Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax

What is your opinion on MST3k/Rifftrax

  • 1. Love it more than life itself and will sacrifice my first born child to glorify it's name

    Votes: 84 21.8%
  • 2. Love it

    Votes: 224 58.2%
  • 3. Meh

    Votes: 50 13.0%
  • 4. Hate it

    Votes: 9 2.3%
  • 5. What the fuck is a MST3K?!

    Votes: 18 4.7%

  • Total voters
    385
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I'm pretty sure that POP CORN is from the live shows that were the beta test of the Movie script
Frank had a giant thing of popcorn up in a balcony seat and dumped it everywhere
 
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Reactions: ditto
I gave Mary Jo and Bridget a shot, but their riffing is too loose and boring. The writing must not be as thorough because they often revert to signing theme songs and ad jingles that barely relate to what's going on. They're delightful gals, but I find their output wanting. And they're nowhere near as remotely bad as those two British guys, though. Woof!

I had heard some pretty decent Mary Jo riffs in the past, and I gave her and Mike's wife a shot since I had not heard her before. Within about 1 min Mary Jo is making cringy unfunny political jokes in some 1950s short, the sort of cheap bait that the old Mst3k/old rifftrax avoided. This was one just selected at random.
 
Just watched this one, a movie filmed over years on weekends and features stop-motion monsters that all look like they were produced by different awful bargain-basement FX houses. The number of sets that are supposed to be larger building interiors but are obviously crammed into a closet or something is shocking. I think the line that best sums up this film is when one character decides to grab a branch off the ground to swing at a monster with:

KEVIN: "The stick chose to be credited as 'Alan Smithee'."

 
I love this host segment so much
the continuity to KTMA days of The Mad Scientist Convention, the punchlines of the THIRD time I used the incendiaries, and it didn't actually make the building blow up, it just made it burn, really quickly... god that was beautiful, wasn't it
and then in reaction to Joel's motorcycle safety device
oh, great. get Ralph Nader on the phone... then call Gary Busey
 
I'll take Emily over Jonah. She's got more personality and charm than he does and I like her delivery than his stiff awkward ones.
I just wish we didn't have Patton Oswalt and Felicia Day. I really like having small unknown comedians playing these characters because you dont know what to expect and aren't familiar with them and it allows them to be a surprise than a repeat.
 
I'll take Emily over Jonah. She's got more personality and charm than he does and I like her delivery than his stiff awkward ones.
I just wish we didn't have Patton Oswalt and Felicia Day. I really like having small unknown comedians playing these characters because you dont know what to expect and aren't familiar with them and it allows them to be a surprise than a repeat.
It will be curious to see if they learned anything from one of the big complaints in the reboot - the nonstop riffing and inability to let a movie breathe.

It's such a shame that I am not interested in this really at all. The MST3K Pluto/Twitch channels are on in the background all the time in my house. But S11 and S12 left almost no impression on me. I've never rewatched an episode, even the "good ones".

It was competently made but not very funny or charming or warm. It just seemed like they were playing to the invisible audience rather than being buddies making each other laugh.

That Emily seems nice enough but just doesn't strike me as the answer, either. If you see the promo Q&A's on the Twitch channel they intersperse between episodes she's said some fairly "uh oh" things like "I'm the one at the party to put tinfoil on my head to get a laugh!". People like Mike Nelson and Kevin Murphy would have made fun of exactly that kind of person back in the day.

I think we're gonna see a lot of sanitized "fun". Fans of darker humor need not apply. I'll pirate an episode or two just to confirm my fears and pour one out for yet another thing from my younger days called forth from the pet semetary against our will and now scratching at the door.
 
This thread is like an old wound to me... :( Loved Mst3k especially the Mike years, not as fond of Joel by a long stretch but I loved TVs Frank and Dr. Forrester. No exaggeration but I would put episodes on all day while doing other things but still listening to it and quoting it to myself. That helped me get through some pretty lonely years if I can powerlevel a bit.

Fuck Netflix and fuck the "revival" the original run had an excellent ending, and once they revealed aspects about it the show only seemed to get worse and worse. New host? Nope, New voices for the bots? No thanks, Felica Day and Patton Oswalt? I'd rather trade places with Patton's wife. Haven't seen an episode and I will never watch one I'm ok with the memories I have.
Also regarding Rifftrax because that was the true successor to MST3k Once I found out about rifftrax I loved that too up untill about 2015 I think once they hired on writers my interest and enjoyment cratered, they aren't funny at all anymore and Mike selling out a friend to appease the mob and Kevin and Bill's TDS cemented me being done with rifftrax.

Sorry for getting autistic
 
This thread is like an old wound to me... :( Loved Mst3k especially the Mike years, not as fond of Joel by a long stretch but I loved TVs Frank and Dr. Forrester. No exaggeration but I would put episodes on all day while doing other things but still listening to it and quoting it to myself. That helped me get through some pretty lonely years if I can powerlevel a bit.

Fuck Netflix and fuck the "revival" the original run had an excellent ending, and once they revealed aspects about it the show only seemed to get worse and worse. New host? Nope, New voices for the bots? No thanks, Felica Day and Patton Oswalt? I'd rather trade places with Patton's wife. Haven't seen an episode and I will never watch one I'm ok with the memories I have.
Also regarding Rifftrax because that was the true successor to MST3k Once I found out about rifftrax I loved that too up untill about 2015 I think once they hired on writers my interest and enjoyment cratered, they aren't funny at all anymore and Mike selling out a friend to appease the mob and Kevin and Bill's TDS cemented me being done with rifftrax.

Sorry for getting autistic
Uh oh, who'd mike sell out? I'm out of the loop here.
 
So apparently there's a sneak peak of the new season this Friday? Anyone here bother to get the Gizmopass?

View attachment 3032859
The Gizmoplex is the platform they built to show the episodes they made with the funds from the last Kickstarter. The first three months of The Gizmoplex is exclusive to Kickstarter backers and then they will be offering membership to the general public sometime in May.
As I’ve said earlier, I’m a pretty easy lay for this franchise and enjoyed the last two seasons even though I see their flaws. The movies were over-riffed in Season 11 (I think they relaxed this in season 12) and overall it was a bit too overproduced. They are not working with the additional funds Netflix pumped into the show once they got involved (in an interview, Joel said that the Kickstarter/Netflix budget breakdown for season 11 was about 65/35), so hopefully this will restore the scrappy DIY feel of the original run. Looking at some of the behind the scenes pictures, they got rid of some of the egregious extra stuff from the Netflix seasons. The bots are now completely operated by the actors voicing them. On the Netflix seasons, the bots were operated by professional puppeteers with the actor using a remote device to move the mouth. And the riffs and theater segments are being recorded at the same time instead of separately. Seriously, in season 11 and 12, the riffs were recorded in a booth and then Jonah and the puppeteers would pantomime the theater segments. At the time, Joel said it was because he wanted to do more complex visual gags in the theater, but those instances came off as unnecessary.
 
Uh oh, who'd mike sell out? I'm out of the loop here.
I don't have this written down and it's been a year or more so if you want something more accurate look it up and enlighten us if I'm off here.
But he sold out Doug Tenaple? Tenapple? Used to be on his podcast but Doug is a devout Christian and said "homophobic" things and Mike noped out the moment things got too spicy
 
Uh oh, who'd mike sell out? I'm out of the loop here.
He was part of a podcast with Earthworm Jim creator Doug TenNapel. TenNapel is a frequent target of Internet mobs (and, to be honest, he sometimes acts like a troll) and people started confronting Rifftrax about things TenNapel said on this podcast (on episodes Mike wasn’t even on, I should point out). I’m working off of memory, but Mike released a statement saying he left the show a few weeks before, but I don’t think he flat out condemned TenNapel.
 
I thought it would have been Doug, what with him being a target, sometimes due to his own antics, but either way thats pretty lame to see people continue to do this shit instead of standing up for people they claim are friends.
 
I thought it would have been Doug, what with him being a target, sometimes due to his own antics, but either way thats pretty lame to see people continue to do this shit instead of standing up for people they claim are friends.
Again, working from memory, but I believe this also happened during the height of the pandemic in 2020 when people were being extra reactionary. Then again, given TenNapel’s relationship with the trans community, which seems to be extra online compared to normies, it was probably only a matter of time before the Internet was gonna make Mike’s relationship with him a big deal.
 
I liked the Netflix ones but I can't get into the new stuff. I think it's the bot voices. New Tom just sounds too generic and new Crow sounds like someone is trying wayyyyy to hard to do the voice. Emily and Jonah are pretty funny though
 
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