Holy Bat-Thoughts!

[Darth Geek]

Douglin, that was funny. He kind of looks like Mr. Incredible.

[Raven]

Max Headroom really didn't age all that well...

I wrote that line but I'd never seen that.  That's hilarious. 

[bratpop]

Wow, sounds like Max Headroom also invented internet bitching. Can we bring him back? And then kill him?

[Raven]

Wow, sounds like Max Headroom also invented internet bitching. Can we bring him back? And then kill him?

Well if that isn't the pot complaining about a kettle or however that one goes. 

[Minnesota]

Well, I watched this finally last night with 3 friends; none of us had seen the movie before, and one of them was a Rifftrax virgin.

The consensus? Hilarious. I announced that it was fan-written before we started and everyone was really impressed.

We didn't actually notice the latter riff-lack until I started mentioning that there were issues here about it; mostly by that time we were all savaging the movie ourselves, so it didn't matter that much.

Excellent job to all those involved, I think we converted a new fan with this one.

Truth

[SmilinJackRoss]

On a similar note, my regular rifftrax watching partner will be bringing over his his new girlfriend, a rifftrax virgin, to watch B&R on wednesday night.  Hopefully we will create another convert with her as well.

[Chaos]

If not, he's going to have to get a new girlfriend that is more receptive to the important things in life.

[Msampo]

I've decided to come out of lurkdom for this. I finally watched this one tonight. My thoughts:
• Overall my impression was positive. It was pretty funny. I laughed a lot. Cheers to the RiffRaff Theater guys and all the authors for their efforts.
• That said, I could definitely detect a difference in the tone of the material. With a riff done by the experts, it's like a journey. There's a beginning, a middle and an end. The riffers go through a process of learning about the movie they're watching (oftentimes learning about how bad the acting is, the directing, the script, etc.). There's a flow to a good riff. I think that's what a riff created in this manner lacks. It's as if you walked up to somebody on the street (a funny person, usually) showed them five to ten seconds of the movie and said "say something funny about that!" They do, and then you show the next ten seconds to another funny person, and so on. Each joke exists independently of every joke around it and has no relationship to the other comments. Sure there were a couple of running gags (I really liked the "You can't make a Batman joke while you're watching a Batman movie!" recurring bit, if only because any comment that had a relationship to any other comment was so welcome) but not many. This lends a detached feeling to the riff that's not there when the same individual or group is writing the riff.
• There were also a number of jokes that are typical of the amateur riffer, but which Team Mike seldom resort to. One is what I started calling  "Comic Book Store Guy jokes" as I was watching, because they began to take on the tone of that Simpsons character. Most of these are not so much jokes as they are smart-alecky plot-hole identifications. Example: "So, Robin is able to find the Robin-sign when Poison Ivy was unable to find the Bat-signal when it was right on top of the police station??" Team Mike will sometimes do this, but not NEARLY as often as it was done here. It was quite clear to me that several of the people who contributed to this riff had watched this movie many more times than is healthy.
• I counted at least two riffs lifted directly from MST3K. Obviously the editors can't be expected to have memorized every comment of 200 episodes (and I should add that Team Mike has occasionally reused lines from the old show), so I guess there's no way to avoid these creeping in. I'm just sayin'...
• There was also more of the sort of random-association pop culture references than we normally see in a regular Rifftrax riff. Some of these were very funny, I'll grant you, but you can overdo it and I think the mix was a little heavy with this.
• Oh, and as far as the dead spots went, I only noticed one really deadly one of about 45 seconds, and yes, I did walk over to the computer to see if the track had paused or something. But in general I thought the density level was fine.
Those are my my two cents. Take them with however many grains of salt you wish.

[Chaos]

Msampo,

Thanks for your comments! I'm too tired to think clearly and type out a response to you tonight, but I definitely want to address what you've said. I'll respond more fully tomorrow. We appreciate your feedback.

[bratpop]

I don't agree about the tone. In fact I was rewatching Harry Potter (Rifftrax) and I thought for the first half anyway, a lot of the jokes sounded like they could have been written by the fans. Plus there's something very "scripted" about the way they... well, read the scripts, sometimes. I don't think they read B&R any different than their own stuff.

I don't really LOVE their running jokes anyway, like the Elton John thing in the SWHS. It's okay, but it feels forced. Not half as forced as the "skits" though like "Count Dooky." Besides, I don't feel like riffing is ever random. It's comments on the movie, which is occuring in front of you. That's the context and that decides the flow. Rarely are too many jokes connected.

Most of these are not so much jokes as they are smart-alecky plot-hole identifications. Example: "So, Robin is able to find the Robin-sign when Poison Ivy was unable to find the Bat-signal when it was right on top of the police station??"

Thanks, that was mine. JJJJJJERK. I try not to point out plot holes unless they're not too obvious, or just so stupid that I'd be disappointed if it wasn't mentioned (this is my biggest pet peeve with official Rifftrax). I would never point out, "his pencil's gone... now it's back" which they even did on MST3k. But it's just funny to me that Ivy had to hatch an evil scheme to find the very bright light that she then used as a lure. I got a lot of "So... *plot hole*" riffs rejected, but I just couldn't think of a funnier way to point them out rather than just point them out. It's not nerdy, because I don't care. It's a stupid movie. But I agree too many is annoying. If there happened to be too many, it's because we didn't have Mike to go "NO" when we were writing, so they pop up randomly. I learned a lot of other things as well, like if I ever ask a question, it's better to think of a funny answer instead. Like the bit about Freeze's dozens of cameras around the house. To be fair, watching years of MST3k where they only had a week to riff something, has let a lot of unrefined riffing styles seep into my brain. Rifftrax certainly isn't more sophisticated, but it is a little more polished. That's something only the luckiest of us can hope to rip off... I mean emulate.

I do try to think about riffs before committing to them, and I only take issue with a few that made it in. Overall I didn't think about whether there were "too many" of something, just whether it's funny or not. To me, the Battlefield Earth reference... eh, not so funny. The tilted hallway reference... funny. But I do the same thing with the regular Rifftrax. And honestly, not a lot of their jokes cause me to laugh. Yet... their voices... soothing... must buy more Rifftrax!

It was quite clear to me that several of the people who contributed to this riff had watched this movie many more times than is healthy.

Actually I didn't watch it before I riffed it. I think the plot stupidities in this movie are just REALLY obvious. However, there's a brain numbing quality that causes you not to notice, or want to think about the movie at all.

I counted at least two riffs lifted directly from MST3K.

That's just payback for all the Schnappi jokes.

[ChrisHanel]

Let's all thank bratpop for sharing his pain with us.

Thank you, bratpop.

[Raven]

To me, the Battlefield Earth reference... eh, not so funny. The tilted hallway reference... funny.

Well I wrote both of them.  The wording on the titled hallway was a little different and I'm sure I wasn't the only one who said something along the same lines. 

So I guess I'm saying, you're a JJJJJJJEEERRRRRRKKKK and then thanks for the compliment. 

[RoninFox]

I've loved watching this both times I've seen it so far, I can't stop myself from giggling uncontrollably when I hear one of my own lines, and as I've said before the only thing I didn't like were the gaps...but I understand them.  I know there were a few times when I was watching toward the end when I was wondering why something didn't make it into the final cut, and went as far as to say "I know I had a line for that" then I would try and think what it was, and most of the time I couldn't remember exactly.  Came to the conclusion that a lot of people were putting in filler that didn't quite match the quality of the rest of the riff, and I had ended up doing the same.  By the time I was riffing the last half hour of the movie my brain was turning to mush and I ended up doing almost a Da Vinci sleep pattern over the last day to get it done (Sleep for a couple hours, wake up and riff, sleep for another hour or two, wake up, eat something and riff, sleep, etc.) and I don't think that helped matters at all, no matter what it did for the sake of the Mona Lisa.

Still this will go down as one of my most watched Rifftrax in my personal collection, I'm sure.  It was a truly bizarre and wonderful experience to hear my material coming from the mouths of some of my favorite comic minds and hearing everyone elses jokes ranged from "HA!  He was thinking the same way I was" to "Holy crap, why didn't I think of that" and never let me down on the funny.

Lets do it again!...perhaps on something not comic book related though.

[Rattrap007]

I finally got my Batman set in the mail. I had bought just the B&R DVD. Spent $20. Never opened it. Debated on it for a few days and returned it and ordered a Batman Anthology set from Deep Discount DVD. I figured Why blow $20 on the steaming pile of poo just for a rifftrax when I can get 3 other Batman films (1 Really good one and two decent ones) for only $30 more.

Overall this was a great rifftrax. The dead air was noticable, but we got some very funny people here. Kudos to you all who got jokes published in the trax.