Western Animation / The Angry Birds Movie

aka: Angry Birds

Why so angry?

The Angry Birds Movie or Angry Birds is a 2016 CGI animated film based on the Angry Birds franchise. It was produced by series developers Rovio Entertainment, animated at Sony Pictures Imageworks, and distributed by Columbia Pictures.

The movie is a prequel to the game series, telling how the fight with the Bad Piggies started. On an island filled with optimistic, happy-go-lucky flightless birds, Red is the only one who is constantly irritated and grumpy, making him a social pariah. But when a small army of pigs sail over the seas with a devious plan to take the birds' eggs — much to the obliviousness of most of the birds on the island — it's up to Red and his friends from anger management class to stop them.

The characters have been given a major re-design and, unlike most adaptations, were voiced by the likes of Jason Sudeikis (Red), Josh Gad (Chuck), Danny McBride (Bomb), Maya Rudolph (Matilda), Sean Penn (Terence), Bill Hader (Leonard), Peter Dinklage (Mighty Eagle), Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox (Hal and Bubbles), Charli XCX, Keegan-Michael Key (Judge Peckinpah) and Blake Shelton among others.

A teaser trailer was released on September 23, 2015, and the official trailer was released on January 26, 2016. The movie was released on May 20, 2016 in most areas, though it was released one week earlier in some countries.

A sequel was announced on September 2016. In May 2017, it was announced that Mark "Thurop" Van Orman (The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack) would serve as director on this sequel. It was released on August 13, 2019, coinciding with the tenth anniversary of the original game.

In meanwhile, 3 series based on the movie premiered on ToonsTV (later moved to the Angry Birds YouTube channel). Angry Birds Blues, which is set after the movie's events and centered around The Blues and their hatchling friends, and the third and fourth seasons of Piggy Tales entitled Third Act and 4th Street, where the movie's Minion pigs respectively perform their antics in the theater and goofing around the streets of Pig City.

Not to be confused with the Real Trailer, Fake Movie Angry Birds: The Movie.

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The Angry Birds Movie has the following tropes:

• Abnormal Ammo: It wouldn't be an Angry Birds movie without at least one scene involving a bunch of multicolored birds using an oversized slingshot to launch themselves at shoddily-built structures full of bright-green pigs. In fact, it's the climax!
  • The pigs' arsenal includes spring-loaded boxing glove guns and bows with toilet plunger arrows. One pig actually uses a flaming arrow that's a burning plunger!
• Accidental Misnaming: Mighty Eagle keeps getting Red, Chuck and Bomb's names wrong.
• Actor Allusion: Earl, the pig voiced by Blake Shelton, shares Blake's arm tattoo, only with bird tracks instead of deer tracks.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: The movie reveals that Red never knew his parents.
• Adaptational Badass: The pigs. Not only is their leader smart enough to trick most of the birds, but they actually fight back when the birds try to reclaim their eggs.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Gale, the villain of the Angry Birds Stella spin-off game and its two-season web series, appears as just an ordinary bird and a good friend of Stella, as she had yet to shown her Spoiled Brat tendencies that lead to her corruption by the crown, or never was at all.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Downplayed, since he's still The Quiet One and the most asocial, but Terence is much more expressive and social than in the games.
• Adaptational Wimp: The original game had Mighty Eagle being a lot more powerful, capable of destroying multiple structures and pigs whenever he helps the bird when the time comes. This movie has him being supposedly arrogant, lazy, big-mouthed and refusing to help Red and his friends. Subverted when his initial refusal to help the birds was revealed to be a Secret Test of Character which was intended to motivate the birds to heroic action, even if it somewhat ambiguous. He ultimately shows up near the end to help the birds with the final battle against the pigs, if still in a rather blundering fashion.
• Adapted Out: King Smooth Cheeks, the original king of the pigs and the main villain of the games and shorts, does not appear here, with Leonard taking his role instead.
• Age Lift: In the games, Bubbles is a Tagalong Kid. Here, he's an adult. Inversely, the Blues are among the first special attack birds you get - in the movie, they aren't even hatched until the finale.
• All-CGI Cartoon: The first feature-length film of the series to be done in this style.
• All Men Are Perverts: Chuck in this case: also the Mighty Eagle.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Because of Red's temper, the entire community (with some exceptions) treats him like garbage. He was also teased as a kid for having very large eyebrows.
• Alternate Continuity: While it's described as a prequel, there are enough differences between the movie and the games, and not just the new look and the exclusive characters (see Adaptation Personality Change and Age Lift, for some instances; or also the fact that both sides live on separate islands, while they all live on the same island in the games), to make the movie this.
• Ambiguously Bi: Chuck. His first idea on how to solve the loss of the eggs is to procreate to make some more, and he is very much down with that idea, but earlier on he has a weird fantasy about the Mighty Eagle, to say the least.
• Ambiguously Gay: One set of parents who have their eggs stolen is two mother birds, though one of them could just be interpreted as an aunt or a friend. Played, er, straight, with the pair of teenage girl birds who hold hands walking away from Red.
• Anger Montage: After Red's Establishing Character Moment, we then see a montage of him getting angry over various things or acting aggressive in bad times.
• Artistic License – Ornithology: Birds do not have urethra/ urinary bladder, so the infamous "Lake of Wisdom" scene, with Mighty Eagle peeing on the water where Chuck and Bomb had been swimming would be something totally impossible to happen.
  • Then again, it's not like that's the only thing different about these birds. For one, far more of them are flightless than would be expected in Real Life. Plus, of course, their teeth.
• Art Shift: Chuck and Bomb's Imagine Spots about Mighty Eagle are done in 2-D animation.
• Avoid the Dreaded G Rating: Inverted - the UK and Ireland release of the film edits out two instances of wordplay to give the film a U/G rating. One instance is the title drop quoted below, as Red says "I want to see some angry, ANGRY birds!" in the UK edit. Red's "Oh... Pluck my life!" remark near the start is redubbed as "Oh... What have I done?" in a nearly monotonous voice that makes it painfully clear that it's an overdub. Interestingly, the UK digital releases (Or at least the version redeemable on the Sony store) have the original line, and the physical copies use the edited version.
• Badass Decay: Mighty Eagle is an In-Universe example; after several years of retirement, he's definitely out of shape.
• Bait-and-Switch: Happens three times.
  • The movie begins with Red running with an egg-shaped container, clearly with a destination in mind, making the audience think that it contains an egg and Red is being pursued by the Bad Piggies while he makes a run for whatever is home base. Turns out he was delivering a birthday cake, and he was running late.
  • After the Pigs steal the eggs, Peckinpah aggressively addresses Red. Since he spent all the movie until now being a jerk towards Red, it looks as though he is going to try to blame the whole disaster on Red. Only instead, he sadly asks Red what they should do now and admits that he should have heeded Red's warnings.
  • Once all is said and done, it looks like the birds gave the glory to Mighty Eagle and none of it to Red. When he looks past the statue made in the Mighty Eagle's honor, however, he sees that that the birds repaid and honored Red's leadership by rebuilding his house (which was previously on the beach and got destroyed when the pigs' boat made landfall) in the middle of town.
• Beak Attack: Hal unfortunately misses his target (because of his own boomerang effect), but literally pierces through an entire tree on his way back with his large beak. Outside of that, the movie and original game mostly avert the use of this trope.
• Berserk Button: This is Angry Birds, after all, and stealing their eggs - all of them - incurs their wrath as usual. Red is the most constantly ticked off in the film because of far more Berserk Buttons than this, but it is the main thing that motivates him to lead the birds to war against Piggy Island.
• Big Bad: Leonard is the leader of the pigs who schemes to take the birds' eggs, setting off the plot and the climax..
• Big, Bulky Bomb: Bomb. The name says it all.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: As in the original games, Red sports these, and they're more pronounced than in almost all the other birds. He was mocked in his youth because of it.
• Big "SHUT UP!": Played for Laughs when Red, Chuck, and Bomb are heading off to find the Mighty Eagle. After Chuck and Bomb try to determine what the Mighty Eagle's call is using annoying sounds, Red just ends it all.
  Red: Stop making Mighty Eagle noises!
• Bird-Poop Gag: Double Subverted. As Chuck tells why he's on anger management, he's shown teasing a police officer trying to give him a ticket with his Super-Speed, ending with him appearing to poop on his shoulder. It later appears to be vanilla ice cream, but later, Chuck says that it was not.
• Black Sheep: Red, being an angry bird in a community of happy birds.
• Blatant Lies: When the birds launch their counterattack on the Piggies, Leonard tells his subjects that the birds have repaid their "kindness" with an "unprovoked attack."
• Boisterous Bruiser: Bomb is rather obnoxious for a bird fighting against the pigs.
• Bowdlerise: The closing credits feature a song with the lyric "Me oh my, it's a hell of a life". On the soundtrack, it is changed to "Me oh my, it's a wonderful life".
• Break the Haughty: Judge Peckinpah suffers this after the Pigs steal all the eggs, apologizing to Red (whom he'd antagonized repeatedly until then), admitting he was right, and even asking him what they should do. It should also be noted that he stops pretending to be taller than he is after this scene.
• Brick Joke:
  • There's a Travel Montage where Bomb and Chuck come up with all sorts of possible bird calls that might be the Mighty Eagle warcry. In the final battle, Bomb winds up using one for himself, while Red is forced to use one to draw the attention of the actual Mighty Eagle. It works.
  • When the Mighty Eagle airlifts all the eggs to safety, one of the birds comments that he looks nothing like his statue. At the end of the movie, a new statue is put up, noticeably emphasizing how he's grown a LOT fatter by this time.
• Broken Bird: Red (no pun intended). On the outside, he may appear as a Jerkass to those around him. Given he neither knew his parents nor had friends growing up, who can blame him?
• Broken Pedestal: Up until meeting him in person, Red is shown to have a deep level of respect towards Mighty Eagle, having a poster of the legendary bird hanging in his house. When he, Chuck, and Bomb go to meet him in hopes of finding out what the pigs are planning, Red becomes increasingly put off and annoyed by Mighty Eagle's apparent laziness and hubris. The final straw for Red comes when Mighty Eagle flat-out refuses to fly them back to their village upon discovering that Red's suspicions about the pigs are proven true and apathetically sends the three on their way. As it turns out, Mighty Eagle's behavior was only an act to ensure that Red and his friends would gain more faith in themselves by losing faith in him.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • A lot of bad things happen to Red.
  • Ross, Leonard's assistant, undergoes this thoughout most of his screentime such as him having some difficulties when operating the mechanical gangplank, and probably some bruises from getting bumped around on it.
• Canon Foreigner: While the original flock is featured, whether in major or minor roles, the film expands the cast to show a thriving community of birds (and of MANY hatchlings). Gale, Dahlia, Poppy and Willow are present in the film along with Stella, who is also part of the original flock. Previously, they were only available in the spin-off Angry Birds Stella, but have now been amalgamated with the original birds.
  • Ross, the freckled pig from Bad Piggies game make his appearance in the movie as Leonard's assistant.
• Captain Obvious: When Red invites Chuck and Bomb to join him in spying on the pigs:
  Red: Now, I'm telling you, something isn't kosher with these pigs.
• Carnivore Confusion: One pig is seen grilling and eating hot dogs during the climax scenes.
  • Or he could be eating sausages made of beef...
• Cassandra Truth: Because he's the outcast, no one listens to Red when he voices his suspicions about the pigs. They really should have listened.
  Judge Peckinpah: You tried to tell us, but we didn't listen. I didn't listen.
• Casting Gag:
  • In the Japanese dub, it's not the first time Suzuko Mimori (Stella) voicing a pink girl, nor it's the first time we hear Kōichi Yamadera (The Mighty Eagle) voicing some angry birds.
  • Blake Shelton as Earl, a green pig, references his song "Green", which states "[he] was green before green was a thing".
• Character Tics: Stella has a habit of thrusting out one of her arms when she speaks.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The slingshot that Leonard and the pigs leave behind turns out to be very useful when the birds raid Piggy Island.
  • The pot the pigs were planning to cook the eggs in ends up saving Red and the blue egg from the explosion that destroys Pig City.
• Clean, Pretty Childbirth: The Blues hatch without any mucus or dust covering them despite Leonard's castle blowing up around them.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: The most severe punishment allowed by the birds' laws is… taking anger management classes.
• Cool, Clear Water: Played with, Bomb and Chuck swim in (and even drink) the "Lake of Wisdom", which appears as clean as ever. Soon after, however they, along with Red, discover that Mighty Eagle urinates in said lake. Cue Chuck and Bomb having the appropriate reaction.
• Crotch-Glance Sex Check: At the beginning of the movie, it is implied that Red did this when he fell into the family's egg, but how he found out the sex of the child is unknown.
• Dance Party Ending: Mighty Eagle puts on "I Will Survive" as the credits begin to roll, and all of the characters, even Red and Leonard, start dancing. Or at least Red's eyebrows start moving in rhythm to the music.
• Dancing Mook Credits: After having their swirly little tails kicked by the birds at the end of the film, the pigs immediately go into a dancing scene.
• Deadpan Snarker: Hoo boy, Red. He rivals Kyon in the amount of snark he dishes out.
• Decoy Protagonist: Despite the fact she is one of the most popular Angry Birds characters, even being featured in the vast majority of advertising and merchandising, Stella actually plays a minor role in the film and is a supporting character at best.
• Demoted to Extra: The Blues— Jay, Jake, and Jim played a major role in the games. In the movie, they don't appear until the end of the climax and the end credits scene.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: A saxophone player plays a jazzy rendition of the Angry Birds theme. Before Red promptly shoves an apple down the pipe.
• Disney Death: Two for the price of one. First with the Blues when Red seems to be carrying only their eggshell, and Leonard after he was caught in the center of the explosion when the TNT underneath his castle blows up.
• Disproportionate Retribution: At the beginning of the movie, Red is disturbed from his sleep by a kid kicking a soccer ball at his home. He comes outside, smiles at him...then punts him into the ocean.
• The Dissenter Is Always Right: When the pigs arrive on Bird Island, Red is the only one to feel like that they shouldn't be trusted, and Red is shunned and ignored. It turns out that Red was right to be distrustful, as the pigs were really planning to kidnap all of the birds' eggs and eat them.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The chick that imprints on Red upon hatching, thinking he's the dad—despite the biological father being right there. It plays out a lot like a contested-paternity case, implying the mother cheated on her husband, never mind that in this case it's obvious by colour who the biological dad is.
• Doorstep Baby: A flashback shows that Red hatched from an egg in a lost and found bin.
• Driven to Suicide: Bomb at the end of his wangsting moment. Also a case of Suicide as Comedy. Fortunately, Red and Chuck pull him back from the mountain edge before he can jump off of it.
• Eats Babies: This is what the pigs' banquet essentially amounts to.
• Enemy Eats Your Lunch: Red is hungry and is about to eat something off the gourmet table, but then the green pigs come in and devour everything in sight, leaving Red mouth agape in shock.
• Establishing Character Moment: The movie opens with Red trying and failing to deliver a cake for a hatchling's birthday party. As the father heckles him for doing a poor job, Red loses his temper and throws the cake in his face.
• Everything Is an Instrument: The film's composer, Heitor Pereira, is the son of a birdwatcher, so a lot of the score's percussion is made up of bird calls from his own personal collection.
• Exact Words: The new Mighty Eagle statue reads "Honoring Mighty Eagle for Saving the Eggs". He does airlift the eggs out... and that's it.
• Explosive Overclocking: In a non-electronics sense. Terence tries to fire himself from the slingshot, realizing that his size and mass would cause major damage to the Piggies' castle, and he is strong enough to take on the Piggies in close combat. However, the stress on the slingshot causes it to break before it can fire him to the castle, stranding him and the other birds, and leaving the main cast on their own.
• Eye Recall: Happens many times during the movie. Chuck and Bomb experience this twice; the first being recounts of their anger management issues, and the second when they were imagining the Mighty Eagle.
  • Leonard also has this when imagining himself and a bird's egg spending quality time together.
• Eyebrow Waggle: A Blue caught kicking a soccer ball against the side of Red's house gives Red a slow eyebrow waggle to coax him into forgiveness. Unconvinced, Red returns the gesture and promptly kicks the Blue into the horizon.
• Feathery Reminder: At one point in the film, a mother bird packs her children's lunch...by eating some food then vomiting it into their bags.
• Feather Fingers: The birds have actual, human-like hands instead of wings (which likely justifies them being flightless).
• Foreshadowing: During the last third of the film, we see a couple of shots focusing on a pair of blue birds distraught that their egg has been stolen. As we find out later near the end, this is because they are the parents who gave birth to the Blues.
  • After Red furiously calls out Mighty Eagle on his refusal to leave his retirement and decides to take the situation in his own hands, the latter smirks. Because Red just succeeded his Secret Test of Character.
• Fourth-Wall Portrait: At Red's trial, the court artist draws in the style of the original games.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In the birds' city, there is a statue of the Mighty Eagle; notably, Chuck later imitates this position in Matilda's class.
  • On a more straight-up example, during the scene where Red and Leonard fall through several floors of the castle, they crash through a room where a pig has just walked in with a sandwich, and it's lost to the two of them falling, the same pig is seen again looking tearfully at the hole in the floor a few scenes later. If you look at the TV in both scenes, 2 different episodes of Piggy Tales (A claymation-animated based on Bad Piggies spin-off game) is playing.
  • Another example is Red's trial at the start of the film. Aside from the mythology gag listed lower on the page, one of the visible pictures drawn on the pile of images is a picture of Red from the first game.
• Friend to All Children: With some exceptions, Red seems to have a soft spot for kids.
  Red (after the theft): "They stole your kids! No, they stole our kids!"
  • Shown quite early on as well, when Red is waiting for a large group of hatchlings to cross the street, one looks up at Red and blows him a raspberry. Red looks around for a moment before returning the gesture.
• Funny Background Event: Watch the gray bird in the first scene with Red; he is seen first holding an apple to his ear, then pressing it, before tossing it to the ground and kicking it. He either doesn't know what an apple is or thinks it's an iPhone. Possibly both.
  • A later scene has a pig taking a picture of Peckinpah and Leonard standing in front of the 'Birds & Bees Fertility Clinic'. A male bird is walking out with an all-too satisfied look on his face. A part of that which isn't in the main film was printed on a trading card!
• Good is Not Nice: Red can be an antisocial jerk at times, but he's definitely one of the good guys.
• Guile Hero: When Leonard tries to kill the unhatched Blues just to spite Red, Red strokes the bastard's ego to make him waste time and pull a Disaster Dominoes move that allows him to save the Blues and provoke a monstrously huge explosion that puts Leonard out of commission (but amazingly doesn't kill him) and utterly annihilates Pig City.
  Leonard: [climbing over a mound of TNT] You have annoyed me for the last time!
  Red: Yep! [cauldron slams on top of Red, covering him]
  Leonard: Ah?!? [All the TNT explodes] NO!!!
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Wouldn't be an Angry Birds adaptation without it. Red in particular has a really short fuse.
  • An important plot point is that he and some of the original birds from the games are actually the only ones foul-tempered in a community of peaceful fellows. At first, anyway.
• The Hermit: Mighty Eagle lives in a cave on top of a mountain.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Chuck's talent for MacGyvering - he created that motorised laughing sign, and crafts a Frame-Up to distract the pigs in Bullet Time.
  • Red's soft spot for kids - the raspberry hatchling is the first thing to put a genuine smile on his face.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The dynamite which the pigs kept stockpiled in their castle plays a crucial part in the demise of Piggy Island. Not to mention that their giving the birds the slingshot is responsible for their downfall as well as the game premise.
• Homage Shot: When Red is launched by Terence, he tucks in his arms and legs with a scowl on his face.
• Hurricane of Puns: Chock-full of them, and not just the obvious bird, eggs, or pig puns either.
  Bomb: Didn't mean to photobomb you, sorry about that.
• Hypocrite:
  • Judge Peckinpah dislikes Red for his anger issues, but clearly has a temper of his own, visibly becoming annoyed when Red claims he's the one with the anger issue.
  • Most of the birds on the island shun Red for being different from them, but wholeheartedly embrace the completely different Pigs.
  • Of the Hypocritical Humor sort, Leonard cries outrage when Red starts ruining his lair in their confrontation, after apathetically (and repeatedly) trashing Red's house while invading their island. Leonard defends his hypocrisy, on the ground that Red's house was ugly.
• Imagine Spot: Bomb and Chuck have two differing interpretations of Mighty Eagle when Red says they're gonna go find him.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Played with. When the Angry Birds that landed in Pig City begin charging towards the castle during the climatic battle, the Piggy Air Force pilots attack them by throwing TNT sticks at them simultaneously while trying to pilot their planes. If they were trying to blow them all up outright, they failed miserably - not a single stick hits a bird. But the resulting explosions do slow them down, all right.
• Imprinting: At the beginning of the movie, Red slips and falls headfirst onto an unhatched egg, cracking it open. This causes the chick inside to imprint on him, calling him "daddy" for the rest of the film (to the real father's outrage). It actually gets treated like a case of contested paternity (i.e., implying the mother's infidelity).
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Red, full stop. Despite acting like an irritable, anti-social jerk most of the time, his heart is definitely in the right place.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Red may have anger issues, but a lot of things that have ticked him off were completely justified:
  • The clown incident was a result of Edward attempting to con his way out of paying for the birthday cake Red was sent to deliver by claiming Red was late to his son's party, despite the fact that Red had not been informed that the party was moved to a different time. This, coupled with the fact that he refused to believe Red's (true) claim of running across the island to deliver the cake and even flat-out insulted him for it, makes it hard to blame Red for throwing the cake in his face in retaliation.
  • His outburst at Judge Peckinpah during the his trial is due to the fact that Peckinpah believes himself to be the Reasonable Authority Figure of the village, yet it is shown that he clearly has a personal bias against Red when he reminds him that nobody on the island really likes him, even when they smile at him.
  • Red's dislike/distrust of the Pigs stems from the fact that they destroyed his house without apologizing or offering to fix it and continually lie about their intentions; starting with the fact that Leonard claimed that only himself and Ross were the sole passengers of their ship when there were actually several other pigs hiding within it. Unfortunately, nobody shares Red's suspicion of the pigs, which ends up biting them all back when they flee the island with all the eggs.
  • Mighty Eagle refuses to help simply because he is retired. Well, "Mostly tired." Mighty Eagle may have been mighty once, but that was a long time ago, as his Heroic Build has given way to a large gut. While he can still fly, he needs a bit of a warm up to get going, and can no longer just swoop in and obliterate his enemies like his game counterpart.
• Keet: Chuck (Not literally though, he's an American Goldfinch).
• Kick the Dog: On top of stealing the eggs, the Piggies also needlessly blow up the Mighty Eagle statue as they leave.
• Large Ham: Leonard, pun intended.
  • Bubbles, especially when he attacks the Piggies.
    Bubbles: [lands in the town] DON'T MESS WITH BUBBLES!
    Piggies: Piggy pile! [dogpile Bubbles]
    Bubbles: [rapidly inflates] I TOLD YOU NOT TO MESS WITH ME!
    Red: Wow, that blows! ...i-in a good way!
• Le Parkour: Stella trades her bubbles for this. It's similar to her wall-jumping ability in Angry Birds Stella.
• Life of the Party: Chuck shows great discomfort in stopping a party rather than starting one, but since the Piggies are stealing the eggs while the Birds party, he'll have to make an exception.
• Lineage Ladder: Subverted. After Mudbeard steals the eggs, he proudly shows off his loot to his subjects as part of a royal announcement, where he reveals that his family has been after them for generations. He sets up the family pattern by citing his father and his father's father, which would force the listener to expect a third type of father due to Rule of Three, but instead it's filled in by an aunt.
  King Mudbeard: "My father, and my father's father, and my weird Aunt Chloe have all searched for the eggs, but only I, King Mudbeard, have found them. I present to you, the eggs!"
• Loser Protagonist: At first, Red is a miserable, curmudgeonly, socially-despised/ignored individual. It isn't til much later in the movie when he's proven to be right about the pigs that he gets any sort of respect.
• Mama Bear / Papa Wolf: The Bad Piggies stealing their eggs is what makes the Angry Birds so...well, angry. This protectiveness is even established in the first scene of the movie, when Red accidentally trips on a squirrel and was gonna land on an egg, only to be (temporarily) stopped by the family holding him back.
• Manipulative Bastard: Leonard a.k.a. King Mudbeard.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: When Leonard sees an egg for the first time in the film, he ends up having a Girl of My Dreams day-dream with it. We know all he wants to do is eat it, but considering what an egg is in bird-society, it just gets so much creepier.
• Moral Myopia: Leonard has the gall to be outraged when the birds responds to his wicked deeds in kind.
  Leonard: You're wreckin' my house! What's wrong with you?
  Red: You wrecked my house!
  Leonard: Your house was ugly!
  Red: Well, now we're even!
• Motor Mouth: Chuck talks, and he talks fast!
• Mundane Made Awesome: The movie kicks off by turning the familiar game tune into a massive orchestral piece like it's the Big Damn Movie. (It is, in a way.)
• My God, What Have I Done?: The birds have this reaction when the pigs steal their eggs, and realize that Red was right all along about the pigs' true intentions.
  Judge Peckinpah: You knew. You tried to tell us, but we didn't listen. I...didn't listen.
  • It's brief, but Terence has this reaction when he accidentally destroys the bird's slingshot, preventing them from entering the pigs' kingdom.
• Mythology Gag: There are a few of them in the movie:
  • In the prologue, after Red delivers a cake to a family, he asks the father to rate him on a scale of one to three stars, as in the games' famous three-star scoring system.
  • When Red kicks the bird into the ocean in the beginning, it makes the sound Matilda would when launched in the original games.
  • During the court scene, the recording bird drawing down what happened in the crime scene draws the moment in the original art style.
  • In the Angry Birds Stella animated series, Stella is depicted to be highly acrobatic even in her original, round limbless form. So it makes perfect sense that in the movie, she has a large wingspan and long, thin legs so that no one needs to imagine how gracefully she moves were she to have limbs.
  • When the pigs first arrive to Bird Island, alerting all the birds, Chuck zips down to the beach only to find that Terence already beat him to the punch. This references Terence's tendency to suddenly show up in Angry Birds Toons, particularly the episode "Run Chuck Run".
  • During the Teach Him Anger montage, Terence shows some birds a chalkboard drawing of an angry bird. Said bird happens to be Red's design in the games and cartoons.
  • As Chuck is launched, he briefly adopts the triangular shape that he has in the games.
  • When Red finally gets in the slingshot to attack the pigs, once he gains composure, he changes into a somersaulting pose directly reminiscent of how he looks in the game's original splash screen.
  • As Bomb blows up the ramp launching the Piggy Air Force, the ensuing explosion seems to call back to his Shock and Awe ability from the Short Fuse update from the original game.
  • The father of the Blues' face-wise looks more or less identical to how the Blues' look in Angry Birds Toons and the later games.
  • In the "Early Hatchling Gets the Worm" short on the Blu-Ray, most of the noises the worm makes are the noises the birds make in the original Angry Birds game (Most obvious when the worm hits something at the start, and makes Red's 'Ow!' sound).
  • When Ross get his head knocked by a rock during the birds' attack, his left eye somehow receive bruises. This is a nod to original Angry Birds game where the pigs get their eyes blackened each time they damaged.
  • At one point, Chuck yells out "Chuck Time!" This was the title of the first Angry Birds Toons segment.
• The Napoleon: Judge Peckinpah is only able to tower over all the other birds because he's been standing on one.
• Never My Fault: The pigs act like they did nothing wrong when the birds start attacking their village.
• Never Say "Die": Subverted - nobody really dies in this sort of show, but the dialogue doesn't shy away from it.
  Leonard: We tried to kill them with kindness, and now we're just gonna hafta, well... y'know!
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Zigzagged - all the birds would need to be Made of Iron to survive getting slingshotted, even though an early scene shows a bird suing for whiplash and pulling it off (then again, he'd been faking it). Apparently teaching them anger has some effect - Matilda, hinted to be a Stepford Smiler, unleashes a powerful bombing ability well beyond the others' level, while Chuck, who remains one of the mellowest birds, has always been in full control of his Super-Speed, but gets severely winded during his flight. And The Stinger shows the Blues nailing their first flight just because they got the anger part down!
• Nice Guy: Out of the three main birds, Bomb is the most good-natured and easygoing, and doesn't seem to have any anger management problems like his friends. If anything, the only reason he is even in Matilda's anger management class is to get better control over his habit of exploding when alarmed or scared.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The slingshot that the pigs leave behind on Bird Island plays a crucial part in their eventual downfall.
• Non-Mammalian Hair: Invoked. Some females have a head of hair that's really feathers of a different texture, which is incidentally how those Big Ol' Eyebrows can exist.
• Non Sequitur, *Thud*: Mighty Eagle tells his mother he can sleep late since it's not a school day when he crash-lands in the pigs' castle.
• Noodle Incident: While the reasons for Red, Chuck and Bomb being sent to anger management are known, Terence's reason made Matilda too horrified to go into detail. Police sirens, screams and Terence's Slasher Smile (for Terence, anyway...) are the only clue given to the viewers.
  • The climax offers another clue: when the birds pull their getaway in a vehicle driven by Terence, Matilda says "Put your seatbelts on, everyone. Trust me.", implying that (part of) Terence's reason is that he Drives Like Crazy.
• No OSHA Compliance: Practically anything the pigs make is horrendously unstable and highly dangerous to be around, whether it's meant to blow up or not. Frankly, if they weren't all Made of Iron, the pigs would've done themselves in long ago. This is highlighted during the attack on Piggy Island, which, thanks to its poor architecture, needs only the occasional light nudge from some of the smaller birds to come toppling down.
  • Exaggerated with King Mudbeard's castle, which is apparently built on stacks of dynamite as its foundation.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Downplayed, but Red was right all along and the one who united the birds to retrieve the eggs, however his plan didn't go any further than getting in the castle, without an actual way to get the eggs back to the island. So, while it earns him the admiration and respect of the other birds, particularly the children that hatched thanks to him, it's Mighty Eagle, who brought the eggs to safety and was already the hero of the town, that gets the statue. Noticeably, however, Exact Words ensue on the statue and Red still gets to be the only other individual bird depicted there, although in an undignified pose.
• No Sympathy: Red actually has some legitimate grievances in the film (such as not being paid for bringing a cake to a birthday party, or the Pigs wrecking his house), but the other birds simply dismiss them. It is only after the pigs antagonise them by stealing their eggs that they relent that Red might have a point.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Played for Laughs during Terence’s above-described Noodle Incident in Anger Management Class. It could still be a bit jarring, however.
• Official Couple: Terence and Matilda at the end of the movie. Yeah, you read that right.
• Offscreen Teleportation: When the birds at anger management go to the beach to see the pigs arriving, Chuck uses his Super-Speed. To his surprise, Terence is already there.
• Only Sane Man: Red is a lot more temperamental than most examples, but his short fuse means he doesn't trust the pigs at all.
• Origin Story: Different continuity wise, this movie serves as a prequel showcasing how the infamous feud between the Angry Birds and Bad Piggies began.
• Overly Long Gag: Mighty Eagle urinates in the Lake of Wisdom for a whole 45 seconds, giving Bomb and Chuck plenty of time to express their horror and regret over swimming and drinking from the lake.
• Parental Abandonment: One bird lampshades the fact where a young Red doesn't have any parents. In fact, the prologue shows that he was born at a lost and found bin.
• Precision F-Strike: Although the movie has no swearing, its soundtrack has one usage of the word "bitch", in "Rock You Like a Hurricane".
  The bitch is hungry, she needs to tell
• Properly Paranoid: When the Piggies first come to the island, all the birds are charmed by them, but Red is the only one who is suspicious of their true intentions. Sure enough, his hunch turns out to be correct when the pigs steal their eggs.
• The Quiet One: Terence (Sean Penn), who communicates entirely by intimidating growls.
• Race Against the Clock: The birds have to invade Pig Palace and get their eggs back in two days before the pigs eat them. Once they start attacking, Leonard changes his mind and decides to serve the eggs up immediately.
• Required Spinoff Crossover: Inverted. The film brings in characters from two Angry Birds spinoffs: Angry Birds Stella (Stella and her friends Poppy, Dahlia, Willow and Gale) and Bad Piggies (Ross). Stella and her friends take part in the festivities for welcoming the Pigs, while the freckled Pig Ross, main character of the Bad Piggies game, helps Leonard out with carrying out his plans.
• Retcon: While Angry Birds doesn't have a strong sense of canon, there is one example of this trope: The film includes characters from Angry Birds Stella, but by having them all live on Bird Island in the first place, Stella's original setting of Golden Island is left out of the picture.
• Retired Badass: The Mighty Eagle's current status.
• Riddle for the Ages: Matilda informs us 'Terrence had an, um, "incident".' We never find out more.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: The hatchlings.
• Rousing Speech: Red delivers one to the entire island to motivate them to go after the pigs and save the eggs.
• Running Gag:
  • "DADDY!!"
  • The "Hug Trader" bird.
  • The Mime Bird saying "Oh my god".
  • Cyrus's sneezing. The first instance shown is into Red's popcorn bucket, and the gag goes from there, even during the birds' fight against the pigs.
• Secret Test of Character: The reason why The Mighty Eagle acted all lazy and arrogant with little heroism is so he can make Red, Chuck, and Bomb believe in themselves more than they believe in him.
• Sequel Hook: Leonard has survived the final explosion and is already plotting his revenge.
• Shout-Out:
  • The police bird can talk in sound effects.
  • The pig DJ's are wearing Daft Punk helmets.
  • While looking for the eggs, Red is confronted by two creepy pig twins in a creepy corridor.
  • Chuck going into bullet time to defeat the castle guards brings to mind Quicksilver's famous scene from X-Men: Days of Future Past.
  • When the pigs' first ship arrives, a bird remarks, "Look at the size of that thing!"
• Shown Their Work:
  • Bomb notes that bald eagles chirp.
  • The game physics figure quite a bit in the final battle, such as Bomb being able to bash through rock while Chuck can't quite do the same despite bashing through several wooden walls.
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: The Blues.
• Smashed Eggs Hatching: Vincent and the Blues are somehow nicely welcomed into the world even though their eggs get shattered.
• Speed, Smarts and Strength: Red, who is the most sensible and the one who comes up with the plans, is the smarts; Chuck, who can run incredibly fast, is the speed; and Bomb, who is The Big Guy and can make explosions, is the strength.
• Stepford Smiler: Matilda's use of her breathing exercises in stressful times suggests she has some repressed anger issues of her own. In fact, according to the official website, she used to be an Angry Bird herself. She gets the chance to let loose during the attack against the Bad Piggies.
  • The tie-in children's book 'Big Trouble on Bird Island' takes this up to eleven - the repressed anger causes her to sleepwalk, unknowingly defacing the town's statue of Mighty Eagle every night.
• The Stinger: The Blues run off without their parents knowing to visit the slingshot, launch themselves with it while magnetized together, and then split up mid-air into three projectiles just like in the games.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Bomb's deal as usual, though in this case, it's triggered when he gets startled or nervous as some birthday guests found out the hard way.
  • He also ends up accidentally exploding when he struggles with some yoga poses.
• Suddenly Speaking: In the games and cartoons (though not the comics or the storybooks), none of the characters really spoke. Mostly they just grunted, growled, laughed and uttered gibberish. In the movie, they're fully voiced.
• Super-Speed: Chuck's special ability. He's fast enough to enter Bullet Time.
• Survival Mantra:
  Matilda: "Deep breath! Deep breath! DEEEEP BREEEEAAAATH!!"
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: The room where the Piggies are keeping the stolen eggs has "NO EGGS IN HERE" written on the doors.
  Chuck: "No eggs in-" (Gasps) Ooh, these are clever pigs.
• Take That!:
  • While searching around the Piggies' ship, Chuck finds a book titled Fifty Shades of Green, and is briefly disgusted by it.
  • The Mighty Eagle is one of the best known pay-to-win features in gaming, so naturally he's grown fat and lazy here.
• The End... Or Is It?: During the start of the end credits, we discover that King Mudbeard and some Pigs have survived the destruction of their city after all, and he's already thinking about revenge!
• There Are No Therapists: Averted with Matilda's anger management class.
• Those Two Guys: Chuck and Bomb are usually seen together and are close friends with each other.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: The Hug Trader finally gets a hug near the end of the film after having all of his previous attempts rejected.
• Time-Freeze Trolling Spree: During an attempt to retrieve the eggs, Chuck enters Chuck Time just as Red tries to come up with a plan. He uses that time to paint a demeaning message on one of the Bad Piggies ("Fart Face" in the film, "I stink" in the junior novel) and gives the paint bucket to another pig to make him a scapegoat. When the time gets to normal, the Bad Piggies fight amongst themselves.
• Time-Passes Montage: Occurs shortly after Red, Chuck, and Bomb realize they've climbed the wrong mountain to Mighty Eagle's place. Red and Chuck go back down while Bomb stays behind for quite sometime, and then starts sobbing over the wasted energy. Red and Chuck then return back up the mountain when they realize Bomb wasn't with them, stop him from plunging to his explosive death, and end up stuck under his weight for some more time until they finally get back down the mountain together.
• Title Drop: During the Teach Him Anger moment...
  Red: What I need now...are some angry flocking birds!
  • Also in the beginning just before Red throws a cake at a heckling bird.
• Toilet Humor: When Red, Chuck and Bomb go to seek out the Mighty Eagle, they come across his "Lake of Wisdom". Chuck and Bomb play around in the water (and even drink it) for a bit as Red tries to get them to come out. When the Eagle finally shows up and they hide, the first thing he does is...pee in the lake, much to the disgusted horror of Chuck and Bomb.
• Training the Peaceful Villagers: After the eggs get stolen, Red trains the birds to fight so that they can get them back.
• Trickster Mentor: The Mighty Eagle acts like a kooky blowhard when Red, Chuck, and Bomb come for his aid. Later, he reveals that he was just playing it up in order to motivate the three to become heroes in their own right. "I had to make you lose faith in me, so you can learn to have faith in yourselves!"
• Tropaholics Anonymous: Red, Chuck, Bomb, and Terence are in one to control their anger under the tutelage of Matilda.
• Trust-Building Blunder: During Matilda's trust fall session, four pigs take the role of being the "trusties" to Terence. Even with all the pigs working together, it doesn't end well for them.
• Two Men, One Dress: Judge Peckinpah stands upon a similarly-sized bird named Cyrus (who in one scene sneezes into Red's popcorn bucket).
• Unrelated in the Adaptation: Played straight. In the games, Red and Terence are brothers, but in the film, they're complete strangers, with neither of them meeting until Red goes to the Infinity Acceptance Center to serve his sentence.
• Villain with Good Publicity: The Pigs supposedly come to the island in the name of friendship and win the birds over with their charm, but Red grows suspicious when they take a sudden interest in their eggs.
• Wangst: In-Universe. When Red, Chuck and Bomb realize they climbed the wrong mountain in their quest for Mighty Eagle, Red and Chuck moan and complain and start going down... And Bomb starts sobbing for hours, lies on the floor for more hours, shoos out Red and Chuck when they come back, and tries to kill himself! Of course, it's Played for Laughs.
• Was Too Hard on Him: The other birds including Judge Peckinpah feel this way after finding their village destroyed and their eggs stolen, realizing they should have listened to Red from the very beginning, instead of having rebuffed his warnings when he really was looking out for everyone, despite how they treated him.
• Weeding Out Imperfections: Judge Peckinpah compares Red's excessive anger to a weed in the bird community that must be plucked out before sentencing him to anger management.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Red is very fond of elbow drops.
• You Don't Look Like You: Most obviously, all the characters are now anthropomorphic and look much more cartoon-y then they did previously. This style would later carry over to the mobile games themselves.
• Your Other Left: Invoked in the scene where they first learn to master the slingshot, rather appropriately.
  Chuck: My left is your left! We are facing in the same direction
  Bomb: Oh, ok. Good call. (starts moving to his right)

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