A brief explanation of Nick Nolte. . . He was a pretty big movie star in the 1980s, probably best known for megahit "48 Hours" with Eddie Murphy. He's had substance abuse issues his whole life, which damaged his career enough that he more or less disappeared by the end of the 1990s-- not that he ever stopped acting, but he was in very low-tier stuff. And he's one of the unfortunate guys who aged terribly, and quickly, from alcohol and drug use. So Nolte just became, somewhat randomly, Rifftrax's go-to guy when there's a dissipated or decrepit or drunk character to riff. Probably helped to make it a running gag that Mike does a funny voice impression of him. They could have used any actor whose career or life was (nearly) ruined by substance abuse. Like, say, Mickey Rourke (though if you don't know who Nolte is, you probably don't know who Mickey Rourke is, either!) That's really all the "lore" behind the constant Nolte references that you need to know! (Fwiw, Nolte did a guest shot on "Poker Face" a couple of years ago, and he was great in it. Haggard, yes, but great. So the running Rifftrax gag isn't what I'd call entirely "fair", making it seem like the guy lives in a garbage dumpster. . . )
So happy to see a long form, in depth RU-vid video on Rifftrax-- finally! I've long wondered why no one has done this before, Rifftrax has been around forever but all I could ever find were fairly superficial "Top Ten"-type videos till now. Gotta shout out your choice of FTL music for the opening. . .. FTL just happens to be my favorite game of all time. :) This was a wonderful video. (I also really loved your video on the Netflix MST3k seasons, btw, which is what caused me to sub and get a notification for this new video right away!)
@@SardonicSays Sam and Max, too. ;) Seems we share a lot of likes. . . I haven't watched every Rifftrax, of course, but I have bought and/or acquired about 300 movies and 300 shorts, so I've spent a good chunk of money over the years. At their best, they're every bit as great as MST3k was at its best. Maybe a little more inconsistent. But the Rifftrax versions of "The Room", "Birdemic", and for my money, "A Talking Cat!?!" are among the funniest things I've ever seen. Not to mention that the Rifftrax guys somehow managed to get me to watch the entire "Twilight" saga-- MULTIPLE times. "Line. . . ?" I look forward (I hope) to more MST3k/Rifftrax type videos from you in the future if that's what you have in mind!
I love the Bridget and MJ riffs, they have a mild kind of "mean girls" quality to some of them (especially towards Watson in the Sherlock Holmes movies lmao), although I also love the times when they actually seem to be getting into the movie, like Beyond Christmas. Lady Mobster is one of my favorites too, partially because my parents were big All My Children fans, so Susan Lucci was a familiar face in our house.
You may think the views/subs on Rifftrax is low, but MST3K has always been niche, had low ratings... it's probably super successful for an MST3K based entity.
Great work. One thing though, "problematic" usually just means funny. Early rifftrax was a magical time; asking whether you should remove media is abhorrent, especially ones featuring poor lowtax.
My impression is that Rifftrax fans tend to be older and mostly people who were already fans, or at least aware, of MST3K. And this style of sarcastic humor just might not appeal to a broad audience. I had to give up trying to get my friends into it, because they didn't really get the point of talking over the movies, even as a joke.
@SardonicSays thankfully this is one of the least toxic fandoms out there and the online community is decent. I've made some riffing groups on FB too. The origina idea was to kind of revive the old "Caption This" MST3K game from the SciFi Channel website, except each group has a theme. MSTKitchen, MST3Karaoke, etc.
