Examples of Sibling Yin-Yang in live-action cinema.
- À ma sœur !: Elena is the conventionally attractive knockout who idealizes romance. Anais is the awkward kid sister, but at times shows more maturity than Elena and is not as gullible.
- Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen often play this role in their movies: either Tomboy and Girly Girl (with Mary-Kate usually being the former and Ashley the latter) or Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling (with Mary-Kate usually being the former and Ashley the latter), although they occasionally switch.
- Black Mass: Whitey Bulger is a notorious crime lord, murderer, and all-around sociopath. His brother Billy is not only a straight arrow, but he's also a politician and an 18-year member of the Massachusetts state legislature.
- Deewaar has calm, humble Ravi and emotional, prideful Vijay. This is reflected in the different ways they help others: Ravi turns down a job so a man who needs it more can get it, whereas Vijay beats up the racketeers extorting his fellow dockworkers.
- The sisters Houseman in Dirty Dancing — flirty, Brainless Beauty Lisa and naive, studious Baby.
- Like Harry Potter mentioned below, most of the sibling relationships in Fantastic Beasts fill this role:
- The Goldstein sisters. Tina is a down-to-earth, career oriented cop who is a bit prissy and is a stickler for rules. Queenie is a flighty flirt who has a menial job (although this is partially due to her being a mind-reader that people can't trust) and doesn't put much stock into staying within the law. They even dress very differently, Tina wears neutral, comfortable clothes while Queenie wears lots of pink and skirts. However, they are very close.
- Newt and his brother Theseus also count. Newt is fine with living his life on the outskirts of Wizarding society and being seen as an oddball for doing what he loves but Theseus is gregarious and a prominent Auror who tries to get Newt back into polite society and to get off the fence in the brewing political tension.
- The series also brings back the relationship between Dumbledore and his brother Aberforth which is explained fully in the aforementioned Harry Potter section.
- Giant Little Ones: Ballas is a jerkass who never admits he initiated sex with Franky, rather telling everyone it's the opposite and leads them in homophobia against him. Natasha, however, is a very sweet girl who dates Franky and is shamed herself as a slut after she'd actually been raped, handling this with cool grace. They also have opposite hair colors-Ballas' brown, Natasha is blonde.
- Hotblooded Santino and cold-hearted Michael in The Godfather.
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly has Tuco, who is a Hot-Blooded bandito, and his brother Pablo, who is The Stoic and became a priest.
- In Her Shoes: Rose, the elder sister, is the serious and responsible lawyer. Maggie is the free spirit who can't hold down a job and turns to alcohol and men for emotional support.
- In the Cut: Half-sisters Pauline and Frannie. While Pauline is free-spirited, outgoing, and loves being in relationships, Frannie is more reserved and cautious. Pauline is also more traditional than Frannie in that she’d like to get married and start a family.
- Into the Forest: A downplayed example. Eva is more emotional, while Nell is more rational.
- Jason's Lyric: Jason is serious, responsible and dutiful. While Joshua is short-tempered, a troublemaker and easily fall in with gangsters.
- Lyric is the innocent sister who has a decent job as a waitress. Her brother, Alonzo "A-1", is a vicious gangster.
- Zach and Gray in Jurassic World. Zach is tough, aloof, cynical and (at least initially) unimpressed with the park and thinks it's for little kids. Gray is nice, optimistic, energetic, and is a die-hard dinosaur fan who loves the park.
- Carefree, irresponsible David and frustrated The Dutiful Son Albert in The King's Speech.
- Lévy and Goliath: Moses Lévy (Richard Anconina) has a very Jewish forename, follows Orthodox Judaism to the letter (including always wearing Hasidic clothes), has conversations with God himself, works in a diamond powder business, married a Jewish woman, doesn't know how to fight all that much and is scared to simply look at non-Jewish women who don't cover their hair. Albert Lévy (Michel Boujenah) has a more secular name, left religion behind, wears whatever he wants, married a gentile woman, practices martial arts and owns a non-kosher café.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Thor and Loki. In Thor, the eponymous character starts as a Boisterous Bruiser who takes in the attention without realizing how destructive and reckless he is. Loki is the opposite, being quiet and preferring to use trickery and illusions. By The Avengers, Thor has learned to stop, listen, think and be humble. Loki has learned to fight, to take control and assert himself and has become a villain, again the opposite of Thor. By Thor: Ragnarok, they have learned from each other as Thor becomes more mischievous and scheming like Loki, and Loki becomes more selfless and even heroic like Thor.
- Thor and his older sister, Hela, who is even more murderous and vindictive than Loki. In Thor: Ragnarok, she makes her youngest brother look like a model citizen by comparison, and she's, in Thor's own words, "The worst."
- In Black Panther we have T'Challa and Shuri, he's a physical powerhouse and tactician while she's a Teen Genius whose quick with a Hand Blast. T'Challa is also very stoic and mature while Shuri is jokey and even outright crass.
- Guardians of the Galaxy has adoptive (fellow abductees) sisters Gamora and Nebula, apart from the former being green and the latter blue both are cyborgs but Gamora is compassionate while Nebula is merciless. Inverted in Avengers: Endgame Nebula thanks to Character Development is a completely compassionate and heroic while thanks to Time Travel Gamora is cold and introverted lacking the development she gain over the course of the Guardian of the Galaxies movies.
- Avengers: Infinity War has Ebony Maw and Cull Obsidian, the latter is a The Brute who smashes his problems, while the former is a Evil Sorcerer who uses careful and deadly methods to achieve his goals.
- In Nope the main characters are siblings OJ and Emerald Haywood. OJ runs the family ranch after the death of their father and has a natural affinity for horses, but is soft-spoken and vastly prefers horses over people. Em on the other hand is outgoing and vivacious with a mind for business, but is flaky and only helps with the ranch in her spare time.
- In La piel que habito (The Skin I Live In), we learn that Robert and Zeca are brothers, with one child being bright and obedient and growing up to be a famous doctor, and the other going off to deal drugs at age seven and turning out as a killer and robber. However, by her own admission, they are both monsters, they just expressed it in different ways.
- Downplayed in The Prestige with the Borden twins. We don't see much of them as individuals, but one is a family man who loves their wife and daughter and recommends just letting the rivalry with Angier die. Meanwhile the other is more aggressive, loves their assistant/mistress and sneaks into Angier's performance to learn how he performs "The Transported Man".
- Quiz Lady: Anne is uptight, awkward, a bland dresser, and works a desk job, while Jenny is gregarious, irresponsible, a colorful dresser, and has trouble holding down a career. Anne is naturally uncomfortable when she has to work together with Jenny to pay off their mother's debts.
- Scanners gives us the telepaths Cameron Vale and Darryl Revok. The former is reserved, methodical and loyal. The latter is emotional, bloodthirsty and manipulative. This was probably done on purpose to contrast their separate motivations for helping their own kind.
- In Secondhand Lions, both Hub and Garth are old men who had many adventures in their lives, but in the end, Garth is the more calm, bookish one who could sit back and relax while Hub was looking for adventure and had no trouble beating up five punks after getting out of the hospital.
- Slumdog Millionaire: Jamal and Salim; Jamal is a quiet and studious boy who followed the law (even in the Crapsack World that is the Indian slums) and tried to stick with his friends no matter what, while Salim was always more boisterous and eventually fell in with gangsters and shunned Jamal up until the very end.
- According to their Tech Specs, Skids and Mudflap from the Transformers Film Series are this... with the caveat that they're both quite stupid. Skids merely believes he's the smart one.
- Sweetie: While Kay is repressed and paranoid, Sweetie is the exact opposite—wild and uncontrollable.
- Vacation: James is a passive, socially awkward Nice Guy, whereas his little brother Kevin is an cruel, outspoken Enfant Terrible.
- Viral: Stacey is cool, reckless, carefree and bold. Her sister Emma is reserved, obedient, responsible and cautious.
- White Wolves II: Legend of the Wild: Mason is a cocky paraglider, while his brother Jeff is a nervous Extreme Doormat.
- X-Men Film Series:
- X-Men: Days of Future Past: Eleven years after X-Men: First Class, Charles and Raven have not only become estranged but also polar opposites in almost every way, especially in regards to ideology and diplomacy. Her sparing of Trask and the president shows that Raven isn't quite as far gone as originally believed, though.
- X-Men: Apocalypse: Although Charles and Raven are on better terms than in Days of Future Past, they still strongly disagree over how humans in general treat mutants. He believes the world is gradually becoming more tolerant of their kind, but she has seen with her own eyes that there's still a lot of oppression. This article
uses the metaphor of Xavier being a peaceful dove and Mystique is an aggressive hawk.Charles: I have plans for this place. I mean to turn it into a real campus, a university. Not just for mutants, either; for humans, too. Living and working, growing together.
Raven: You know, I really believed that once. I really believed we can change them.
Charles: We did.
Raven: Just because there's not a war, doesn't mean there's peace. You wanna teach your kids something, teach them that, teach them to fight, otherwise they might as well live in this house for the rest of their lives.
