Alternate DVD Commentary

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Apparently, Mystery Science Theater 3000 is really popular. With the advent of the DVD Commentary, many, many groups have sprung up to offer their insight onto some of the movies they love, or hate, or love to hate, or hate to love. Some do it much like the original... snarky commentary on bad movies. Some take their favorite movies and add snarky commentary. And some even do snarky commentary on television shows. Whatever the reason, they provide commentaries for your download and enjoyment.

Examples of Alternate DVD Commentary include:


  • Riff Trax (created by Mystery Science Theater 3000's Mike Nelson and co-starring fellow Mystery Science Theater 3000 alumni Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, with guest riffers including Mary Jo Pehl [before Cinematic Titanic], Bridget Nelson and occasional celebrities) focuses on newer films and sells mp3s on iTunes and elsewhere to be played alongside the movie.
    • The Rifftrax site also offers Mike Nelson's solo commentary tracks synced to several public domain movies. The commentaries feature information about the films involved combined with riffing. Eventually the full Rifftrax team made complete riffs for the same movies.
  • Cinematic Titanic (created by Mystery Science Theater 3000's Joel Hodgson and Mystery Science Theater 3000 alumni Trace Beaulieu, J. Elvis Weinstein, Frank Conniff and Mary Jo Pehl) does this in live shows, however DVDs are available.
  • Film Pigs
  • The Spoilers
  • Sharecrow, a program that synchs up alternate commentaries to your DVD.
  • Zarban.com, a database of Alternate DVD Commentaries. Most of the individual commentating groups on this page are linked to by Zarban, including many fan-submitted Rifftrax (you still have to pay for them).
  • "Wizard People, Dear Reader!" for Harry Potter.
  • Hey, Want To Watch A Movie? By a rotating group of podcasters and PodioBook authors.
  • Down In Front, a podcast which has less to do with snark and more to do with intelligent conversation about whatever film is the subject of that particular week, along with plenty of laughs and tidbits along the way. The creators and hosts are big fans of TV Tropes, and reference various tropes on nearly every episode.
  • A regular event at the Transformers convention Botcon is MSTF, where a trio of Big Name Fans riff on old Transformers episodes.
  • Speaking of Fan Conventions, most anime conventions have the "Bad Anime, Bad!" Panel where a few guests (and the entire audience) team up to rip the worst animation Japan has to offer to hilarious, bloody shreds. These panels are notoriously hard to get in to as they tend to fill up quickly.
  • Incognito Cinema Warriors XP is a series of these, with season one being full-length riffs on movies released to DVD and season two being riffs on short films being released online (with a feature-length season finale.)
  • DVD Podblast.

And creator-made examples:

  • Commentary! The Musical to Doctor Horribles Sing Along Blog, naturally.
  • Broken Saints Chapter 19 Act 1 features a hidden audio track that basically consists of the creators goofing around making jokes about the episode and saying the lines in funny voices.
  • The DVD of The Incredibles includes a spoof cheapo Clutch Cargo-esque cartoon with an optional commentary track by the "real" Mr. Incredible and Frozone, who are aghast at how bad it is.
    • The Pixar short "Mike's New Car" has a commentary track by a bunch of kindergarteners on the Pixar Shorts collection.
  • The DVD release of Bubba Ho-Tep includes a commentary track from Bruce Campbell... as Elvis.
    • In a similar vein, the commentary track for "Tropic Thunder" had Robert Downey Jr.... AS Kirk Lazarus AS Lincoln Osiris (his character from the movie)...
      • Doubly hilarious, since Osiris!Lazarus himself claims in the movie proper that he doesn't drop character until after he's recorded the DVD commentary. Apparently he wasn't kidding.
  • The Matrix DVDs have commentaries from philosophers and movie critics instead of the cast and crew.
  • The first season of South Park was released without the already recorded commentary tracks due issues that Warner Bros., the distributor, had with comments that were made about WB properties. Comedy Central had CDs made as part of a mail-in offer as well as for those who ordered the set directly from them.
  • During the Russel T Davies era of Doctor Who episodes were accompanied by two different commentaries. One was a podcast available after the episode aired and the other being a regular dvd commentary. Sadly they stopped making the podcast commentaries and even the dvd commentaries aren't on every episode any more.
  • One of the commentaries on the Brother Bear DVD is by the moose brothers Rutt & Tuke, played by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas. You even get MST-like sillouettes when they get up to answer the door for their pizza. Said pizza man then joins the commentary.
  • Muppets from Space has commentary from the director, Gonzo, and Rizzo (with brief appearances by Kermit) complete with Mystery Science Theater 3000 silhouettes. Comments run from the mundane to dream sequences being shot entirely inside someone's head.
  • One episode of The Boondocks TV show has commentary by Uncle Ruckus, a self-hating racist character.
  • One DVD release of Christmas Evil has a commentary track by John Waters.
  • The Deluxe Edition of Friday the 13 th: The Final Chapter includes a fan commentary by Adam Green (Hatchet) and Joe Lynch (Wrong Turn 2 Dead End).
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