Here’s Mike and the two robots telling us about it.
I watch a lot of Rifftrax shorts on youtube, but have never gone to their website to see how it works. Can anyone here tell me about it? I’d love to see Mike and the robots again, not to mention Pearl, Bobo, and Brain Guy.
“Vroom indeed my friend, vroom indeed”
I told my wife and she’s off to the Kickstarter page - just an FYI to those who didn’t see the video, it’s more a “coming soon once we fund” than ready to go. But I’m looking forward to it!
ETA - Kickstarter was originally for $20k, it’s now over $918,000. All the really expensive perks sold out.
I fully support it. Amazing, better than the recent episodes I hope.
Very happy!
How does Rifftrax in general work? The original way is that it tells you to pause at a certain part (like on the production company logo) then play your audio and they’ll mention at what point to unpause it so they’re synced up.
The “new” way that’s been available for years is that the various apps have a feature that listens to the movie audio cues and will sync up their audio to the right moment. Some older Rifftrax might not be available but many that predate the sync have been converted.
There are apps available for iPhones and Android as well as popular TV devices like Roku. Note that at least for Android there is a Rifftrax app and a Rifftrax Sync app - you want the latter to do the automatic syncing. If you buy the audio on one platform it will transfer to others on the same account, so no need to worry about which you will commit to.
Ha! The total amount they’ve raised now stands at $1,100,000 plus.
I’m not techie enough to know how to work Rifftrax yet, and Mr. brown is not going to be any help. If I want to see these new episodes, I’m going to have to do a lot of studying on how to do this. I’m totally unclear on where to watch them - through my laptop? The TV? My phone? Off to find a resource.
I’m a big Rifftrax fan and I currently have a ‘Best Friends’ subscription through their website, but I’ve never tried their ‘Just The Jokes’ riffs where you rent the movie separately and play the ‘Jokes’ track concurrently with the movie. I’ve not yet really felt a need to, since they have so much content available that includes the short/movie and the jokes together. I think their ‘Just The Jokes’ selection is a very small part of their overall catalog, when they can’t get the rights to the movie. Granted, the ‘JTJ’ movies they riff on are probably bigger, more well known movies, but I kind of like the charm of riffing on the older, obscure, terrible movies.
If anybody has any questions about the Rifftrax website or the app that doesn’t involve questions about the ‘JTJ’ riffs, I’ll be glad to take a stab at answering those.
In any case I guess this is good news, but honestly (and I know this will be heresy among MST3K fans) I prefer the Rifftrax format, where they’ve dispensed with all the skits and the silliness and just riff on stuff. I always found the skits on MST3K kind of tedious. Get back to the movie, already!
I assume since this is being marketed as a MST3K event, it’s going to be a full movie with the silhouettes, as well as intermission skits. So you should just be able to rent/view the whole thing, no lining up of a streaming video & separate audio required.
I also wonder who owns the rights to MST3K and the bots now. Did they have to buy them back from Netflix, or did they just lease them in the first place?
I’m the exact opposite - I thought Rifftrax was dull since it was just nonstop jokes about the movie, with little interaction between the 3 of them. I enjoyed the banter between the host & the bots, and the skits in between.
Sure, to each their own. I said my opinion would be unpopular…
Clearly, that’s why they’re raising money to do more MST3K episodes-- because a lot of fans miss the old format.
I don’t want to be that guy but isn’t Mike Nelson a Trumper? I know for sure he is a Conservative Evangelical.
Oh man, I hope not. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard them (maybe it was Bill or Kevin) make a couple sneaky, veiled anti-trump jokes here and there. Though they don’t get political with their jokes in general.
Do you have a cite, or are are you just assuming guilt by association? Not all evangelical Christians support Trump.
So you’re saying my suggestion that they do the movie Melania is a non-starter?
I was asking a question not accusing anyone. I know he is (or at least was) a Conservative Republican.
I just googled “Is Mike Nelson of Rifftrax a trumper” and granted, I haven’t done a deep dive since this came up in the thread 5 minutes ago, but nothing obvious comes up that points to him being a trump supporter.
There was a bit of a dust-up awhile back with Mike about some transphobic comments, and he released a statement saying it was because of a conservative religious podcast he had been a guest on, and was not a part of the show at the time of the comments. Also Bill and Kevin have disavowed some old jokes that could be seen as transphobic or homophobic in nature.
I’m sure someone with more knowledge can refute me but as far as I know he has tried to be as apolitical as possible in his work. One thing that happened was a podcast he was associated with a few years ago had some transphobic comments (no I don’t remember what the comments were). But this happened after Mike had mostly pulled away from the podcast and it was on episodes he wasn’t on. When it blew up he officially cut ties and condemned the comments.
To me, asking a question in the form “Isn’t Mike Nelson a Trumper?” implies that he is. Whereas asking “Is Mike Nelson a Trumper?” implies nothing and is much more neutral.
I knew he is (or was?) a Conservative Evangelical and a Republican so yes my question was posed with the assumption that the answer was yes (not unreasonable) but I was looking for confirmation.
$1,100,000 of the original goal of $20,000. I think that is 5500%, isn’t it?