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A character is angry. Very angry. He or she proceeds to smash up a room. This montage shows it, often in stuttercuts or other fancy editing work to make it look even more dramatic.

Compare with Defenestrate and Berate.

Examples of Anger Montage include:


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Comics[]

  • Daredevil did this after archenemy Bullseye killed his long time girlfriend Karen Page.
  • Arguably every time The Hulk goes on a rampage it's one of these.

Film[]

  • The movie Earth Girls Are Easy featured an Anger Montage that was also a musical number, in which Geena Davis sings as she systematically demolishes everything owned by her unfaithful fiancee? (A particular favorite is the moment where she rolls a bowling ball down a pair of skis into his computer's monitor.)
  • Citizen Kane. The movie commentary tracks note that this scene was a bit of "method acting" that got out of control. Welles broke his hand very early in the sequence; you can see him favoring it at the end. Also different from the typical example in that it is shown in a couple of long master shots, rather than an actual montage of closeups: this is because they could only do one take.
  • In Apocalypse Now, the opening montage shows Martin Sheen being randomly enraged/emotionally crippled in several ways, including punching a mirror, an injury which necessitated the bandage on his hand for much of the movie. The stuttercuts in this sequence were happened because the cameraman stopped filming when he saw Martin Sheen had been injured. Coppola told him to keep going, but the break in continuity made a montage necessary when editing it all together.
  • Used in the film of Dreamgirls when Jennifer Hudson is just walking down a runway singing, "I am telling you, I'm not going!" The camera cuts away and back to her so fast it's like they're afraid of relying the scene solely on her performance. Jennifer Holliday's version has her just sitting down, and she's still astounding.
  • Selina Kyle from Batman Returns trashes her apartment as part of her Freak-Out and transformation into the dark and dangerous Catwoman.
    • A nice touch: she has a neon sign above her bed that reads "HELLO THERE", and we see her hit it twice. At the end of the montage the camera pans out and we see the sign now reads "HELL HERE."
  • The Little Mermaid, when Triton destroys Ariel's secret collection of human artifacts.
  • The Room ends with quite possibly the wimpiest, most half-hearted Anger Montage in the history of film, where Johnny destroys the titular Room by knocking down some fixtures, pulling down drawers and throwing a TV out of the window.
  • Inverted in Zombieland, where the protagonists mess up an abandoned store in this manner just For the Lulz. Kinda like "Glad to Be Alive" Sex, except with less sex and more smashing things.
  • Mr Bean, a villain in Fantastic Mr. Fox, does this in response to the title character's latest victory.
  • Master And Margarita: When Margarita found the apartment of the critic who ruined the Master, she rips ink on his pillows, makes the bath overflow, and smashes everything that can be smashed.

Live Action TV[]

  • In the Battlestar Galactica episode "Revelations", Admiral Adama has an epic one after discovering his best friend and XO, Saul Tigh, is a Cylon.
  • Done in an ITV two-part one-off drama called Lawless, where Trevor Eve's character trashes a house.
  • Elliot does this in an episode of Scrubs, trashing her bedroom before going and getting her hair hacked up into the now-familiar "scarecrow" configuration (all to the tune of "American Girl" if this troper remembers correctly).
    • Dr. Cox often does this as well.
  • Cameron Mitchell has one of these in the Stargate SG-1 episode ?Unending? thanks to the stress of being stuck in a time dilation bubble for years on end.
  • In the 1990 Charles Dance miniseries of Phantom of the Opera, Erik does one of these after Christine unmasks him, smashing his creepy, childlike possessions.
  • The How I Met Your Mother episode "Benefits" has Barney going back to the alley and smashing a TV set from the dumpster every time Ted mentions how he's having sex with Robin again, since Barney has fallen in love with her. Eventually the dumpster runs out of TVs, so he goes to the store and buys one just so he can smash it.
  • In the Buffy episode "Blood Ties," Dawn destroys her room (and burns her diaries) after she learns that she is the Key. On Buffy's birthday.
  • King Henry VIII does this a lot in The Tudors.
  • Happens occasionally in Rescue Me when Tommy or Sheila goes on a rampage.
  • Sue Sylvester on Glee has rampages all the time, frequently throwing students around.

Video Games[]

  • In Splinter Cell: Conviction, Sam goes into one of these after learning that Lambert and Grimsdottir, the two people he thought he could trust in Third Echelon are both responsible for taking his daughter away from him.

Visual Novel[]

  • Done in the VN of Turn of the golden witch. Jessica storms into the honored guest's room after the first twilight, only to find a note there taunting her and insulting her parents. She then proceeds to wreck the room in a fit.
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