Red Letter Media

[ddlloo]

I just rewatched the Plinkett review of Star Trek Generations. While it's odd to watch the early stuff without all the Plinkett lore and expected music cues, it's also refreshing to see him simply focus on the movie at hand.

His TNG movie reviews came before the Star Wars prequels, which is odd to think about too.

I actually quite like his Star Trek reviews, ngl. The 'irl' plinkett stuff in the Star Wars reviews is cool, but to be honest it's pretty boring after the first watch, unlike the actual review segments.

And I hope I don't catch much hate for this, but my favorite plinkett review is actually Baby's Day Out.

 

[KrewlKween]

Wow, calling Plinkett badly edited is not what I'd've expected.

I wouldn't call Plinkett badly edited at all, but certainly aged and maybe a little sloppy in parts. Overall Mike's edits have good comedic timing and they're "smart", but he's a sloppy editor compared to Jay. In Mike edited episodes I notice little errors that I can't recall seeing in episodes where Jay handles it. Example can be seen in the latest TNG vid at 15 seconds. Mike accidentally paused a clip he cut to while editing instead of having it play so it stayed static on his face.

But like, who cares? Being sloppy is forgivable if everything else is well done and it is.

 

[Mola Ram]

Example can be seen in the latest TNG vid at 15 seconds. Mike accidentally paused a clip he cut to while editing instead of having it play so it stayed static on his face.

I'm like 90% sure that is not accidental at all. They frequently throw in embarrassing freeze frames like that in most of their shows.

 

[KrewlKween]

That's usually Mike doing it to Rich exclusively though. And with some sort of context that would make it make sense to be like "look at this dumb face". This hit more like an error to me.

 

[fuckthisshit]

Are you serious lol, this is Mike's editing shtick..

 

[KrewlKween]

Mike's always been the experimental one, I'll give him that.

 

[Megaroad 2012]

That's usually Mike doing it to Rich exclusively though. And with some sort of context that would make it make sense to be like "look at this dumb face". This hit more like an error to me.

Are you retarded?

 

[Dom Cruise]

And I hope I don't catch much hate for this, but my favorite plinkett review is actually Baby's Day Out.

That was the first Red Letter Media video I ever saw as a matter of fact, although I heard about the Phantom Menace review when it first came out in 2009 thanks to a Ain't It Cool News article on it, I didn't actually watch it given the intimidating length, but I did think "huh, that looks interesting"

But then I somewhat forgot about RLM until 2010 when looking up Baby's Day Out on imdb, I clicked the "external reviews" link and there was RLM's video on it, right away I recognized it as the "Phantom Menace review" site and decided to watch the Baby's Day Out review to "test the waters" and from there I was hooked and proceeded to watch all the other Plinkett reviews.

It's in hindsight quite serendipitous that I managed to discover their videos just before Half in The Bag, I remember when RLM was mysterious and you didn't know who exactly was behind the site and what they looked like, it was just this funny disembodied voice talking about movies.

But I sometimes have a talent for discovering these web videos not when they first start off, but before many people do, I first saw the Angry Video Game Nerd in 2006, after a handful of his videos but before his Friday The 13th review, which I think is when he first really hit it big, I also first saw Chocolate Rain just before it really went viral (and knew as soon as I saw it that it was going to go viral)

Anyway, what's everyone else's story on when and how you discovered Red Letter Media?

 

[Megaroad 2012]

Anyway, what's everyone else's story on when and how you discovered Red Letter Media?

I saw some Prometheus video where they questioned everything and was like, "who are these two gay plumbers and why is their house so gross?"

Wound up watching exclusively HitB for awhile until finally watching Plinkett.

 

[Mola Ram]

Anyway, what's everyone else's story on when and how you discovered Red Letter Media?

Like most people, I got sucked in by the Plinkett review of The Phantom Menace. It was a revelation, in that it tore apart the movie on completely different grounds than people had shit on it for since 1999 (I was heartily sick of whining about Jar-Jar and midichlorians) and explained why it didn't work as a film. You'll see a lot of people on social media pissing on RLM these days about how great the prequels really were, and while I'd agree they're certainly not the disaster the Disney crap is, that argument really elides how disappointed the majority was even when they were new, and what insight the Plinkett reviews brought to the argument.

After that, I started trawling through their stuff and found the TNG reviews, which in a way were even more interesting. "Star Trek Generations is the stupidest movie ever made" wore a groove in my brain.

 

[feral cat #6385]

I saw some Prometheus video where they questioned everything and was like, "who are these two gay plumbers and why is their house so gross?"

Wound up watching exclusively HitB for awhile until finally watching Plinkett.

Yea that's how I found them too. Two drunk guys ripping apart Prometheus. Was enough to get me to subscribe.

Eventually I branched out and watched Best of the Worst.

 

[mandatorylurk]

I found them with the original Phantom Menace review on their site when it came out and made that first wave. And I was one of those people who were kind of annoyed they were doing Half In the Bag instead of more Plinkett, but looking back now it was more because those original HITB episodes were way too short and they didn't feel confident in giving their opinions and relied too much on the VHS setup. I think it was around the Troll 2 episode where they finally won me over on the premise and from there they did Best of the Worst and Plinkett felt more of an afterthought, at this point I'd like more commentaries than Plinketts.

 

[Neuromantic]

Mike constantly talking about Trek might make me finally watch everything from beginning to end.
Probably my biggest gap in Scifi stuff. That and Babylon 5.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Like most people, I got sucked in by the Plinkett review of The Phantom Menace. It was a revelation, in that it tore apart the movie on completely different grounds than people had shit on it for since 1999 (I was heartily sick of whining about Jar-Jar and midichlorians) and explained why it didn't work as a film. You'll see a lot of people on social media pissing on RLM these days about how great the prequels really were, and while I'd agree they're certainly not the disaster the Disney crap is, that argument really elides how disappointed the majority was even when they were new, and what insight the Plinkett reviews brought to the argument.

After that, I started trawling through their stuff and found the TNG reviews, which in a way were even more interesting. "Star Trek Generations is the stupidest movie ever made" wore a groove in my brain.

I wonder if there's anyone who was somehow there from the start of the TNG reviews? That'd be some real bragging rights.

It's weird when things go back farther than most people were paying attention to something, like on a side note I can claim that I heard of The Room before most people, it was in 2008, before Adult Swim's April Fools airing of the movie in 2009 which is when it first entered on most people's radar and it was also thanks to Ain't It Cool News, someone in the comments just threw that title out there and I looked it up on imdb and just saw the poster with Tommy Wiseau's weird face and thought "what the fuck is this?" but I didn't research it any further like looking for clips on Youtube, which I really regret, I could have been way ahead of the curve on quoting "You're tearing me apart, Lisa!" and "hahaha, what a story, Mark!"

I found them with the original Phantom Menace review on their site when it came out and made that first wave. And I was one of those people who were kind of annoyed they were doing Half In the Bag instead of more Plinkett, but looking back now it was more because those original HITB episodes were way too short and they didn't feel confident in giving their opinions and relied too much on the VHS setup. I think it was around the Troll 2 episode where they finally won me over on the premise and from there they did Best of the Worst and Plinkett felt more of an afterthought, at this point I'd like more commentaries than Plinketts.

Since I had only discovered them less than a year prior I wasn't married to the Plinkett reviews, I did think it was weird when suddenly they started doing Half In the Bag, but I wasn't annoyed, I enjoyed Half In the Bag right from the start*

*save for their awful review of Sucker Punch, but I can let that slide, that was only like their second or third episode.

 

[Megaroad 2012]

Mike constantly talking about Trek might make me finally watch everything from beginning to end.
Probably my biggest gap in Scifi stuff. That and Babylon 5.

They have a Star Trek VHS movie set that I had as a kid. I never watched it because I assumed it was stupid boomer shit.

Flash forward to 2013, summer break in college and I finally decide to watch Wrath of Khan because Mike wont STFU about Star Trek. Next thing you know, power watching OG series.

Fucking wish I still had that box set afterwards now, to say the least.

As an aside, probably because I grew to love OG Trek and would rewatch it, TNG took a bit to get into. Doesn't help I only ever saw season 1 and 2 stuff.

 

[Neuromantic]

As an aside, probably because I grew to love OG Trek and would rewatch it, TNG took a bit to get into. Doesn't help I only ever saw season 1 and 2 stuff.

A friend of mine is always telling me to ignore this and skip that. (Mostly OG and the first two seasons of TNG.)
But I'm one of those people that has to watch everything. Might be some slight autistic OCD. But if I finally start with ST it's gonna be with OG, all the way through.

 

[Flexo]

You spergs can come over to the trek thread.

We go over watch advice about... every 5 pages so we're due.

 

[Megaroad 2012]

A friend of mine is always telling me to ignore this and skip that. (Mostly OG and the first two seasons of TNG.)
But I'm one of those people that has to watch everything. Might be some slight autistic OCD. But if I finally start with ST it's gonna be with OG, all the way through.

OG is just great pulp scifi. I love good writing delivered by quality actors, and even dumb episodes like Gorn has some good themes in them.

TNG has Mary Sue Wesley Crusher and right off the bat they rip off an early episode of the original show.

The autistic part on my end was "why is this a space hotel?" with the interiors and families aboard. Like, I get Gene's idea but it's a military ship and you see it get fucked with deaths by the dozens.

Voyager is a guilty pleasure because Janeway is a lunatic who will flip between Starfleet protocol or outright genocide, and Picardo is the best exploration of humanity character. And Seven's enterance was metal as fuck for Star Trek.

I still need to get to DS9 and Enterprise. 9 sounds cool and I hear Enterprise got really great and then canned.

 

[L50LasPak]

It's funny to me Mike still holds that one big break review as his crowning achievement, but the current fans probably don't agree. And while it was big online a decade ago, it wasn't even big enough to fill a screening room. It was just "some guy made funny thing". Literally no one cared WHO made it. RLM YT and twitter bios both read "RLM is responsible for the 70 minute Phantom Menace review as well as Space Cop, Half in the Bag, and Best of the Worst". He still sees it as a big enough thing to mention first. If you asked anyone who happened to know what RLM was what they're "known for" 10 years ago they would have said Mr. Plinkett and/or that specific review, not any of their films or Mike's other projects. Ask them today and you'll likely not hear Plinkett reviews mentioned at all. There are probably fans who have never even watched them. I'm not saying those reviews are irrelevant because they're not, but they've evolved so far beyond it.

I often forget about Plinkett to be honest, these days Plinkett is probably the thing they're known for the least, it's easily been eclipsed by Half in The Bag and Best of The Worst.

This is completely alien to me for reasons I'll get into below.

I wonder if there's anyone who was somehow there from the start of the TNG reviews? That'd be some real bragging rights.

Me. Well, kind of. I wasn't there at the very start, but for the longest time I only knew of RLM because I picked up their reviews in the Related Videos while I was pulling up Star Trek clips on Youtube. The Plinkett Phantom Menace review got reccomended to me first and I think I watched about half of it before I got kind of bored by it at the time. I can't remember off the top of my head, but I was either watching AVGN or SFDebris and that's when they came up in the reccomendations for Star Trek stuff. I was like "Oh, these guys did the TNG movies too?" and from there I was hooked. This was circa 2010 I'd say.

Honestly the main reasons I latched on to them at first was because I was a dipshit in high school who really liked Star Trek, wasn't a big Star Wars fan and basically nobody else gave a flying fuck about what I had to say about either franchise. So for me the draw was these nerds talking about SF only I had really strong opinions on in my social circle. I also loved their Avatar review because I thought that movie was stupid. Many times during game nights with friends I'd flip on an RLM review while we stopped to eat for the evening or something as background noise since I wasn't a TV guy.

I probably ignored HitB and Best of the Worst until maybe 2015-2016 or so, with one exception: I remember I tuned in for the Into Darkness Review when it was fresh in my reccomendations (so 2013ish) and had no idea who the hell Rich was.

As much as I like Half in the Bag and Best of the Worst today I'm kind of shocked that the Plinkett reviews sailed out of public perception so quickly. I feel like the RLM crew will never admit it but they probably think the Plinkett reviews are overrated. They've also been heavily crticized for the edgy humor and stuff which, in retrospect, is actually quite distracting from the reviews themselves even if I still get a chuckle at it ("GET OUTTA MY POPCORN TUB!"). I'd be interested to see them do like a 20 minute documentary/retrospective on the Plinkett Reviews since its been so long since they first got popular, but I think they don't really want to talk about it and would rather stay with their current lineup.

 

[Flexo]

As much as I like Half in the Bag and Best of the Worst today I'm kind of shocked that the Plinkett reviews sailed out of public perception so quickly. I feel like the RLM crew will never admit it but they probably think the Plinkett reviews are overrated. They've also been heavily crticized for the edgy humor and stuff which, in retrospect, is actually quite distracting from the reviews themselves even if I still get a chuckle at it ("GET OUTTA MY POPCORN TUB!"). I'd be interested to see them do like a 20 minute documentary/retrospective on the Plinkett Reviews since its been so long since they first got popular, but I think they don't really want to talk about it and would rather stay with their current lineup.

Plinkett reviews the plinkett reviews.

Internet implodes.