and they are able to get along as friends.
• Lucas - Though Lucas Bly tries desperately to win the heart of new girl Maggie (even joining the football team), she sees them as being better off as friends and goes for Cappie Roew. Maggie even says, "We're Just Friends, Lucas," at one point.
• At the end of The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade turns in Brigid O'Shaughnessy for the murder of his partner.
• In Marmoulak, although Reza and Faezeh are attracted to each other, Reza does the honourable thing and urges her to go back to her reformed husband.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Thor did not manage to end up with his love interest Jane Foster since he destroyed the bridge that connects Earth to Asgard by the end of the film. They do reunite in Thor: The Dark World, but a scene in Thor: Ragnarok has Thor pose for a selfie with a couple groupies and one of them mentions that Jane dumped him. He then tries to spin it as a "mutual dumping" to save face with Loki. Then in Thor: Love and Thunder, Thor and Jane get back together before she dies of cancer, leaving him alone again.
  • Captain America: The First Avenger. In a great adaptation of a famous plotline from the comics, Steve Rogers forces the Red Skull's flying wing down in the Arctic to save New York and other major U.S. cities. Peggy Carter, Steve's comrade and love interest, has him promise to take her dancing the next week, with both knowing he's all but guaranteed to die in the crash. Once Steve awakens seventy years in the future, the realization must set in that even if Peggy is still alive, and he somehow managed to find her again, she'd be an old woman of at least ninety, almost certainly with a family.
    Nick Fury: (After just breaking the time issue to Steve) Are you going to be okay?
    Steve: Yeah. Yeah, I just... I had a date.
  • Steve gets to see Peggy and say goodbye before she passes in the sequel, Captain America: The Winter Soldier. But then the trope pops up again: the entire movie hints at a potential romance between Steve and Natasha, the Black Widow, even as she continuously suggests other women he should ask out. At the end, they end up developing trust and friendship instead of romance, and she tells him that he should give Girl Next Door Sharon a call. Ultimately subverted in Avengers: Endgame; Steve is tasked with returning the stolen Infinity Stones to their rightful times to avoid throwing the future off balance, but decides to stay in the 50s and reunite with Peggy rather than return to the present. He's last seen as an old man Passing the Torch to Sam as the next Captain America.
  • The Incredible Hulk: Bruce Banner doesn't get to stay with Betty Ross, the woman he loves, because he's still a target of the military. To twist the knife further for poor Bruce, his second love interest (Black Widow/Natasha Romanov) dies collecting the Soul Stone from Vormir, and despite his best efforts, Bruce can't bring her back with the Infinity Gauntlet.
  • Spider-Man's first Love Interest, Liz, turned out to be the daughter of Adrian Toomes aka Vulture, a criminal he's been trailing recently, thus dooming their budding romance, not helped by the fact he was forced to ditch her at their homecoming dance to save the day (Spider-Man: Homecoming). He eventually gets together with Michelle Jones (Spider-Man: Far From Home), but she's forced to forget he even existed due to Peter requesting Doctor Strange to Un-person him to prevent a multiversal Cosmic Flaw (Spider-Man: No Way Home).
  • Doctor Strange is ultimately rejected by his Love Interest Christine in his first movie because of how much of a jerkass he was before getting his powers. He attends her wedding at the start of the sequel Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and despite his best efforts to hide it he spends the entirety of the film quietly lamenting his mistakes. Later in the movie, an alternate Strange reveals that apparently, nowhere in the multiverse has a relationship between the two worked out.
  • The Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy ends with Peter "Star Lord" Quill not getting with his love interest Gamora. While there was sexual tension in the first two films, Gamora is killed off by her father, Thanos, in the film Avengers: Infinity War. In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Gamora comes back after the blip, but is not the same Gamora who died. She makes it clear to Peter that she is not the same Gamora he fell in love with. In the end, she goes back to her space pirate gang, and Peter goes back to earth to spend time on his home planet.
• J from Men in Black II mainly because the love interest is an alien princess and needs to return home to ensure the safety of Earth. This line sums it up.
  Laura: It's not fair.
  Jay: It never is.
• In My Best Friend's Wedding, the female lead Did Not Get The Guy.
• In the Italian comedy movie Notte Prima degli Esami ("Night Before the Exams"), Loser Protagonist Luca meets a girl named Claudia at a party and immediately falls for her. It was a brief meeting, and after the party, Luca doesn't know anything about her, except her name, and through the movie, he desperately tries to find out where she lives. Meanwhile, Claudia seems to return his feelings: we see her writing in her diary about "an amazing guy she met at a party". At the end (when they finally meet again), it turns out that Claudia was talking about one of Luca's friends, who was also at the party.
• The Myth: General Meng Yi and Princess Ok-soo/Concubine Li fell in love, but the General was slain in battle and both the Princess and the General's Number Two are rendered immortal for drinking the Elixir of Youth not long after. Meng Yi is then reincarnated as protagonist Jack and is eventually reunited with the Princess, but once she finally realizes that he's essentially a different person now, she decides to stay at the collapsing Cave Behind the Falls while he is forced to escape.
• The Old Man & the Gun: In the end, Forrest Tucker can't enjoy his comfortable retirement with Jewell. At the age of 79, he robs four banks in one day and winds up back in prison for the final time.
• On Chesil Beach: The film begins with a just-married Edward and Florence taking a stroll on the beach during their honeymoon. Their relationship begins to unravel later that day, ultimately resulting in an annulment of their marriage. In sequences that take place thirteen years, and then forty-five years later, Edward is still painfully reminiscing at what could’ve been with Florence, who married and had a family with someone else.
• In Once (as well as its Screen-to-Stage Adaptation), the developing romance between the two main characters remains unresolved, with both of them choosing to reunite with their respective exes. It's bittersweet, as while the Guy and Girl clearly wanted to be with each other, they at least left with a renewed faith in love.
• A rare female example in The Pelican Brief. Julia Roberts' character, who is the main character, and Denzel Washington's character were supposed to get together and were even scripted to have a lovemaking scene. However, Unfortunate Implications from the fan base of both actors caused the script to get rewritten where they part as close friends by the end of the film.
• Subverted in Pixels - at first it seems like Lady Lisa is forever gone for Ludlow, but then she returns and they have Babies Ever After.
• Played for laughs at the end of the Bob Hope vehicle The Princess and the Pirate, where Hope's co-star from the various "Road To.." movies, Bing Crosby, cameos as the guy the film's heroine is actually in love with. This revelation of course provokes a sarcastic fourth-wall-breaking rant from Hope.
• This is the Cruel Twist Ending in The Purple Rose of Cairo. The heroine has to choose between Tom Baxter, a movie character who literally walked off of a movie screen to be with her, and Gil Shepard, the actor who played Tom Baxter in the movie. She chooses Gil, but he had only been pretending to be interested in her; all he cared about was saving his career by getting Tom to return to being a movie character. Once Tom returns to the movie for good, Gil takes a plane back to California without even saying goodbye.
• In Repo Men, Remy winds up on a beach with his best friend Jake and his love interest, Beth, after his son publishes his book exposing all the dirty secrets about The Union, except we find out he is in a neural net fantasy, Jake is still working to pay off the bill and Beth will probably be dead soon when The Union repossesses her ArtifOrgs for real.
• Requiem for a Dream ends with Harry's arm being amputated, Marion prostituting herself for heroin, Tyrone in jail, and Sara in a mental institution. Harry, the main-est of the main characters, doesn't even bother asking the random Asian nurse to phone Marion, because he knows there's no way she's ever coming back. Downer Ending? Why yes, yes it is.
• In The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior, young Mathayus finally kills the Big Bad (his father's murderer) and ruins the plans of an evil goddess. As his love interest approaches him in a seductive manner, prepared to be his queen, he suddenly smiles and rides off into the sunset without her. So not only did he refuse the girl (with nothing in the film foreshadowing this) but he also refuses the crown. Would Akkad still fall (in the first film, Mathayus is the Last of His Kind), if Mathayus stayed?
• In Shakespeare in Love, Shakespeare can't have his love because not only is he a common man, while she is a noblewoman, but he is married and she's engaged to someone else. His frustration over this leads him to change the ending of Romeo and Juliet.
• In Splendor in the Grass, where the male and the female leads are equally important characters, he ends up married to someone else.
• The reboot film Star Trek (2009): Throughout the movie, Kirk constantly tries to get with Uhura, only for her to reject him every time. It's revealed this is because she's already in an established, secret relationship with Spock. The expression on Jim's face when he realizes that his stoic First Officer got the girl instead of him is priceless.
• Streets of Fire. Hero rescues his ex-girlfriend, but she stays with her current boyfriend. He rides away with his tough female sidekick, who insists that he's not her type.
• Superman Returns plays with this; Superman isn't ever going to wind up with Lois because she's engaged to Richard, but Richard will never see her fully commit to him either because she still loves Superman. The real 'fun' comes in when you realize that the only way that the situation will ever be resolved is by eliminating a corner of the triangle. Then there's the little revelation that Superman is the biological father of Lois's son, Jason, yet the guy who Jason has seen as his father for his entire life has been Richard.
• In The Terminal, Viktor, despite his huge effort and all the sweet things he tries, doesn't end up with Amelia, who resumes her affair with the married official. Definitely a bit of a downer, though quite a few reviewers later admitted that if she's like that, he's better off without her.
• The Third Man, with its famous ending shot of the hero's love interest walking coldly past him without even a sidelong glance. The film pulled this off so well that its ending was lifted almost verbatim in both The Departed and Miller's Crossing.
• The Town - Doug is forced to flee Boston and can likely never return due to the FBI manhunt.
• In TRON, Flynn does not permanently hook up with either Lora, his former girlfriend (for whom he still has feelings) at the start of the film, or Yori, her program counterpart, although he kisses the latter just before he leaves the electronic world, believing that he's about to die.
• In Up in the Air, George Clooney's character did not get either girl.
• The Bittersweet Ending in V for Vendetta has V himself die in Evey's arms just as he confesses his love for her.
• Vikingdom: The hero Eirick is in a relationship with Love Goddess Freyja before the start of the movie. When he is killed in combat, she manages to resurrect him on the condition that they can never be together again and he ends up living as a depressed hermit for the next decade. When she convinces her old love to move on and hook up with his companion Brynna, she dies at the end of the movie, performing a Heroic Sacrifice to save him. This means the dude lost his two separate love interests during the movie.
• The Warrior's Way have the Wandering Warrior, Yang, eventually settling in the dusty town of Lode, finding a potential Love Interest with Lynn (they even share an Orbital Kiss moment!) but at the end of the film, Yang have to leave Lode and it's residents behind, Lynn included, because they won't be safe from assassins when he's with them.
• What a Carve Up!: Ernie spends the film trying to impress Linda, but, at the end of the film, her previously unmentioned boyfriend (played by Teen Idol Adam Faith) arrives and takes her away, leaving Ernie heartbroken.
• Woody Harrelson's protagonist from White Men Can't Jump. He actually does start out with her as his girlfriend, and when she manages to become a champion on Jeopardy it seems they've earned their happy ending. But she breaks it off with him when he (yet again) goes back to basketball hustling (to save his friend who had been robbed). They win the big game, but when he goes to win her back afterwards she's already gone, having given up on him ever be done hustling for good.
• Wild Wild West: Rita (Salma Hayek) reveals that Dr. Escobar is not her father, but her husband. Which she should have mentioned before.
• The Wrestler has the main character choose the self-destructive life of wrestling rather than retire into obscurity with his new girlfriend. It's implied that he dies in the ring.
• Invoked straight in an early work of Francis Ford Coppola titled You're a Big Boy Now. In this movie from 1966 Bernard, the protagonist, suffers this fate at the end, after spending all the movie chasing Barbara Darling. Actually, he doesn't get that girl...

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