Team Starkid

I think Twisted has been their best by far. It toned down the raunchy-ness. Like, I never really found parts of the Harry Potter Musical funny, like the Butt Trumpet joke from the Potter Sequel as just... awkward and childishly raunchy instead of actually funny.

Twisted instead makes the raunchy jokes add to parts of the plot; Aladdin's Horny-Teenager Song actually moves the plot forward and, while I found the inverted-penis joke a bit odd, it ends up being a plot point later.

In other words, the jokes were better integrated and I never really felt like the plot paused to make loads of jokes and was all around better paced.

The only time I felt the pacing was off was when it does the flashback to Young!Ja'far and stuff. But, it worked well enough. And the music was damn fucking catchy.

I was also really surprised that they could so blatantly 'rip-off' Wicked and Disney so many times and STILL be entertaining and, occasionally, surprising.

Watching Holy Musical B@man now.

Prepare for a Hurricane of Puns

I was... eh to it. Sweet Tooth stole the show but I just didn't care much for anyone else. It was just... Things happen for two hours. There wasn't a whole ton of structure to it.

I'm largely impressed that he remembered what pockets each candy was in for each pun. That's... Impressive. Just simply impressive.

I was just in a lack of care about everything else.

Twisted, I think, is their best work yet. I wonder what they'll do next.

Well, that's weird. I thought Twisted was hands-down the worst and Holy Musical B@man was the best next to Starship. What do you mean it had no structure? It had a very straightforward plot about Batman meeting Robin, having a rivalry with Superman, then defeating Sweet Tooth, who kidnapped Robin, by having to befriend Superman, then at the end they form a league for justice. How is that just "things happening?"

Also, they're doing Star Wars next.

edited 17th Oct '14 7:50:03 AM by spashthebandragon

I loved the Sweets puns, but I thought the music was pretty terrible.

They did two more musicals this summer which should be on You Tube by the end of the year. Like splashthebanddragon said, one of them is a Star Wars parody which will be up next week. The other is based on the Oregon Trail video game and is supposed to come out in December.

Having already watched both of the shows (they had livestreams people could rent this time) and seen some of the reactions, I think the Oregon Trail show is going to end up being a lot of people's favorite Starkid show, while the Star Wars one will probably get more mixed reactions. (Though this might be in part because of most of the more popular people being in the Oregon one. ) Personally, I really liked both, but my favorite is still Twisted!

... We'll all die of dysentery...

Ani is out on Starkid's Youtube channel. :)

...And is unwatchably horrible and unfunny. How the mighty have fallen, Starkid.

Wow...that's harsh. :P Most people who have been complaining have been whining about how the actors didn't sing or because Lauren Lopez wasn't in it. :P

I forgot to post my thoughts here but I really liked Ani. Not surprising seeing as when it comes to Starkid I am the queen of unpopular opinions (I didn't exactly like AVPM which everyone else loves) but I thought it had great music, great acting and a great message. It didn't top Twisted (in all honesty I don't think anything will for me) but I still enjoyed it.

But for everyone else who hated it Trail to Oregon should be out in about a month and you guys will probably love that and you can forget all about how much you hate Ani. XD

edited 12th Nov '14 9:06:31 AM by true

Frankly, after three horrible musicals in a row, I'm ready to give up on Starkid altogether. That's a real shame, too, because I loved their earlier stuff. I think the people working on the musicals changed or something, I dunno.

edited 12th Nov '14 9:35:33 AM by spashthebandragon

I was afraid to see Ani after your first comment, but seeing that you hated last three of their musicals, I can watch it safely.

Well, I don't know what to tell you. I feel like there was a noticeable dive in quality right after Holy Musical B@man (which was one of my favorites). For the record, the three musicals I'm referring to are Potter Senior Year (the script-reading one), Twisted, and Ani. And, for what it's worth, Twisted had a couple okay moments, so it was better than Ani.

edited 12th Nov '14 10:27:01 AM by spashthebandragon

I thought the concept for Ani was okay: "the prequels made Anakin into a whiny pussy with acceptance issues, and the Jedi ruined his life" was an interesting perspective.

The "said pussy is also somehow a fan of the movie series and a maker of extremely lame jokes and puns and knows the names and biographies of characters that aren't even named in the script" was just puzzling and 'huh?' inducing.

The people running the shows are still the same. AVPSY and Ani were done under pressure (AVPSY because of lack of time to rehearse due to the huge cast and it being at a con and Ani being done when the Langs had to deal with two shows at once) so that might be a reason why it seems different.

But even if you didn't like the last few musicals I would still suggest giving Trail to Oregon a chance. It has a tone similar to B@tman, MAMD, and the Potter musicals (campy with lots of off-the-wall silliness but with a strong message). Oddly enough, that one WAS run by someone different: Jeff Blim. Matt and Nick Lang, who've done a lot of work on all the other shows, still helped with the writing and directing but those two had to spilt between both shows whereas Jeff was just working on Trail.

edited 16th Nov '14 11:40:00 AM by true

Alright, I might give it a try whenever I get around to it, then, but I'm not super familiar with Oregon Trail, so I think a lot of the humor will be lost on me.

Trail to Oregon isn't like with Ani or the Potter shows where you have to be familiar with the source material in order to understand it. When I first saw the show I had never played the game and understood it just fine. Afterwards I watched a Let's Play of the game and then rewatched the stream and understood a couple of minor jokes but that was it. The references are mostly Easter Eggs; it's very much an original show apart from that. (The game itself doesn't even have real characters, you just name a few people and it tells you if they get sick or die while on the journey) so all characterization and a lot of the plot was created by the team.

edited 16th Nov '14 4:36:11 PM by true

Little Tim died of dysentery.

Almost forgot to post here in all the New Year's excitement but we finally have a release date and teaser trailer for Oregon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3JKoQzW-m8&feature=youtu.be.

It's later than I expected, even though I know they have this thing about releasing stuff on holidays now. But it should still be a good watch when it does come out.

Oregon Trail is out.

:)

Any thoughts/opinions on it?

Can't follow the lyrics. Want my subtitles.

Trust me half these songs make no sense whatsoever anyway. XD But I can't wait to see the attempts at subtitles for them.

edited 14th Feb '15 5:20:04 PM by true

I enjoyed it, thought to be honest I enjoyed Ani more, if only because it was practically completely dialogue-driven which was different (and I'm a big Star Wars fan). Still, Trail to Oregon was fun, and the music was great as always, though only "On the Trail" is really memorable, and maybe "It Pays to be an Animal" too. It's just really hard to top Twisted's scale of epicness that felt like a proper broadway musical with that homemade Starkid charm. Though I guess that explains the smaller budgets for these past couple of shows.

The smaller budgets for Ani and Trail to Oregon were because they were produced at the same time so the money had to be split between the two. They'd run Oregon one night and Ani the next and also did a bunch of other stuff in the theater while they were renting it over the summer. That's also why no one was in both shows. Twisted had such a large budget because it was funded via Kickstarter.