Eastern half of the country folks–the west coast will be seeing this on tape delay so keep spoilers to a minimum until a little later tonight, okay?
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RiffTrax Live: What Did You Think?An open thread for your thoughts about tonight’s show.
138 Replies to “RiffTrax Live: What Did You Think?”Commenting at Satellite News
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Down here Orlando way the theater we went to sold out and they opened a second theater across the hall for more folk. My contributor’s t-shirt is excellent and I wore it proudly. The event itself was hilarious, filled with both general laughs and excellent references, too! Too bad there’s no DVD coming, because, it would be destined to be a classic. The sound level issues weren’t really bothersome. The guys didn’t riff a lot during the loudest (and longest) scenes of mayhem, and only a few bits of humor were lost.
My only complaint? The credits left out an entire level of contributor’s names. I mean, we were promised…
AMC 24 in Westminster, CO was declared sold out. Had a friend and overheard another group who couldn’t get in.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’d say this was easily their best live show yet. There were some audio ducking problems, but just like any show, there’s another riff coming right behind it so what’s the harm? Personally, this also suffered just a little bit from being so darn long. Shades of Birdemic there…
I might even go see the replay, I had that great a time!
I have to say that was the best show yet…I didn’t know how good it would be, but I’m still aching from laughing. This was also the first packed house, not one seat available, in Lynnwood, Washington!
So many good riffs…
Saw it Norman, Ok. Was really hoping for a new Norman short, but oh well. So, was there not a goodies page code? We left during the end credits, so I’m wondering if they waited till the very end to show it, or if there just wasn’t one this time. ?!?
Great riff, but was kind of disappointing for a live show. No guests. No Shorts. Just “Here’s the movie, have a nice night”. Would have gotten the same experience with the DVD and the .mp3 file.
I’m guessing that there were no shorts because the movie was long enough on its own… Adding another 20 minutes to the show probably would have been too much… Night of the Living Dead is only an hour and a half (as opposed to over two hours for ST), so my guess is that there will be some shorts next time.
And have they stopped doing digital goodies? Or did I miss the URL this time?
It’s so much more fun watching one of these with a receptive audience.
Also: RICO!
Springfield, Oregon. The theater was about 95% full, which is the most crowded Rifftrax showing I’ve been to. As mentioned before, it was a struggle to hear the guys sometimes over all the audio carnage, but it was still a riot. I’m really glad they were able to splurge for something that wasn’t public domain and I hope they do it again. I was a little annoyed that felt the need to cut away from the nudity. It’s already an R-rated movie and I’m pretty sure most of us have seen something naked before. It just comes across as squeamish, but maybe that’s just me…
I remember it being pretty stupid when I saw it originally and was curious to see if I missed any incisive satire the first time around, but nope. Just as dumb now.
Thanks for a really fun evening, guys. I’ll be back in October.
Favorite riff: “Matt Dillon and Neve Campbell.”
San Diego was packed and packed early. The doors opened at 7:30 and my 7:35 3/4 of the theater was full.
Not a sold out house, but I am glad I got my tickets early.
Same sound problem here also. Could not hear a good number of riffs as their volume and the movie volume were the same.
No other drop outs or glitches.
Odd that they censored the “nudity” (creatively BTW) but kept the language. Never quite understood that even on television.
I guess the Kickstarter program meant that we felt more vested in this program than earlier ones.
Had to leave before the end credits finished. Any “free downloads? Usually they announce the web-link as they walk off stage.
Good show. Just sorry they can’t do a VOD of it. They should at least post the pre-movie slides. Always a great source of entertainment.
Fav riff: The Mike Nelson Wedding vows.
“You’re it until you’re dead, or I find someone better.”
Great show. Theater in Palatine, IL (Deer Park 16) was half capacity. Although the work around for the nudity was cute…really, guys? The nudity is worse than people being ripped to pieces? Since when was any child ever traumatized by breasts and/or genitals (qualifier: not belonging to their parents)? And they warned everyone ahead of time: R-rated film w/ excessive violence and nudity. So if you brought children to the event, you were warned. On the bright side, when they release the MP3 of ST, they’ll have to address it. They can’t send a gorilla-gram to make you avert your eyes.
No, you guys didn’t miss any digital goodies this time.
I thought it was hilarious, and the fact that it’ll get rebroadcast is a nice touch.
Packed at the Century Theater in San Francisco; in fact, it got a little hot in there. Brought my brother, who has seen the movie before, and he loved it. The Airplane! reference was hilarious.
Hi all! There were 2 theaters in Mesa, AZ showing it and when we got to the AMC on Stapley and the freeway the ticket seller said they were sold out. Luckily I bought our tickets ahead of time. My brother, who’s been with me to a couple RT events, claims Starship Troopers is one of his all-time favs but sadly he couldn’t make it. But screw him, we had a great time!! Sorry, Rick…
Reno was sold out! What a great night:). Cant wait for night of the living dead!
Something I forgot to mention in my opening post was how pleasantly surprised I was with the crowd that showed up. Not a sellout, but I’d say a fairly healthy crowd. Went in at 7pm, just in time to catch the tech testing, where they show bits from concerts and operas. Had a good time riffing on that stuff. The trivia slides were hilarious. The showing started on time. All in all, a very fun night.
Around ten people in my theater in Columbus, OH. Very funny show despite the lack of extras(pre-movie trivia slides, shorts, guest stars…).
Hmm. There were trivia slides in my theater.
Gorillagram! 90-95% full in Willow Knolls. A very good show and haven’t seen Starship Troopers in years. Plenty of dark humor in there, which I enjoy.
“I can’t believe it… We still have physical media hundreds of years in the future!”
“And Slippy Toad gets shot down immediately”
I was at the Niles, IL show. Typical 3/4 full turnout or so that the place has at these shows.
Thought the riffs were good, at least the ones you could hear that weren’t during the action scenes. Hopefully they could remix the audio when they release the show digitally/on video.
I gotta say that not having the digital goodies at the end left me a bit disappointed. It left a bad taste in my mouth since they decided not to do it for the show they raised money for using Kickstarter, making it seem like that you only got anything extra if you gave them money for it ahead of time.
But other than that gripe, the show was good and I can’t wait until October for the next one.
Springfield, Missouri was about 80% full. The same audio problems. I hated this movie when i came out, hate it now. It should not have been named after the book, besides being a huge piece of crap it has nothing to do with the book.
Believe me, you’re better off not seeing the shower scene, since you can see Jake Busey’s pubes in it, so any titillative benefit is destroyed by your eyeballs trying to crawl out of your head. Clydsedale!
AMC 20 livonia MI, Sold out crowd (next time i am going to another theater just for wiggle room). Everything was great though. I felt they were being a bit too nice in the riffing cause they know some of the folks, or should I say folks are a bit more hi-profile. Great non the less. Though I appreciated the first gorilla-gram and was a bit disappointed by what the second was blocking- I applaud the creative solution- and the equality among nude scenes.. not just a “we don’t like man ars but tits are fine.” Looking forward to NOTLD!
Too add to my earlier comment, it was a great show but I was disappointed there wasn’t more surprise ‘stuff’. I was really hoping for something totally unexpected. Turned out to be, more or less, the same old show. Very good, still far better than what you’d get just going to a movie, but I had my hopes up this time (a little too much perhaps). I won’t even say what I was really hoping for as it’s just too crazy and never going to happen, but I will always have hope that someday …..
My wife and I saw it in Topeka, KS, where we have seen all the Live events. This is the first time that we had a few technical issues other than a brief dropout. If there was any audio during the preshow trivia slides, we did not get any of it. Usually there are at least some Rifftones songs going. In fact the show started with no audio, someone ran out and got them to start the audio feed just in time. Right after the introductions, the screen curtains moved in and another set of previews started showing over the Rifftrax feed. Some kind of ad for the new Simon Pegg movie. At least we were still getting the audio from what we were supposed to be seeing. Somewhat annoying but it was fixed by the time the movie started. It is just a sign that it seems like theater staff just doesn’t care. There were two or three fairly significant signal loss episodes early on that were annoying but that went away and things were fine the rest of the show. The theater was pretty close to full which is a good sign. I thought that the treatment of the movie was great. I know I missed several riffs due to either laughter to the movie overpowering them. I did have a great time despite the few problems. I am disappointed that we won’t get a DVD of this one to catch up on what I missed but hopefully the one they are going to do will have the same riffs. Only bad thing is that in that format I will have to buy Starship Troopers for real. Oh well. It was a great show and I look forward to Night of the Living Dead.
I was also at the Topeka show – trailers for other films started playing (automatically, I assume) during the intro, and my husband was about to go try to find someone to ask about it when it stopped, but we did see one and a half trailers, so it went on for a while. But for a moment, Vin Diesel’s face was superimposed onto Kevin’s, and it was hilarious. This didn’t happen during Birdemic (in the same theater) so I have to hope it was a one-time deal and not an indication of the theater not caring. The audience was bigger here than at Birdemic, I’d say about 85% full versus 70% at Birdemic. We were a little late and came in seconds after it started, and had very few seats to choose from by then.
The riffs were terrific, Rifftrax definitely brought their A-game. My only real complaint is that the movie ended so abruptly, it was jarring and confusing, though I know they wanted to save the credits for later to go along with the Kickstarter credits.
Great turn out -probably 95%- at the Majestic in Brookfield, WI. The Airplane riff made me actually hunch over laughing. They really were firing on all cylinders.
During the opening joke cards there was one about Heinlein being the Dean of Science Fiction. I don’t remember the actual joke but there were a group of teenagers behind me that thought it was a Futurama reference (“Robot Hooouuussseee”). For half a second I was sad that they didn’t realize it wasn’t, but then realized that it’s actually a more than fair trade off.
I loved the show and had a great time, but the item I found most fascinating about the presentation was the stunt to avoid showing the movie’s infamous shower scene and it’s one, very brief, sex scene. Now, there’s nothing really untoward about either scene — just a bunch of naked people of both genders in the shower (engaging in very non-sexual behavior) and little more than your usual full frontal nudity in the sex scene. Compare that to the countless scenes of heads getting blown off, human bodies literally being ripped to pieces by massive insects, pincers and other insectoid appendages impaling human (some of them through the brain) and other elements of gore too numerous to completely list.
Yet, the naked people were edited out.
I will never understand this country’s almost frightening psychopathic/schizophrenic relationship with sex and violence.
My theater in Houston was almost packed. Probably the biggest audience pleasers were Mike’s wedding vows, the cry of RAID, and the AT&T still dropping calls in the future lines.
I’d never seen the film before, but the violence was so over the top comic book-like that I can’t imagine too many kids would be troubled by it. The really scary part was the presence of Jake Busey, crazed violinist.
This was my 4th “live” show, having previously been to Manos, Birdemic, and the repeat of Plan 9, and while this one didn’t reach Birdemic levels, I still thought it was great.
I’m really glad they seem to have phased out the whole “special guest” element. The guests usually aren’t very good (Weird Al being the 1 exception) and are generally more of a momentum killer than an enhancement to the overall viewing experience. (All just IMO of course.)
But I did miss having a short before the main feature. I guess it was due to the film’s length. Hopefully there will be one during October’s show. Surely there’s a 3rd Norman short out there somewhere, which is a scary enough concept that it would fit with Night of the Living Dead.
Awesome turn out down in Savannah, GA. I’ve long been an MST3K fan but this was the first RiffTrax Live I have been able to make it to. I was actually shocked to see so many people there considering our humble surroundings. The riffs were hilarious. I especially liked when the soldier gets his head cut off during the ambush on P and Mike yelled out “Promise me you won’t dribble my head!” All in all a great experience!
Lakeland, Florida was about 70% full, the best turnout I’ve seen. Loved the show, missed the usual short but understandable with the 2 hour run time. Noticed the audio everyone has commented on but was not much of a distraction. Best Rift was Mike’s wedding vows, the whole theatre broke out in applause on that one and at the end. A great night can’t wait for Night of the Living Dead.
I saw it in MD with my wife, son and some friends. Overall it was a great show. Pre-show trivia jokes were great as always. The volume on the movie was a bit too loud though and it interfered with hearing the Rifftrax jokes from Mike, Bill and Kevin. Usually they keep the volume on the film being riffed somewhat lower to make it easier to hear the jokes over it. Starship Troopers was so loud in parts it was a real struggle to hear the Rifftrax jokes at all. Also, I still don’t get the need to censor the brief nudity in a movie with dozens of severed heads and limbs, brains being sucked out, etc., that stuff is much more harmful for kids. Anyone too young to see a shower scene is too young for the violence in that movie and shouldn’t see it at all. Nevertheless, I’m hoping to make the encore showing on Sept. 12 too.
We saw it at Cinemark at Arundel Mills Mall and they were showing it at two theaters. Tickets sold out shortly before show time. These Rifftrax Live shows have gotten much more popular in our area over the past year. The first year or so the theater would be nearly empty, now it’s really important to get tickets early and to get there early to ensure good seating and sitting together with friends.
Entirely sold out at the Roseville Cailfornia theater,show was a home run,crowd was great!
Went to the Union Square show in NYC – although the screening was considered a sell-out in their largest theater (and they added another screening in a second smaller theater that ALSO sold out), there were still about a dozen open seats in the balcony. Maybe some folks just didn’t show up at the last minute? The main floor was packed, though. I’ve been to every NYC Rifftrax show so far & they almost always sell out, with the exception of the Christmas Shorts & Jack the Giant Killer shows.
As for the riff & the movie, I prefer their riffs of older, more obscure material or incredibly incompetent modern films. Starship Troopers was competent enough, but it was big, loud & dumb & actually a lot of fun on its own in its own dopey way – I probably still would have had a big dumb fun time had I seen it un-riffed, but the guys did a good job with what they had. We were right by a surround speaker that drowned out maybe 40% of the riffs during the noisier scenes – my one main gripe is that you’d think they would have figured out the mix before beaming it out. Mike, Kevin & Bill seemed to be primarily coming from the center channel while the film itself was an all-out assault from every other channel. If they were to do another riff of a loud modern movie, I’d suggest mixing their riffs into all the channels to make sure they’re audible. I didn’t go to be impressed by Starship Trooper’s bombastic sound design, I went to laugh at jokes. I’m looking forward to the in-studio MP3 just so I can hear all the riffs I missed that got a big reaction from the Nashville crowd.
But, all in all, another worthwhile Rifftrax live show. I was hoping for Super Mario Brothers, but still enjoyed their take on Starship Troopers more than I would have enjoyed seeing Twilight again. Not my favorite of the live shows, but that’s like saying my ice cream is “great but not the best ice cream I’ve ever eaten”.
I’m on the fence about Night of the Living Dead in October – I think it’s a legitimately good movie & haven’t been all that impressed with their riffs of Jaws, Alien & other good flicks, but I’ll probably go just because these shows are so much fun with a couple hundred other people. Now if we could just get Cinematic Titanic to not disband & start doing Fathom Events, too…
FAVORITE RIFF: (GIANT FLAMING “WAR!” TEXT APPEARS ONSCREEN) “Ah, Fox News’s most subtle graphic.”
I’ve never attended the encore RiffTrax showings (preferring to save my money for the eventual DVD/Blu-ray release), but I have to see this again! I had such a great time that I needed to watch an episode of MST3K (The Deadly Mantis) to avoid whiplash.
I laughed at everything mentioned so far, especially the Airplane! reference. No one has mentioned Mazzy Star inciting the prom fight (I had trouble hearing the exact riff, but I still laughed really hard.)
Question: Speaking of having trouble hearing a riff – What did Bill say when something hit the windshield of Denise Richards’ escape pod? It got a laugh from the people around me but I missed it.
Regal at the Fenway in Boston was sold out on 2 screens. IT WAS AWESOME!!! Up there with their best! I hope they keep working to get the DVD release rights for it (maybe team up with SHOUT who have a pretty good record of making the impossible possible). I always prefer the Live riffs over the studio (though both great) and I want to relive and share this experience.
Best Riff:
“You’ll be my Corporal ’til you die or I find someone better.”
Mike: “Ah, my Wedding Vows.”
@83 – Is that when he said “Ironically they have a bug on their windshield” or something like that?
Nearly sold-out theater at the Cinemark in Mission, KS. Where did all these people come from? I used to go to the earlier Rifftrax Lives, and it was only at one theater in all of Kansas City & maybe a dozen or so people besides me & my friends. And most of those other people didn’t seem to understand what was going on. Now it shows at 15+ theaters around KC, and each is packed with people who are actually fans (both MST3K & Rifftrax)! (and yet Cinematic Titanic STILL won’t come to KC…).
Yeah, they definitely needed to do some better sound mixing with these more modern movies, we missed a lot of riffs during louder scenes. I did get a kick out of the Captain Planet reference!
[Rock voice]FINALLY Rifftrax has come BACK to the AMC FORUM 30![/Rock voice] Good to be able to see this closer to home again, although I *do* rather like the theater in Oxford where we’ve seen the last several shows. AMC even put us in one of the larger auditoriums, and it was nearly full. Sorry Starship Poopers, but the R rating did NOT hurt business. The show was good, even though I missed a lot of riffs because of the sound issues. The framing was also off a bit. I hated the gorilla-gram nonsense. Anyone who can watch this level of blood and guts should be fine with a little T & A to go along with it. Best riffs (that I heard): Wedding vows, AT&T dropping calls, 80% move. Looking forward to NOTLD for Halloween!
@85 – mst3ktemple, It was shortly after that riff. Bill’s comment came after the battleship blew up. The space debris hitting the escape pod looked like a body, but it happened so fast I can’t be certain. I’ll have to catch it during the encore.
The thing that hit the window was a dead body.
Bill’s riff: “Can I hitch a ride?”
About 70 percent full at the Century Downtown 7 in Sacramento. What was incredible was the wide range of subjects the riffs were connected to, from voting in Chicago and Kafka to Fox News and Arena Football.
By the way, when the Gorilla Grams showed up to interrupt the shower scene, did anyone think “this is worse than floating blimps hiding bare breasts on the screen”? I think certain people know what I mean.
A question I forgot to ask earlier: during the pre-show title cards, they ran three Rifftones songs I recognized (“When a Man Loves a Shark”, “Sparkly Vampires” and “Reefer Boy”) and a couple I hadn’t heard before (including one about car chases). Are these other ones new?
The theater in Lubbock, TX was almost full. For whatever reason we did not get the pre-show trivia, which was a little disappointing. But, at least, we didn’t get kicked out 30 minutes in due to a supposed gas leak as happened when Jack the Giant Slayer played. Yeah, sound mix wasn’t so good in a few scenes but, from what I could make out, those jokes weren’t that great.
I miss the line from the 1998 Academy of Robots Choice Awards Preview Special during the bug carpet bombing. “The battlefield smells delicious, gentlemen. Now, drop the drawn butter.”
The only thing that wasn’t actually funny was the Gorilla Grams bit. Although it did the job of what they needed it for. Minor quibbles to an otherwise phenomenal show. I’ll probably go see it again on September 12th, hopefully with friends who could not make it this time.
All-in-all, it was the best Rifftrax Live experience so far.
I think I was the only one in the theater who laughed at the “Wow, she got a little aggressive with the eyebrow plucking” riff. Chortled loudly. Felt like an idiot. Fortunately, the film was very loud, so I think I had some cover.
@MSTieScott – Thank you!
@Kenneth Morgan – I was wondering the same thing. I checked the site last night to see if there were new MP3 tracks, but I only saw the previously available RiffTones album.
Giddy space pilot Denise Richards: “I’m ‘Jon’ Solo! He-he-he-he-he.”
I’m guessing that the new songs were some that Kevin did for the Kickstarter donors. The “Kilt” song was surprisingly elaborate, epic even!
Proof that MST3K/Rifftrax fans have a sense of humor: I live in Utah and one of the biggest laughs of the night came from the “Mormon extremists” segment.
Also kinda ironic given what happens in the 3rd movie.
At Birdemic the theater in Bristol Virginia was maybe half full. This time it was maybe 80%! Made me feel good.
@88 and 89 – yep, I remember that now. Thanks.
I wasn’t at the show last night, but here’s the DVD Talk review.
http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/61463/rifftrax-live-starship-troopers/
@96, I’m also in Utah and the audience I was with got a good kick out of that too, although personally it made me a bit uneasy for some reason. Perhaps because I missed hearing the “extremists” part, but still.