So there’s a banner ad running for this. Which just floors me. To me, the whole point of Mystery Science Theater 3000 is a fondness for bad movies, not a bunch of smug guys really full of themselves for how funny they are. Which, yeah, they are. I really enjoyed the Film Crew stuff Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy were doing. But do people really want to listen to those guys goofing around during good movies like Die Hard and Jaws? Really? Ugh.
I miss Joel…
-TomBut they riff on a few horrible films, too, like Troll 2…
Agreed, though. They’re missing the point. Unless the point is to make money. In which case they’re still missing the point because the people who’re going to listen to these tracks probably aren’t going to pay for them anyway.
Their riff of Twilight was beautiful.
Just for an example of how absolutely friggin’ awful this is, check out the clip from Jaws. What a wonderful scene. And these guys are making really lame strained jokes. Ugh. Just ugh.
-TomYeah I never understood the appeal of Rifftrax.
Damn it. They didn’t. They couldn’t. Not Mrs. Kitner.
I’m a little burned out on them lately myself, but it’s still fun to watch them do bad films.
They’ve been pumping out so much product lately that I can’t keep up, and it’s all starting to feel a little bit wrote.
Not sure why you’d be missing Joel though. He, Frank, Trace, and the rest of the Cinematic Titanic guys are a hard at work. I saw them live a few months ago, and it was an excellent show.
It’s funny though, the Rifftrax live thing was probably more uproariously funny, and more mainstream. Joel and the CT gang are definitely more artsy and darker. More of a Zinfandel to Rifftrax’s Shiraz.
After the last couple, Cinematic Titanic is out doing Riff trax. Partly because CT isn’t pumping out a new product every week. Plus truely bad movies just work better.
Ooh, a couple of new ones! I thought I was on their mailing list. Grr.
But, yeah, I meant “I miss Joel” in more of a “Joel is better than Mike” sense than in the sense of literally missing Joel. I caught the live Cinematic Titanic show last year and it is indeed awesome. Those guys would know better than to talk during Jaws.
-Tom
Banner ad for Memento, though i’ve never really listened to any of their work. Isn’t Memento supposed to be a good movie?
Blood of the Vampires is bad. I mean Castle of Fu Manchu bad. I saw it live, and I haven’t purchased it yet because it’s still with the hurting.
But, yeah, I meant “I miss Joel” in more of a “Joel is better than Mike” sense than in the sense of literally missing Joel. I caught the live Cinematic Titanic show last year and it is indeed awesome. Those guys would know better than to talk during Jaws.
-Tom
I tried to watch the Rifftrax Iron Man riff and just ended up watching Iron Man again.
I’m tempted to watch Twilight, but the sample is pretty ho hum. I think that Episode II and 300 are probably the Rifftrax high points.
It looks like they’re going after movies people have already seen a million times. Do you get TBS there in Los Angeles , Tom?
Sign me up for Cinematic Titanic live stuff again too. I was skeptical when I went to see the live show. I thought I was in for an evening of crappy strained jokes falling flat. I was totally wrong. By the end of the opening credit sequence of the film–Doomsday Machine–I was already laughing so hard I was crying.
Tossing the cat over the wall to get rid of the guard…priceless.
-amanpour
Oh…also…“Watch out for snakes.”
That really was awful. Riffing on good movies is pointless. It’s like sitting next to an obnoxious boob in the theater who has endless dumb observations about what’s happening on screen.
I am a registered Mikeangelist.
You do know that he was the head writer and very involved during the golden Joel years.
… that being said, rifftrax are great for any film really. They are just allowing people to choose to watch their version of the film. You can really make fun of anything in a movie (most movies) if you want to. Someone’s line can be taken out of context, etc…
You really should check out their Star Wars X-Mas special rifftrax. It is glorious on so many levels.
You can… but at least be funny. And the above clip wasn’t in any sense of the word funny.
Riffing on something good takes real skill, and most likely you have the audience against you from the start, so why try - riff on bad movies and you and the audience are in it together. You’re both watching a crappy movie trying to improve it.
Riffing on Jaws means that everytime a joke falls flat the watcher is thinking “shut the fuck up, I’m trying to watch a movie here!” and when every joke falls flat like in the clip above, then the feeling quickly turns to hatred.
But I must say, that the MST3K-clips I’ve seen hasn’t really impressed me either. Feel free to point me towards the good stuff, because so far it has only brought smirks… not something I’d pay for.
I think instead of good vs. bad we should be focusing on known vs. unknown. One of the great advantages to doing a send up of a truly bad film is that many in your audience will be seeing it for the first time during your send up of the film. Their first exposure to the film is your version.
It’s not like there’s nothing to goof on in the movies we love. It’s just that we’ve already goofed on that stuff with our friends. We’ve already riffed on it at parties. SNL has already done the “Land Shark” skit. Decades ago. The film has been mined.
The first–and only–time I saw “Eegah” was while watching MST3K’s version of it. So that is the film for me.
It’s not that there are no jokes to be had in good films. It’s just that the worse the film you choose, the less likely it is that I’ve seen it. And if I’m watching it for the first time while you goof on it, your goof is about anticipating the best joke I might come up with and beating me to the punch. And you can do that because you got there well before me. MST3K is a time-traveling class clown. Very funny and talented, but ultimately cheating because he had the transcript of today’s class yesterday.
When you try to goof on something we’ve all seen a hundred times you’re just telling us jokes we’ve already heard, already thought of, and probably already dismissed. The real trick is to hit us before we’ve done all three of those things. If you do a send up of a beloved film, then you have to push to create jokes beyond the ones that are already played out, and if you do that then you run into if-it-bends-it’s-funny-if-it-breaks-it’s-not-funny territory.
And if you choose films that already have a sense of humor about themselves (i.e. Jaws, Die Hard), you’re stacking the deck against yourself even more.
-amanpour
That’s an even better reason why it’s not working
The time travelling class clown is a powerful metaphor and also very apt.
I think the best one I’ve ever seen was “Manos” The Hands of Fate.
Shouldn’t the watcher think “Hey I’m a moron for playing this mp3 while I’m trying to watch Jaws”?