Joel Hodgson can’t wait to show you what he’s been working on. “It’s the benefit of having a year of being locked in the guest room with lots of time to come up with ideas,” the creator of Mystery Science Theater 3000 says. Since Netflix declined to order more MST3K in the fall of 2019, Hodgson and the team at Alternaversal Productions have been hard at work keeping the tapes circulating, so to speak: Pre-COVID-19, that meant mounting live tours; during the pandemic, that’s meant putting new spins on old episodes and reuniting cast members from throughout its 30-plus-year history for a charitable cause. Now, they’re ready to unveil the next chapter of their flagship movie-riffing series.
Nearly six years ago, MST3K was reborn thanks to a record-setting Kickstarter campaign; this afternoon, Hodgson and company launched a new crowdfunding effort for a 13th season, with a key distinction. There’s no Netflix involved, and no cable channels, either. If #MakeMoreMST3K reaches all of its goals in 30 days, 12 new feature-length episodes and 12 shorts will be delivered directly to MSTies, shortly after completion, via a dedicated MST platform dubbed the Gizmoplex.
“It’s our own network this time,” Hodgson says. “It’s so much better than pitching to an executive who’s seen it all.”
Jonah Ray is set to resume the role of yellow-jumpsuited test subject Jonah Heston, teaming with robot friends Tom Servo (Baron Vaughn) and Crow T. Robot (Hampton Yount) to lampoon the bad movies sent to them by mad scientists Kinga Forrester (Felicia Day) and Max (Patton Oswalt). While the faces and voices will carry over from the most recent TV iteration of MST3K, the show is preparing to turn away from the binge-release model of the Netflix seasons. New episodes will roll out individually on the Gizmoplex.
“It’s a little richer experience for the people making it and doing it that traditional way,” Hodgson says. “It’s better for watching, too, having them paced out one at a time. It’s really the style that built our show—we really ignored the way TV was made back then and just kind of made it work for us.”
“You get tickets to every show and they premiere,” Hodgson says of the Gizmoplex. “There’s a point where [the audience] can all be there right at the beginning of it. There’ll be a way to discuss it, too—chat and stuff, while you watch stuff.”
When it came time to design a new online home for the series’ past, present, and future, Hodgson wanted to avoid the feeling that MST3K was being given its own nondescript on-demand portal. “I didn’t want to just do a ‘Netflix with more MST’—all these tiles that you click on and go, ‘Okay, what else you got?’” he says. Conceptually, the Gizmoplex is a movie theater run by Day and Oswalt’s mad scientist characters, one that can host special events, a rotating selection of classic episodes, and interactive components featuring the cast and characters of Mystery Science Theater. In describing the Gizmoplex, Hodgson likens it to a virtual theme park, Hollywood’s famed Magic Castle, and one of TV’s gold standards for comedic world-building.
“It reminds me a little bit of SCTV where The Mads are falling all over each other, trying to do new things in the Gizmoplex in the hopes of making more money,” he says of the platform’s role within the universe of the show. “[SCTV] did that so well where, behind the scenes, they’d be planning something and then you’d see it realized on the show, and that was always so fun.”
The Kickstarter’s initial goal, set at $2 million, will fund the launch of the Gizmoplex and the production of three new episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000. All funds raised up to $5.5 million will pay for additional episodes, as well as apps that will bring the Gizmoplex to mobile and OTT devices. (The 2015 #BringBackMST3K Kickstarter raised $5.76 million from 48,270 backers.) Enough behind-the-scenes work has been done to allow production to begin (under COVID-safe protocols, of course) almost immediately after after the crowdfunding concludes; Hodgson estimates the new episodes and the Gizmoplex will be online later this year. But, ultimately, he admits, the shape of the final product is up to the fans.
“We don’t always know what we’ll announce during the Kickstarter,” he says. “It’s just this living thing. It’s like an iceberg, right? You know that so much of the iceberg is under the surface and you can’t really show it all. But people will indicate the parts of it they want to see.”
With the Kickstarter now underway, he can start that show-and-tell process.
“It’s getting to a point now where I can show it all to the writers,” Hodgson says. “In a way, the audience is seeing it at the same time that a lot of the creative team is seeing it as well.
“We can kind of show our work as we’re doing it, which is my favorite part. We have to entertain [the fans] very directly and make them really content happy that they put money into it.”
Read on for more excerpts from The A.V. Club’s exclusive interview with Joel Hodgson.
AVC: It’s been almost six years since the first Kickstarter launched. What would you say is is different this time?
Joel Hodgson: We know what we can do now. Before it was really unclear—what would this thing look like? What would it feel like? It seemed like the huge goal was could we land it in the world of Mystery Science Theater, and make it feel like Mystery Science Theater again. We didn’t want it to be a love letter to the past—we want to make it now, and know what we know now, not pretend it’s the ’90s.
I think the other thing that’s different is we have so much more identity now than we did back then. It was just kind of like a nostalgia thing [in 2015]. And now we kind of have these things like the live shows and and the shows on Netflix that are our new identity.
AVC: Does introducing the technological elements of the Gizmoplex feel at all daunting?
JH: We got really good people working on it and some really interesting partners for it. We’re working with Scener, if you know them—that’s what the Alamo Drafthouse does with live weekly events.
On making the new season under COVID-19 safety precautions
JH: We have to plan this to do it all remotely. We did experiment with that when we did the MIGIZI shorts. [Produced in the summer of 2020, the shorts “A Busy Day At The County Fair” and “Behind The Scenes At The Supermarket” had Matt McGinnis and puppet operators Nate Begle and Conor McGiffin providing silhouettes for riffs voiced by Hodgson, Bill Corbett, and J. Elvis Weinstein.—Ed.] That was kind of our first test to see if we would lose anything in translation. And most people didn’t seem to notice or even think about it.
I’m kind of astonished how flexible MST is—that we can kind of even look at it this way and break it apart and record each person separately. It’s not going to be a Zoom meeting. We have some conceits that make sense out of [the remote recording]—you’re on the moon, we do a lot of stuff in spacesuits, right?
Our fans are so graceful. It makes me feel not afraid technically of going after it. And even if there’s some problems, they really seem to thrive on that just because of the nature of the show.
On being cognizant of launching a crowdfunding campaign during a time of pandemic-related economic downturn
JH: That’s the other thing we want to be sensitive and alert to. We’re trying to figure out cool ways to make it so people can visit the Gizmoplex if they can’t afford a pass. There’s ways that if your friend’s solid, he can buy passes and bring you along. There’s some one day passes that are very affordable as well.
AVC: You don’t want it to turn into a walled garden.
JH: No, it can’t be. I’m trying to look at it like a roadside attraction on the moon where you can come and spend as much time as you want. But it’s also easy to bring your friends so they can experience it—you share that.
137 Comments
It’d be cool if those episodes get rolled into the MST3K channel on Pluto, but I don’t think they even have The Return episodes yet.
I’m hoping they continue to make the new episodes available for purchase on Rifftrax.
Yeah, I can’t afford to spend money buying tickets to watch guys riff on old movies right now, so it looks like Pluto TV will have to continue being my source of riffing entertainment.
I suggest trying this out.
This, the twitch channels have more variety and less annoying commercials than the Pluto TV channel.
Club MST3k – Watch Streaming Episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000! (club-mst3k.com)I’m a big fan of [Link above, because KINJAAAAAA!!!]The great part about Club MST3K is that it points you to YouTube uploads of the experiments, many of which are ripped from VHS tapes, so you get a very pure experience, often complete with the heads and tails of old 90s commercials.
That’s cool and good to know.
I use the twitch channel partly because I don’t even want to think about what episode to put on and it seems that the way they schedule the episodes, I rarely hit the same one every night
Yeah, that’s nice too. Club MST3k is definitely an “I want to watch this specific episode” thing, which is how I tend to watch the show.
There’s a shitload of them on Tubi.
GOOD. I was sorry to see Netflix (of course) cancel the revival after 2 seasons.I remember WAY BACK in college catching the original on Comedy Central (maybe?) and instantly falling in love.
Yep. Comedy Channel/Comedy Central aired even some of the old “cable access TV” shows that Joel did. I was in grad school and remember shows like BTAS, Babylon5, and MST3K as being wonderful distractions. I’ve even had the privilege of meeting Joel at DragonCon 2014. Super nice guy.As others have mentioned, Rifftrax already recently offered a similar service. If MST3K as a subchannel on that service, I’d definitely consider subscribing.
Same here – my first two broadcasts were The Amazing Colossal Man and Time of the Apes. Both classics.
My first was Moon Zero Two, so I was very happy with the recent live re-riff they did.
Mine was Pod People.
I remember watching early MST3K when I would stay with my Mom, she had cable Dad’s didn’t, and wish I could do that again.
It may not be a popular opinion among the crustier MSTies, but I liked Jonah/Baron/Hampton/Felicia/Patton. They definitely gave off an air of trying too hard early on, but that team produced some legitimate classic episodes.
I agree – I think Jonah was my second favorite host, but then I like the ‘gentler, kinder’ humor of the Joel years.
I didn’t support the 1st Kickstarter because I found the business model underlying it to feel a bit skeevy, but a ‘by fans, for fans’ model? Take my money!
I am now off to Kickstarter!
Odd that you can’t watch the first season on Netflix anymore.
I can pull them up on my Netflix. Are you in one of those shithole countries that President Trump told me about?
I thought you weren’t supposed to say his name. Like Harry Potter guy.
I only heard about how if you say his name while looking in the mirror, he’ll come up behind you and grab you by the pussy.
No I live in the US. I typed in MST3K and only The Gauntlet showed up.
Not sure what device you’re trying to pull it up on, but Netflix’ UI kinda sucks on some platforms. The part where it says “The Gauntlet” is a dropdown where you can select the Return.Here’s a screenshot from my desktop browser:
I just had to scroll down the episode list. Watching The Wizards of The Lost Kingdom now. 80s and later movies are of my favorites they riff on.
Both seasons are there. I just watched REPTILICUS again last night.
They’re on my Netflix, though ordered season 2 and THEN 1 for some reason. (alphabetically perhaps? Gauntlet and then Return?)
J Elvis as Tom is too much like Joel. And Joel is especially somnambulent in the first season.
This. The first couple episodes reeked of desperate over riffing, but they settled down into a nice groove shortly thereafter and had some great episodes.
Yeah, there was a slight learning curve, but all episodes are pretty good, and Cry, Wilderness deserves to be added to whatever MST3K classic episode pantheon exists.
WILDERNESSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mac & Me is where I think they really clicked, that episode is incredible and they were firing on all cylinders.
I was genuinely surprised by some of the negative reaction. I thought the new seasons were great, and I’ve watched each movie at least twice. I do think the binge viewing model of Netflix doesn’t really jibe with Mystery Science Theater. You can’t binge that many bad movies at once. You kind of have to savor them.
I enjoy the group too. Honestly the biggest flaw with the Netflix seasons is they hasn’t gotten their timing down. The first couple of years of the KTMA/CC seasons were the same way. They just need more time to find their groove.And honestly, I hope with this new bunch they’ll have more freedom to get back to the roots of the show. I thought the titles selected for riffing were a tad too polished. There needed to be more black and white, more grunge and fringe.
and more shorts.
Yes most definitely. Shorts were sorely lacking from the Netflix shows, and these should be no-brainers, since so many of them have fallen into the public domain.
I know one of the problems I read about in several of the MST alum interviews is the “too bad to be funny” issue. There has to be SOMETHING there – even if (in a case like Manos) it’s someone’s woefully mistaken belief that they were a film maker. I mean, a lot of the Corman stuff is frankly just too disinterested in itself to really sell a MST3k run.Hopefully this format and the time they’ve had to work over the last couple years gives them a good run of movies to work with. That’s always seemed to be the key.
Maybe I’ll get my wish and they’ll finally do Slipstream.
Oh, if only they could somehow tap into the Cannon Group catalog. I know it’s pie in the sky, but a guy can dream, can’t he?
Exactly. I want to see some discoveries. None of the films the Netflix episodes featured were unknown by any stretch. They seemed much more handpicked and curated. I mean, Mac & me was alright, but it was also the lowest possible hanging fruit. A big part of MST3K’s magic was finding films that you’d be amazed even existed were it not for them. It really is a perverse act of love, like a roast when they find a film to riff on because it’s reviving the film. Sure Monster A Go Go, or Final Sacrifice are bad movies, but dammit, they’re lovable.
I like Jonah, I like Felicia (who was kept on a tight leash), but Patton sucked and while tolerable, the new voices for Tom and Crow sound way too much alike so while ok to listen to there are times where I can’t tell which character is speaking. Part of me wishes they would ditch Patton and bring Mary Jo Pehl back as Pearl full time. Pehl and Day had good chemistry when they interacted and you could get a lot of mileage out of the Boomer/Gen Y generational gap between the two in the host segments.
I saw the Carnival Magic episode again the other day. I hadn’t watched the new series since the first run and it was actually REALLY good, even better than the first time. I think the watching the first time around, not being used to the cast or the writing, there was some awkwardness. But having revisited it, I think it’s as good as Joel or Mike’s series.
Oswalt didn’t really work out. Maybe it was just a matter of dealing with too much in his personal life with the tragedy of his wife’s death, or that he just wasn’t a good fit for the format. Plus, the whole thing with the band/minions (“Skeleton crew” or whatever they’re called) was kind of a pointless distraction. The interstitial stuff has always been MST3K’s weakest link. Sometimes it’s a good platform for more riffing on the movie, but whenever they start going very deep into their own little stories and gags it breaks down fast. Also, having Gypsy drop in for exactly one joke each film added nothing. I think everyone else on the Netflix shows was fine. Having done a lot of rewatching of “classic” episodes lately, I believe everyone’s perception about how much better it was back then is really a case of nostalgia, much as people get with their favorite SNL eras. Sometimes the jokes on those old shows make me laugh so hard it almost hurts. But a lot of the time I’m just lightly chuckling. I think the newer “power trio” actually stack up pretty well to the old guys when you compare them side by side.
I kinda stopped after the first two episodes because of what exactly you described. What’s your favorite episode from the “Jonah” episodes?
My personal favorite is Carnival Magic, but don’t weigh the whole series on a single episode. I would also urge you to give the following episodes a shot:AvalancheStarcrashYongaryWizards of the Lost Kingdom I
Mac & MeKiller Fish
Thanks for the recs, I’ll give it another go!
For the first Netflix season, I would go with Avalanche, which has become one of my absolute favorites of the series. For me, that’s when things come together. Cry Wilderness is good too, but a lot of that has to do with the fact that the movie is just so goddamn weird. They hadn’t gotten the riffing quite right yet. And for the second Netflix season, you can’t go wrong with Mac and Me.
I had one criticism of the latest batch…Usually the heckling was in response to what they saw on screen. In this latest incarnation, the jokes sometimes set up lines from the movie or what we saw on screen. It threw me off.
That happened occasionally in the show’s earliest days too.
I agree – it’s more of a “Rocky Horror”-style gag and doesn’t fit the conceit so well.
I was there since 1990-91. I adored the new group and the first Netflix season has several stone cold classics.
It took them a while to find their rhythm but it made me laugh.And then I stopped laughing during the invention exchanges because those were always dead airtime.And I stopped laughing at the Seinfeld sketch because that man is better suited for running a talk show from his car now.
I really liked this crew as well, especially Baron Vaughn. He has a great voice for mocking things.
Totally agree. Cry Wilderness, the Hercules movie with Detective Benson’s parents and Mac and Me all made me laugh my ass off.
I liked them too. I thought Jonah was an interesting evolution in the host/bots dynamic – Joel was the father figure, Mike was the roommate/equal, then the bots treated Jonah like the New Guy.But yes, there are some legit classics in those Netflix episodes – “Every Country Has a Monster” is one of the best musical numbers they ever did.
I liked the Beach Boys-like number they did in the theater during Star Crash.
Also “Concepts” from The Day Time Ended
Oh, yeah – I thought that cast was great.
I really liked most of the Netflix episodes and thought they had their own charm, with just enough familiar MST feeling to give me a nostalgia buzz.Also, possible hot take here, but MST has never really been a perfect thing. In fact part of its charm is that it’s rather janky. The skits have always been goofy and suffered from a mix of not putting much effort in, and community theater-grade overacting (poor Pearl was especially guilty of this; having actual actors involved in the new series was a marked improvement, even if the material was about the same as always). The earliest seasons are dense with pop culture references without any other attempt at a joke, and the delivery is sometimes so sleepy and muffled that it’s hard to track what they are even talking about. Some of the movies are so dire and dull that even good riffing fails to liven them up. The Netflix version may have failed to completely recapture the essence of the original iteration(s) of the show, but I don’t think its flaws were particularly worse.
I saw this and I would love more MST3K but what I don’t understand is why go with another Kickstarter instead of say just doing a Patreon? Also I always wonder what the deal with with Joel and the Rifftrax guys. They seem friendly and have done a bit of crossover work but it always seems like they are competing in some sort of way. Joel’s Gizxmoplex sounds like a glorified MST3K exclusive streaming platform, which is cool, but RiffTrax just rolled out their Rifftrax exclusive streaming service about a month back. Given the effort to put one of those together and the niche market they are already running in. You would think that the Rifftrax guys, Joel and the new MST3K crew and the original Mads should consider joining forces and creating one streaming platform that can accommodate all three of them and any other new riffing based shows.
Whats interesting is the MasterPancake guys out of Austin have been doing someone similar to that, Rolling on twitch showing old shows, and some of the skits. Its nearly 2x a week for all of Covid, I’d check them out
Because they’re almost at $800k 2 hours after launch?
It has always felt to me like each group has different priorities and that’s what causes the friendly but very present split. Joel is a visionary and likes world-building and innovating and props and sight gags. I don’t get a sense that he’s nearly as invested in the jokes as the Rifftrax guys. Who are much more focused on material. I’d say the same goes for Trace and Frank, who are more joke focused. With them, the focus seems more satirizing nostalgia. Their choice of films is much more old 50s and 60s than the Rifftrax crew.Which isn’t to say that I disagree about the pragmatism of joining forces. I just think priorities differ too much to make it anyone’s first instinct.
I am a big consumer of both MST3K and Rifftrax, and definitely agree that they have different identities. Rifftrax is really purely about the riffing, in the early going their concept was that they wouldn’t even pay for the rights to the movie, they’d just release an audio track that you’d sync to the movie. And that freed them riff over modern blockbusters that would’ve otherwise been way too expensive to license. As time went on and they grew a following, they started licensing out B-movies and shorts and releasing riffs pre-mixed with the video, which came much closer to MST3K—but still without any of the world building, characters or skit comedy that was in MST3K. Joel’s background is as a prop comic, that stuff is central to his comedic style. The comedic personalities of Crow and Servo are huge parts of the appeal of MST3K to me, I look forward to the act breaks just because I adore Crow so much. And then that feeds into the experiencing of watching the movie with the silhouettes, it feels like watching the movie with your funny robot friends. The Gizmoplex leans into that strength; Joel continues to have a great feel for what makes MST3K special to people.Re: Patreon vs. Kickstarter, as soon as you sign up for a Patreon it charges your credit card and collects the money, on a recurring basis. That’s not well suited to the type of conditional fundraising goals that they have. The pledge targets and things like that are just much better suited to Kickstarter, and it’s clearly a platform that MSTK3K supporters are comfortable with, they set records with the fundraising 6 years ago. I’d also bet that Patreon keeps a bigger cut of the revenues than Kickstarter.
Rifftrax — especially the live show versions of things like “Birdemic” and “Miami Connection” — has been a godsend when it comes to having background noise while working from home during these god-forsaken Trying Times.
It could be as simple as the fact that Joel (and Jim Mallon) owned the show when it originally aired and thus saw income through the years as first Rhino and then Shout Factory sold DVDs, where all the other performers were paid poorly (Comedy Central gave them $35,000 per episode, total) and received nothing from DVD sales.Then Joel opened the first Kickstarter without communicating with the others, after acquiring the share of the rights Mallon had back.Part of the accommodation after that seems to have been a standing invitation to appear as a guest, plus allowing Rifftrax to sell MST3K episodes and peel some of the profits off to distribute among the cast. (I am unsure if everyone gets a piece of that or not.) I know I order Rifftrax and Mads shows in part to help make up for all the money they didn’t make from all those DVDs sitting on my shelf.I suspect there may be union rules relating to Patreon-funded enterprises: unlike the original show, the new MST3K is union.
why go with another Kickstarter instead of say just doing a Patreon?I think it has to do with needing the lump sum of money up front, instead of doing a prolonged, rolling production. Getting sets, props and costumes ready for the show means you need the cash on hand then and there, not an unknown monthly stipend for an equally unknown time frame.
I get that but to be honest, shouldn’t they have most of that already with the last kickstarter. I doubt they threw it all out after they were done filming a few years back, did they?
They made so little from the NetFlix deal, they had to ask the fans for an additional $600k to do the second season.
So yeah, that money is all gone.
This is very similar to what On Cinema At The Cinema is doing for season 12 after getting the boot from Adult Swim. Wonder if we’ll be seeing other shows go independent in the future.
It would have to be shows with a fairly large and VERY engaged fanbase.
Just as a question BTL do people prefer the MST3K format or RLM’s Best of the Worst (effectively MST3K but condensed paired with discussion of the films)?
MST all the way. Best of the Worst can be a pretty fascinating look at B movie weirdness but they’re more or less reviewing the films. Sure, with humor, but it’s less an actual comedy show than MST. They’re more informative and insightful in many ways but not as funny. I also can’t take Rich. His glass-shattering laugh, his word fumbles, his dipshit neckbeard sexism… He’s the goddam worst.(FWIW, I’d take The Flophouse and How Did This Get Made over Best of the Worst as well. RLM aren’t comedians, they just happen to be funny sometimes and have a good eye for insane B movie trash.)
“his dipshit neckbeard sexism”Some of the earlier stuff from all of them felt like deliberate edginess but they haven’t been doing it for years. At most now it’s very telegraphed mocking of online obsessive fans.Also don’t hate on Famous Celebrity Rich Evans just because he’s been on the Ellen Show.
Ellen only wishes she could get somebody of the prestige of Rich Evans again.
The other guys? Yeah, they seem to have mellowed on the anti-SJW cringe shit. Rich seems like the same privileged white fuckwit nerd fanboy.
No, it was a “comedy” bit that they all stopped doing years ago and now almost all of their comedy is mocking hardcore fans by putting on dumb voices and saying generic anti-criticism arguments. Honestly they’ve never really been “anti-SJW”, the only time they really criticised someone for being “SJW” was Brie Larson when she did the whole “white dude reviewers” thing that did come across as performative and overcompensating (especially when she never had a problem with her career being built in part from the rave reviews of those same reviewers and continues since to take big cheques to star in major franchises controlled and written by white dudes long after having enough clout to get her own indy projects made).
Sigh.Whatever, man. I’m not going to relitigate Larson or the Ghostbusters 16 bullshit or the endless Star Wars whining or whatever other woman-hating trash has come out of that group. I know some of it’s exaggerated for views but some of it’s genuine and I don’t give a shit what the ratio is of True Feelings to Performative Anti-SJW Outrage. When they’re making fun of weirdos like Neil Breen or laughing at no-budget DTV horror I like RLM fine. Any time they touch on sociopolitical topics? Fuck em.
“Whatever, man. I’m not going to relitigate Larson or the Ghostbusters 16 bullshit or the endless Star Wars whining or whatever other woman-hating trash has come out of that group.”Except they haven’t engaged in “woman-hating trash”.They criticised Brie Larson for her strangely flippant remarks when she was at the same time taking massive money to star in projects controlled by the sort of people she was complaining about (established “white dudes” in the film industry), they criticised Ghostbusters 2016 because it was boring and bland with most of their attacks being aimed at Paul Feig’s direction while also criticised both fanboys for hating it for simply having women but also the script (namely the male sidekick being a complete moron when the female sidekick in the originals was pretty damn clever and also how the trailers really played up the black female character as nothing but SHOUTING ALL THE TIME) and Sony for deliberately stoking that reaction to give a product that would make a lot of men serious money the charade of being a “feminist movie”, and on Star Wars they’ve specifically defended female stars in the films who got shit for the actions of male writers/directors who put it together.They have an entire subseries, Nerd Crew, aimed at mocking male “fanboi” culture regarding Star Wars and the consumerism that surrounds and encourages it.
I’m sorry someone else gave something you like a chance and doesn’t like it, for reasons that are valid to them but that you don’t agree with.
In what world is calling critique of predominantly male-controlled mass media products where most of their criticism is aimed at the men behind them “woman-hating trash” valid in any view?One of the films they list as an example as “woman-hating”, Ghostbusters 2016, has them praising all the female stars as either people with talent or done-dirty by the trailers by the seventh minute…
What’s crazy is that I don’t even DISlike RLM. I just think they veer into misogyny more than I would like and Rich Evans being a shithead is less of an act than his fandom insists.I also still watch my old Woody Allen DVDs. It’s okay to think things you enjoy have problematic aspects.
What “woman-hating” did RLM do? They call out women who say stupid shit or act horribly just the same as they do men. They also praise women who act well or direct good movies. Mike even said in his Ghostbusters Re:View that he’s willing to give Answer the Call a chance despite the horrible trailer and that if it makes him laugh, it will be a success. Which is why he hates the movie so much, because it didn’t make him laugh, though he DID say that Leslie Jones was much better in the film than the trailers made it seem like. His biggest problem with Answer the Call was the endless chatter and Paul Feig not knowing when to let a joke end. Unless you are taking Mike’s very obviously sarcastic “You know why i really hated the film? Because there were women in it!” line at the very end of the film at face value.
Or you’re one of those people who think that anyone who criticizes a female-led action film is a misogynist.
Sure, let me have a reasonable argument with a cultist.Fuck that. Google it. Most of what you’ll find I agree with. Some of it I don’t. But I’m really not interested in going near your sacred cow while you’re brandishing a can of gas and a book of matches.
That’s neat I guess. I’m still mostly satisfied rewatching old Mike episodes from the SciFi days.
Seems…PRETTY NICE….Also, watch out for snakes and Mittens, an action film called Mittens?
Joe Don Baker IS Mittens!
If there’s one episode I probably know every line from, it’s Mittens. I mean the Martha Mitchell story…I mean…One of my go to all time lines is “Mitchell: even his name says is that a beer?”
They’ve arrested Harlan Ellison!
Good.
I thought Team Jonah were nervous, stiff, and less witty. They didn’t give the jokes enough breathing space. But they still did some good ones (Yongary, Mac & Me, and Cry Wilderness in particular. “Okay: WILDERNESS!”).
With remote viewing parties becoming a viable social activity, I often wonder why MST3K hasn’t licensed some sort of customizable silhouette filter. Be your own bot!
I think I still have my old silhouette vinyl cling lying around somewhere.
My casting instits were spot-on with the recent MST3K reboot.While I’m not a huge fan of his comedy, I knew Jonah Ray would be a good host.And I also knew Patton and Felicia would be terrible mads.
Right on both counts!
Patton did a good job at being a new TV’s Frank. But honestly the mads were never the best part of the show, and most of the time the skits weren’t great either (sometimes they were surprisingly hilarious though).
Definitely throwing down some money for another season, though!
I don’t love the new bots either. But I think that’s more on the recording end. What Joel says in the Kickstarter worries me. What I disliked about the new episodes was the sense, supported by interviews, that none of them recorded together. He points out the timing awkwardness of the first few episodes and while I largely agree, that sense never fully went away. And I blame the new crew having busy non-MST professional lives. Trace, Bill, and Kevin (and sure, J. Elvis) weren’t also standup comics. They recorded together and you can FEEL that.I know COVID has forced people to do things separately but recording can be done with a Zoom meeting or similar teleconference tech. MST shouldn’t feel like puppet silhouettes with jokes fucking ADR’d over them.
Hampton Yount hardly ever seems to even be trying to keep Crow’s mouth synced to his lines. I swear, half the time in the theater he just lets the mouth hang open.
Nah Felicia was great
I agree, she’s tons of fun.
The only thing I didn’t like is that so many of the storylines around her revolved around romance and/or Patton’s creepy crush on her. You never saw that with the Mads.
Because the only woman in their life was Clayton’s mom.
I mean, they could have brought in love interests if they really wanted to. It just kind of speaks to a poverty of imagination that “attractive woman” = “romance storyline” in the writer’s eyes.
They should just have the skits with Jonah and the bots. The bots are still cute.
oh wow how remarkable, you agree with your own opinion! definitely a worthwhile post, i’ll be sure to pat you on the back if your hand ever gets tired of doing so. personally, i loved Kinga and TV’s Son of TV’s Frank.
I didn’t say I agreed with my “opinion”, I said I agreed with my prediction.
well, if we’re calling opinions facts, then unfortuantely, your prediction was dead wrong. 🙁 must be hard for you to cope, thus the bravado!
Um, no. I already said it was true and therefore it is. They sucked. It’s a fact.
See I loved the mads, and liked Jonah Ray, but I thought the bot actors were fairly middling. Sometimes I have trouble even distinguishing which of them was speaking in the theater.
Fair. I personally couldn’t get past the fact that the bots didn’t sound “like themselves.”
Yeah I agree. If I could impose my will upon them to make one change, honestly, I’d get Trace and Kevin back for the bots. I enjoy changing the hosts, and the mads, and the setting, and everything else, but Trace and Kevin have proven the hardest to replace. Bill Corbett, god bless him, sure tried, but Trace was the best.
I would love it if MST3K changed hosts every season (or maybe every other season just to make sure there are plenty of episodes after a host hits their stride) without much fanfare. I think there are plenty of funny, diverse people who would love that gig, and I would love seeing them all get a chance. But I am serious about doing it with as little fanfare as possible. The commitment to world building really held back the last two seasons.
This is my favorite time to be alive. HI KEEBA!
Hats off to their resiliency. I’m so jaded with their bad luck over the years that I fully expect Gizmoplex to get a new chief executive who immediately cancels them.
I know! It’s been cancelled 3 times! And yet refuses to die.
I know! It’s been cancelled 3 times! And yet refuses to die.
They should sell NFTs, so you can “own” an episode.They wouldn’t even have to worry about Kickstarters.
I just made a donation, albeit a small one. It’s been my favorite show for so long, and I was starting to warm up to the new cast by *hand gestures* The Gauntlet, so I’m looking forward to more.
Cry Wilderness was the best of a really good new batch. Looking forward to more.
I’m about as a diehard of an MST3K fan as they come (look at my username!), but Joel squandered a lot of my goodwill and interest in his “pure” version of the show.Jonah Rey seems like a nice guy, Baron Vaughn killed it everytime I saw him on Superstore, and Patton Oswalt is Patton Oswalt, but none of the made me chuckle at all in the new episodes. The guy who played Crow was dreadful, and Felicia Day was brought in more to get nerds to open their wallets more than any performing skills. I’ve watched the “new” episodes a couple of times, and what bothers me is that the style of humor is completely different. It’s much more shrill and less understated and Midwestern (because it’s made by people all based in L.A.), and at that point it becomes not MST3K but rather one of the umpteen Youtube channels with some asshole snarking about how dumb some movie/game/show is.Then there’s also the fact that Joel seems really bad at running a production company. His Kickstarter set a record for funds raised, and he still needed to do a second round of crowdfunding for the second Netflix season because they took him to the cleaners on whatever production deal they signed with him, especially since they dropped MST3K soon after. Add in the fact that he wants more money, and then for fans to pay up monthly for an extremely niche streaming service, all of this during a pandemic/economic meltdown, and I’m skeptical.
Not to make this into this decade’s version of the Mike vs Joel wars, but the Rifftrax crew has done a far better job at building a fanbase and also keeping their business growing at a sustainable clip.
Rifftrax does a Kickstarter every year.
So if you’re calling Joel bad at business, what are they?
I just looked up the last two Rifftrax Kickstarters. They raised $560,000 in 2020 and $460,000 in 2019. The first MST3K Kickstarter raised $5.7 million, so roughly 10 times those amounts. Riffrax is also very up front that this money is used to pay their writing team, maintain their digital platforms, and get rights to future films. They’re truly independent, unlike MST3K, who was supposed to have a production company in Netflix who handled this kind of stuff.
If I’m remembering correctly, Joel told us the whole point of that first fundraiser was to get enough for new episodes and also show potential studios/streaming services that there was a hungry fanbase out there. Joel gets that done, and then signs an apparently terrible deal with Netflix, because even after handing them a completely-paid for season of MST3K they still won’t pony up the $600,00 needed to fund Season 12. So now we have to do a “pledge drive” to make up those costs, which is still asking for more money than Rifftrax has ever gotten in 15+ years. And then Netflix, which is notorious for giving anything with a pulse a 3-season order, drops MST3K despite the show costing them so little.
Admittedly Netflix is also notorious for head-scratching decisions when it comes to canceling and renewing, so I don’t blame Joel for their fickleness. But I think it’s entirely reasonable to question why he signed up with them given how little enthusiasm and support they ultimately showed for MST3K.
I said all along that that model was unsustainable, so I agree with you on that.
What I was pushing back on was the idea that Rifftrax using Kickstarter = good while MST3K using it = bad.
I didn’t donate to the first Kickstarter, but I am to this one, because I do believe that going independent is the way forward if we’re going to get new stuff.
My apologies, I wasn’t trying to imply that using Kickstarter isn’t necessarily a bad thing. My larger issue is the management of the $6 million that Joel raised, and fans are once again being asked to pony up.Ultimately I would be interested if I found any of the new cast, or the style of humor, to be enjoyable. But since I don’t, I will not be participating, although I wish them luck.
Fair enough. I liked the new cast, Jonah and Rebecca in particular, and found the humor more to my liking than the Mike years.
And I felt that way about the first Kickstarter that I did not participate in.
We’ll see how it goes.
You are on to something about the tone of the humor. Without its casual midwestern sensibility the show doesn’t have a heart.
Thanks to the way backer names were split among the various episodes of “The Return,” I can truthfully say that I share a credit roll with Jerry Seinfeld, so, yeah, I’ll back this one, too.
I moved to Eden Prarie, MN and lived a few miles from Best Brains in the 90s. If felt like hometown TV back then, so always had a soft spot. And honestly, while I get the criticisms of the latest version, I don’t think it detracts much – just different.
When Mike Nelson first hosted I missed Joel (who always sounded a little…buzzed), but it’s all good. I’ll take Rifftrax, Cinematic Titanic, all iterations of MST3K – pandemic salves. And thank you, Tubi.
“Ya know, it’s not so much the apocalypse it’s the humidity” – MST3K, Warrior of the Lost World.
Given the current rate of donations, I don’t think they are going to have any problem hitting that minimum goal. Or any of the stretch goals.
I love MST3k, but is anyone else leery of a bespoke streaming service? One for which they’re very oddly *not* promising all the previous episodes on demand, suggesting rights issues? And, judging from the subscriptions you get based on pledge tier, with a monthly price higher than Disney+ and already in the Hulu/Peacock range?
Shout Factory! owns the rights to MST3K, but they don’t have streaming rights to all the films.
I’m sure they don’t have streaming rights to the 2 new seasons (yet, if ever), and there are some films they’ve riffed that they lost the rights to pretty early on, such as the Gamera films.
There’s over 100 episodes (last I looked) on the Shout Factory! Roku app, so I think they’re making a good faith effort to give access to everything they still have the rights to.
That’s understandable! I would like *them* to say it, though, and make some guarantees regarding those 100+ episodes.
All Gamera, all the time.
No thanks. It’s time to move on, Joel.
I tried so very, very hard to enjoy the new series, but man it was some serious pain. There was no chemistry to the leads, the jokes weren’t funny and the actual riffs were WAAAAY too dense (and unfunny). I got 3 – maybe 4 – episodes into my blu ray of the first season and had to tap out.Sorry, man, but no thanks. I have enough old episodes to see me through, and Rifftrax delivers what I need for new content.
Good lord the kick starter hasn’t even been live, what, 24 hours or so, and they’re already almost up to the 2 million dollar first goal. I’d say they’re gonna pull this off.
I am sure we’ll never learn the real reasons, but Netflix’s decision to drop them will always puzzle me. They basically went to Netflix with the episodes in the can and all they had to do was put the files on the server. It was critically acclaimed (100% on Rotten Tomatoes IIRC) and it came with a pretty good sized fanbase at the start. I sort of get why SciFi bailed because they needed that broadcast time to air professional wrestling and infomercials (no, not bitter) but none of that applies to a streaming service. Why would they bail on a S3 of MST when they keep so much other original content? All I can assume is that due to its popularity, Netflix assumed Joel was going to ask for a better deal and they could have spent on fifteen new cop shows from South Korea or Brazil.
I’m a little disappointed that they’re opting for the Netflix cast rather than the performers from the recent live tour (Emily, Yvonne, et al); I thought they really knocked it out of the park. The stuff they did on Twitch during the pandemic wasn’t great, but I hope they get another chance.
I was gonna say that I’d love if Jonah, Baron, Hampton, Felicia, and Patton would still be involved, and lo and behold!!I’d also love to see Har Mar still involved, but I think I’ll swap that wish for him to not have been a monstery creep all these years.
Had always been a fan of MST, I did not have problem w/changing casts etc. I found the netflix seasons fairly unfunny, the inbetween movie bits became like finding a fly atop a slice of cake which was not that great to begin with. I actually find rifftrax (for the most part) funnier than even the original MST, better movies and there is something to be said for no skits. Also Felicia is a definite minus for me, have never understood the appeal.If they get new cats would give a watch.