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Florestan
Since: May, 2015
2025-03-31 03:34:29
Not quite sure if this applies to this specific example, but, in general, "rivals/enemies expressing respect for each other" would be Worthy Opponent.

Is there a trope when two characters who spent the whole story (movie/TV series/novel/play) being antagonistic, oppositive or just facing a problem through different approaches, eventually sit together and show that they learned to understand each other. The specific example is that of the television miniseries Chernobyl (2019): at the end Scherbina, the USSR party man, expresses regret for having served a government that in the end proved to give more importance to its pride and image than to the lives of its citizens, declaring that he only managed to stay alongside people like Legasov, the scientist, who instead being more capable of understanding that knowing when to do the right thing is more important, are the men who matter; Legasov, however, replies that he acted only on the basis of the scientific knowledge that many other scientists have, and therefore many others could have come to Chernobyl and given the same suggestions on how to contain the disaster, but what Scherbina did, that is organizing the operations, finding every available resource (moon rovers, 50,000 tons of sand and boron), convincing divers to carry out an almost certainly suicidal but necessary mission is something that no one else could have done, so Scherbina is the one that mattered most!
Edited by NURJIN915