A sequence in which it is shown that, while time is passing, the protagonist is feeling sad and alone. Opposite of the Good-Times Montage. In fact, some films will juxtapose a Sad-Times Montage with a Good-Times Montage earlier in the film, only with different music. Can overlap with the Lost Love Montage, with both sides of the lost love being sad, separately. Especially if there's an overlap with the Lost Love Montage, a Cradle of Loneliness may be part of it.
See also Happier Home Movie, which the protagonist may watch in lieu of this.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Comic Books
- Discussed in New Mutants: Lethal Legion. When Cerebella talks to Escapade in the first issue, trying to work out why she still feels down after the team's victory over the cult who'd previously imprisoned her as a Brain in a Jar, she wishes she could take the montage option.
Cerebella: I'm sorry. I'm being boring. I wish I could just montage this @#$%.
Films — Animation
- In 5 Centimeters per Second, Makoto Shinkai will make you cry over a montage.
- Shrek has one of these right before the big Climax. It's set to the John Cale cover of "Hallelujah."
- Up. The first minutes are two people getting together and marrying. Then there's one thing after another...
- In Madagascar, we see Marty, Melman and Gloria walking sadly through the jungle while Alex isolates himself in the jungle so he won't hurt his friends, all set to "What a Wonderful World".
- In An American Tail where Fievel is walking around in New York alone, searching for his family.
- Open Season had this when Boog and Elliot have their fallout and Boog tries to find his way home single-handedly just as it rains. All of it is set to the song "Where I Belong" by Pete Yorn.
- After Verne alienates his friends in Over the Hedge, he gets this. The song "Still" sung by Ben Folds does not help.
Films — Live-Action
- The characters in Shortbus have a sad fucking montage.
- The entire scene of "Without You" from the movie version of RENT.
- A montage appears in Good Morning, Vietnam, with images of American war atrocities played against, again, "What a Wonderful World".
- Get Ready to Be Boyzvoiced: After their rejection by the American music label, the band members are seen giving interviews lamenting how everything they've been doing up to that point has been for nothing, set to an instrumental version of "In the Air Tonight".
Live-Action TV
- Sad-Times Montages set to various covers of "Hallelujah" are practically a sub-trope all their own. Other examples include:
- The O.C. (the Jeff Buckley version)
- The West Wing
- ER
- And Scrubs.
- Usually happened on Buffy the Vampire Slayer when things went wrong in the lives of Buffy and her friends — which was often.
- Neatly played with in one episode, however, when Spike has been around after breaking up with Drusilla and basically ends up causing trouble for everyone, which ends up spoiling a lot of different things for different people. By the end of the episode, we see a montage of all the characters looking angsty and wistful... and then we see Spike, who has solved his problem and is currently driving away as happy as Larry, bopping to the Sex Pistols' cover of "My Way".
- Variant: Another episode had three different women hurt and disappointed by their respective partners, and ended with a shot of all three walking around different sides of the same campus park, but without taking notice of each other - so, actually a bad times non-montage.
- The end of pretty much every episode of Ally McBeal.
- Misfits brings out one of these close to end of its very first episode, with all five of the main characters trying to recover following the events of the day: Nathan gloomily watches his mother and her boyfriend enjoying themselves; Alisha resigns herself to an evening alone thanks to her newfound power; Kelly lapses into depression over being dumped by her boyfriend- not long after finding out what he really thought of her; Curtis watches old footage of his past athletic triumphs, evidently trying to use his time-travelling powers to undo his mistake; Simon at first appears to be enjoying himself, given that he's standing in the middle of a cluster of friends and smiling... and then it's revealed that he's made himself invisible and is standing in between groups of people in a desperate attempt to assuage his own loneliness. A good look at his face a moment later shows that it isn't working.
- Played for laughs in The IT Crowd when the shirtless Roy gets locked out of the office building. Lacking his wallet and keys, he turns into a homeless derelict, begging for enough change to make a phone call until Jen finds him again. All of this happens in two hours time.
- In the finale of Mimpi Metropolitan, Bambang leaves the dorm for seven days. Those days are shown with a montage of his friends in Jakarta missing him.
Theater
- In On the Town, the "Lonely Town" ballet expresses Gabey's feeling of being lost in New York City.
Web Comics
- This page
and the next one from Everyday Heroes, showing how Jane felt after Goldie was killed.
- Gunnerkrigg Court. Kat and Alistair part without a proper goodbye. As a result, on this page, Kat gets progressively more sad, until Annie decides to intervene.
Western Animation
- The Simpsons uses this frequently. A notable one occurs in "Million Dollar Abie", when Grampa becomes a pariah and faces rejection from various townspeople to "Nobody Loves You (When You're Down and Out)".
- Mocked in Family Guy when Peter has one of these after getting into an accident and having to use a wheelchair - it's revealed that the montage was only a few minutes.
- In The Venture Brothers, after Hank and Dean are killed, the first episode of Season 2 opens with a montage of characters looking depressed, Doc breaking down, fleeing the compound in the X-1, and Brock tracking him through various exotic locales as Doc "finds himself". Unusually for most montages of this type, the accompanying music is an upbeat techno track, which undergoes a Diegetic Switch as Brock finally catches Doc at a rave.
- Futurama: The ending to "Jurassic Bark", doubling as a Time-Passes Montage, depicts Seymour sitting in the same spot by Panucci's for twelve years, desperately waiting for Fry to return, until he eventually passes away in the same spot.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has one during Twilight's BSoD Song "Find a Way" in "Magical Mystery Cure", as Ponyville degenerates into chaos and ruin due to the Mane Five's' cutie mark switcheroo.
- South Park:
- The episode "Raisins" has one after Stan learns that Wendy has broken up with him, set to Cinderella's "Don't Know What You Got (Til It's Gone)".
- The "Landslide" sequence at the end of "You're Getting Old."
