It is something we see several times throughout Don't Look Back In Anger as the film covers several of those on-stage arrivals from the 2025 tour. At the first, in Cardiff, Noel seems guarded, unsure of the gesture of brotherly affection. By the time the band are playing in Dublin a few weeks later, he is laughing, relaxed, as the pair hold hands.
For years, Oasis fans thought they would never see anything like this. Don't Look Back In Anger, written by Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders) and directed by Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern, was a chance to tell the story of how the brothers got here.
Towards the end of the film, we see Noel and Liam interviewed together for the first time since before the band's split in 2009.
"All the little things that used to annoy us about each other have gone away," says Noel at one point. "It's not a power struggle anymore." He describes Liam as "delightful" - a word he says he never thought he'd use in that context - and also praises his talents as a frontman. "I'd forgotten what he means to people. The songs are one thing but then there's what he means to them."
Liam is equally complimentary: "I'm glad to see Noel doing it again. They're his songs... they come from his soul. He deserves it and the songs deserve it." The brothers are in contact "way more" now than they ever were before the band's split, they say. "It was all forgiven without saying a word," says Noel.
Unanswered questions
This is what we find out about the brothers' relationship now and there's a genuine sense of friendship. What Don't Look Back In Anger doesn't do is answer the question of how it came to be.
How do you go from Liam calling Noel a potato (and worse) on Twitter, and Noel saying he would never perform with his little brother again, to holding hands on stage?
The answers to these questions remain off-camera. The documentary is titled Don't Look Back In Anger after all, so maybe that was always the intention. This film is about those 2025 shows, documenting fans' disbelief at first, and then the euphoria, the tears, the nostalgia and everything the tour encapsulated.
First, there is a quick recap of Oasis's rise to fame, including the huge Knebworth gigs in 1996, followed by growing tensions and the split just before they were due to perform in Paris in 2009.
Cut to the reunion and the first rehearsal with both brothers together. Noel and the rest of the band had been rehearsing for a few weeks before Liam's presence was required.
"I was born with one fatal flaw in my character," says Noel beforehand. "I cannot forgive people."
We also hear from Liam: "I'm not a yes man... I'm f****** Liam Gallagher."
Could this reunion, as many cynics believed, implode before the brothers even made it on stage?
The first rehearsal
Noel paces as they wait. Then in Liam strolls, parka on, strut unmistakable. There are no hugs, no overt affection, no mention of what has been said before. They just get on with it.
When he leaves without announcement, again, there is no fanfare. "I'm not sure whether our kid's enjoying himself," says Noel, mystified. But Liam is taking it very seriously. He's given up cigarettes and alcohol, he says, because the songs "need to be treated with the utmost respect".
When the documentary gets to that first show in Cardiff, you see what this means to the audience. From here, the film tells the story of the tour through songs, and the stories of fans all around the world - from the woman in Brazil who named her dog Bonehead, to a survivor of the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing.
These gigs brought bucket-hatted fans old and young together in a way even Noel says he could not quite believe. "I certainly wasn't prepared for the intense outpouring of joy and tears," he says at one point. He had to turn his back to the crowd several times during the tour to stop his own emotions from getting the better of him, he says later.
The sense of community, the collective joy is what the filmmakers capture here. From Manchester's "Gallagher Hill" to South Korea, the lyrics are sung back to the band by tens of thousands of people in the crowds, and fans all have stories about what those words mean to them.
The brothers' children met for the first time during the tour, the documentary reveals, and they were all there to show support at the premiere, along with musicians including Johnny Marr and Bobby Gillespie, and band members Bonehead, Gem Archer and Andy Bell.
Will there be another tour?
There is nothing in the film about these other band members, save for praise from Noel for Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs; Oasis's original guitarist, he quit in 1999, 10 years before Noel called time on the band.
"He's a massive, massive part not only of the sound but of the dynamic" of the band. When he left... we spent 11 years chasing that sound. He is the f****** sound of Oasis."
There is also no real mention of the eyewatering ticket pricing many were stung by, which threatened to overshadow the launch of the tour. Presumably because, by the time the gigs rolled around, all was forgiven. "Was it worth the £40,000 you paid for a ticket?" Liam joked at the Cardiff show, and was met by a roar of "yeah!" back. In the documentary, we hear him joke again: "There are no cheap seats... sorry about that."
Just as Oasis's best songs were about defiant optimism, Don't Look Back In Anger runs with positivity. With so much turmoil in the world, more than ever now, people "want to escape", the brothers say, and the film captures that feeling - for those two hours or so, life was joyous, uncomplicated.
So the documentary is all about the music, the brothers' relationship now, and the fans. "It's about 'we' and 'us'," as Noel puts it when describing the songs and why they have endured. The fans have always played a huge part in Oasis's story.
With all signs pointing to another tour (if the band's now daily teasers on social media are anything to go by), it feels like "we" could be doing it all again very soon.
