A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far way, the final chapter in an epic saga was complete. But enough about the final episode of "The OC". Instead, let's talk about the Return of the Jedi. A movie where Jedi use rocks instead of lightabers. Where cute little teddy bears wage war on a huge military force. Where a planet-killing battle station crew takes their orders from a senile old man with a horrible skin condition. Where galactic crime-lords have nice little sleepovers while anyone can just waltz in unannounced.
The Harass Bastards put the "special" in Special Edition as they embark on the monumental harass of Return of the Jedi. Prepare for greasy slugs, a smirking Harrison Ford, a lucid Carrie Fisher, and a comatose Mark Hamill.
NOTE: This track was done using the Special Edition cut of ROTJ. So scream in Nerd Rage as you see Hayden's smirking maw in spectral form!!
Comments
This riff track starts off with one minor but significant technical issue. They combined an intro of music to the riff track, and then normalized the sound for the whole track. The problem is that the initial music was recorded much louder than the riff itself was, and thus the riff track ends up much too quiet. I have a program called "Fission" that I bought for my computer (MacOS), and I used that to increase the loudness of the entire riff (except for the intro). This made the riff track much easier to listen to. ___p___
There is also some kind of oddity where it sounds like the three riffers have somewhat different setups for recording. I'd almost think that one of them was on some kind of speaker phone. This bothered me less after I had modified the track so all three of them were louder. ___p___
This is another riff track which is listed as "explicit content", and much of the conversation of the entire riff falls into that category. Some of the riff lines are funny, while other parts didn't do much for me. I think the group needed to do a bit more preparation before going into this, as there were some points were they'd start some riff, and then not have a good ending for it. All-in-all it isn't too bad of a riff track, but it seemed to me that this movie should have triggered something more.
Did a great job with this Riff. Very funny. Great job guys. Except for Sideswipe he sucks and is a giant military dork.
The entire riff is improved but still hilarious
Sides is not a giant military dork
Unsurprisingly, I found this RIFF to be less interesting than the official Rifftrax content available on this site, for other movies. At times they induced a chuckle out of me, but otherwise I found their commentary annoying, and turned it way down so that I could enjoy the film. I hope Mike and friends do this movie sometime in the future.
This riff track is by far not living up to such a classic as this movie is. It's horrible to hear the "riffers" laugh at their own one-liners probably due to the fact that no one else is. Watch the sample and listen to the great line about Lei in disguise playing hide and seek... its horrible. The few remarks that may produce a chuckle or two do not make this worth downloading. Mike, Bill, and Kevin need to offer their own recording to complete the original movie trilogy. Hear me Mike? PLEASE?
GaranceDrosehn said:
"I'd almost think that one of them was on some kind of speaker phone."
I'm pretty sure this whole riff was recorded during a Skype conference call, or with the use of some sort of internet voice chat service. Someone has their speakers turned up and it triggers their microphone, so you get certain lines echoing.
I agree also that it is very annoying to hear the riffers laughing at their own jokes, and I believe due to the lag of the voice chat they are using, you get some laughter before the lines are even audible.
[edit]
About the commentary being too quiet -- it definitely is. I had to turn up the mp3 on VLC to 200% volume, and turn up the preamp to 20dB, AND turn the movie volume down to 20%, to be able to hear the riffing properly. This, to me, is another indication of the fact that this group has little to no practice -- they didn't even bother watching the movie with their own riff before releasing it.
[/edit]
The riffs aren't very funny, to me. They just aren't subtle when compared to a real rifftrax commentary, and most of it doesn't even sound like it was written. It sounds more like they just outlined what they wanted to joke about, and tried to ad-lib it. The result is a lot of tripping over lines, and jokes just kind of petering out and ending without having been funny. It basically makes me feel like I'm watching the movie with a few guys that I don't particularly consider my friends. What makes this feeling worse, I think, are the personal insults and digs towards each other that the commentators make. Ha, ha, your mom's fat, So-and-so. That's great, but I don't care! I don't know So-and-so, and if I did, a "yo momma joke" about him probably wouldn't be funny to me anyways.
I am not particularly politically biased towards either the Democrat or Republican parties, but I found the comparison between the Emperor and John McKane to be a bit tasteless.
I guess that sums up most of my feelings about this riff. Tasteless. And not in a funny way.
Overall, this seems like a very amateur riff. I know that these guys don't have the resources or experience of Mike, Kevin, and Bill, but this really seems like it was the "Harass Bastards' " first attempt at a riff. Or, more specifically, their first run of their first attempt. No effort was made to do ADR for any lines, so the end product is just a solid, flawed, one-shot run-through.
It was only $0.99 USD, but still, I don't find it to be worth it.
A movie like this really deserves the attention of the "real" riffers!
Mike, Kevin, Bill, I beg you!