There's something about their characters and how they interact with each other that stands out from other famous duos. Their relationship remained the same throughout the whole movie, their fights were never truly sincere, and they were almost never apart from each other. This kind of relationship we don't see very often in movies that feature only a duo without some major dispute that tests their friendship. Take Frodo and Sam from Lord of the Rings for example. Their friendship was challenged over and over again, their friendship almost completely ended a few times. Like the one thing about the stolen bread, what was up with that? The point of these disputes is for the characters to overcome their differences and come out of it with a stronger relationship. After Sam and Frodo made up, their friendship became stronger than ever and they never fought again (if you don't count that volcano scene) but with Butch and Kid a "major dispute" never happened.
My theory is that their "major dispute" happened before the movie's plot took place. This movie is the result of a strengthened friendship that past the hardships that tested it. What could have been this dispute that almost ended Butch and Kid's friendship? I'm guessing it was a love triangle between the girl, Butch and Kid, and Kid won over the girl (I forgot her name) and Butch got over it. The way Butch looked at the girl and Kid dancing in the photo montage scene may suggest that Butch had feelings for the girl at one point in time, from the "Raindrops are Fallin' on my Head" scene it makes apparent that now their relationship is nothing more than a strong companionship. When two guys friends fall for the same girl, there are many different outcomes that could result from that, most involving an end in friendship. Both Kid and Butch go through a lot of events in the movie that would, for any other average pair of friends, end their friendship, but Butch and Kid had already went through their toughest trial as friends that would make any other situation seem like nothing; the dreaded love triangle.
The sequence of photos below illustrate what I said earlier about Butch's potential feelings toward the girl, but getting over it after seeing how happy the Kid was. Excuse the watermark.
Butch Cassidy is a smooth talkin' con artist and the Sundance Kid is a gun-slingin' introvert, so in theory you'd think these two wouldn't get along so well, but in reality these two set the gosh-darn bar in friendships. They play off each other so well, with Butch Cassidy coming up with the ideas and the Sundance Kid executing them. This teamwork makes their heists possible, because one cannot survive without the other. Butch, up until the last half hour of the movie, has never shot a man, and the Kid verbalizes several times in the movie that Butch is the one that has the ideas of what to do, not him. You can tell that they are fully aware of this because of the fact that when the Kid'.s girlfriend went back, the Kid did not go with her, he stayed with Butch.
Sauces:
Barsam, Richard Meran., and Dave Monahan. Looking at Movies: An Introduction to Film. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2010. Print.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Twentieth Century-Fox Films, 1969.
The Lord of the Rings the Two Towers. New Line Home Entertainment, 2003.
Barsam, Richard Meran., and Dave Monahan. Looking at Movies: An Introduction to Film. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2010. Print.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Twentieth Century-Fox Films, 1969.
The Lord of the Rings the Two Towers. New Line Home Entertainment, 2003.