Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax

[Peaches the Wonder Cat]

One of the Rifftrax writers:

 

[Ralph Barnhardt]

And that's the game.


I know I'm coming into this at the very end of this whole affair but to me it looks like this failed due to bad decisions made by those involved, a lukewarm reception after experiencing the last season, and the economy sucking ass and not leaving people with disposable income to give to a silly puppet show.

 

[Rick's Beef Wellington]

And that's the game.
View attachment 5522775

I know I'm coming into this at the very end of this whole affair but to me it looks like this failed due to bad decisions made by those involved, a lukewarm reception after experiencing the last season, and the economy sucking ass and not leaving people with disposable income to give to a silly puppet show.

The absolute hubris of thinking you need to beg for $4m to make a show that's people talking over a movie when half the country stopped trying to find jobs because the economy collapsed. I know I just rephrased what you said without adding anything, but I wanna be angry too.

Like, make a show and sell it for $8 an episode instead of begging.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

I still can't wrap my head around these idiots wanting 4 million dollars for six episodes. Even with adjusting for inflation I doubt half of the original seasons combined cost that much to make.

 

[grapeshark77]

Was looking at a Reddit thread, I think some of these MST3K fans are going to become personal lolcows to me:



That Crow voice that was in over half the season appears to have been a dealbreaker, but I think it's because it was annoying rather than a woman playing it. Also women have been writing for the show since the early days.

They got to be smug and lost the show. I doubt half of the people will come back to the next crowdfunder after getting told they were sexist and dumb for not liking season 13.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

I still can't wrap my head around these idiots wanting 4 million dollars for six episodes. Even with adjusting for inflation I doubt half of the original seasons combined cost that much to make.

but they might manage to score the rights to Plan 9 after all these years! something never done before!

 

[A Ghost]

https://showmaker.mst3k.com/stories/bKo7z5 Joel posted the last update guess there gonna try again next year

 

[mlanguishi]

Was looking at a Reddit thread, I think some of these MST3K fans are going to become personal lolcows to me:

View attachment 5522991

That's hilarious that they blame 'incel backlash'. Just like they do on Indy/Star Wars and MCU. The young male loner market is (was?) 90% of their markets and they threw it all away. It's all the same crap, drive away your audience while the budgets balloon and then wonder why you failed.

ETA and if Rifftrax is going back to rerecord their 'edge' jokes to be even more PC, I'll be done with them too.

 

[BScCollateral]

I usually buy Rifftrax within a week of them offering something, and my downloaded copy is immune to Winston Smith.
It's a little surprising to see a project fail to get financed with a $5 million target; guess I'm so used to seeing quarter billion budgets squandered on scripts that wouldn't be well-regarded on a fanfic site, that I forget just how much $4.8 million really is.
I hope Joel is able to learn, bounce back from this, and produce something able to stand next to his earlier work.

 

[Ralph Barnhardt]

I still can't wrap my head around these idiots wanting 4 million dollars for six episodes. Even with adjusting for inflation I doubt half of the original seasons combined cost that much to make.

I completely forgot but the original kickstarter was $2 million for three episodes so it kinda makes sense in a very simplistic and dumb kind of way. I still am not sure why it costs that much to make a puppet show that's mostly green screened and watches public domain movies. The cheapness of the original show was part of it's charm.

 

[BScCollateral]

I completely forgot but the original kickstarter was $2 million for three episodes so it kinda makes sense in a very simplistic and dumb kind of way. I still am not sure why it costs that much to make a puppet show that's mostly green screened and watches public domain movies. The cheapness of the original show was part of it's charm.

Better; the original kickstarter had to cover the cost of building the virtual sets, figuring out how to use them effectively, and of course getting stuff to work properly. Making this show isn't like buying eggs; the cost of extra seasons should be reduced because they can reuse the stuff built for earlier seasons.
In 2001, Larry Blamire made Lost Skeleton of Cadavera, a 90 minute B&W satire of 1950s space monster films. The Wikipedia entry states the budget was around $40,000. I am not in the film industry but I can't imagine why an episode of the new MST3K would cost 25x as much.

 

[Peaches the Wonder Cat]

In 2001, Larry Blamire made Lost Skeleton of Cadavera, a 90 minute B&W satire of 1950s space monster films. The Wikipedia entry states the budget was around $40,000. I am not in the film industry but I can't imagine why an episode of the new MST3K would cost 25x as much.

Plan 9 From Outer Space cost $656K adjusted for inflation, which is a little less than how much MST3K wanted per episode to riff it.

It shouldn't cost more to riff a movie than to make a movie.

 

[BScCollateral]

Plan 9 From Outer Space cost $656K adjusted for inflation, which is a little less than how much MST3K wanted per episode to riff it.

It shouldn't cost more to riff a movie than to make a movie.

Yeah, I wouldn't think so. Shooting on film is pretty expensive, and filmstock was probably the biggest part of Plan 9's budget. Of course, that's not necessary when you shoot on video. Lost Skeleton ran into a problem because the first batch of special effects were unusable because they looked too good, so Blamire used a fishing pole and model to get the look right. I'd think that Lost Skeleton was far more expensive than riffing a film.
I suppose rights might be an issue if Joel wanted high-quality versions to riff, which might be under copyright, but still.

 

[Commander X]

One sign that the Reboot MST3K might be having problems were the new sets and effects which were pretty lavish and showy (comparatively) to the kit-bashed look of the original series. Perhaps Hodgson and his new crew should have put the time that was invested in the somewhat expensive-looking look of the new show and hiring Day and Oswalt and the celebrity cameos and "amazing" new characters into "good joke writing" instead.

Which really stings is they had some great films as riffing targets and it's all one big missed opportunity. I saw they were trying to tempt people into backing by announcing one of the films would be Battletruck (1982) and at another time and so on, I would have been all for that but not now with the fast-talking, "cram every empty space with WORDSWORDSWORDS" and "forced, overly complicated jokes that fall flat" fools making up the NuMST3K crew.

Really, if the current MST3K was actually good, they could have had a real great time with movies like this, what a waste:

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

One sign that the Reboot MST3K might be having problems were the new sets and effects which were pretty lavish and showy (comparatively) to the kit-bashed look of the original series. Perhaps Hodgson and his new crew should have put the time that was invested in the somewhat expensive-looking look of the new show and hiring Day and Oswalt and the celebrity cameos and "amazing" new characters into "good joke writing" instead.

Which really stings is they had some great films as riffing targets and it's all one big missed opportunity. I saw they were trying to tempt people into backing by announcing one of the films would be Battletruck (1982) and at another time and so on, I would have been all for that but not now with the fast-talking, "cram every empty space with WORDSWORDSWORDS" and "forced, overly complicated jokes that fall flat" fools making up the NuMST3K crew.

Really, if the current MST3K was actually good, they could have had a real great time with movies like this, what a waste:

iirc Battletruck is a pretty solid movie, a lot stronger focus on tactics and logistical planning than a lot of Mad Max-ish stuff
hardly a sexy bullet point to advertise with, but I recall watching it with buddies and we found that to be a neat touch you don't usually see in this sort of movie

 

[BScCollateral]

iirc Battletruck is a pretty solid movie, a lot stronger focus on tactics and logistical planning than a lot of Mad Max-ish stuff
hardly a sexy bullet point to advertise with, but I recall watching it with buddies and we found that to be a neat touch you don't usually see in this sort of movie

Yeah, it's a pretty solid B from me. Not brilliant, but it would be a much better world if more films were at its level. Of course, a fair number of the classic MST3K films were legitimately decent.

 

[Commander X]

The newest short, A Conservation Carol, a take on "A Christmas Carol" set in the "present" of the late 1970s and Scrooge is an office worker who refuses to carpool in order to save fuel and stave off "malaise" or whatever that peanut farmer Carter was going on about then. Also instead of Jacob Marley, Scrooge is visited by his late mother, chained to the cans of gasoline that she foolishly wasted in life when gas was cheap. Not even the hackiest sitcoms ever staged a take on "Carol" that felt so needless.

It’s the late 70s and Ebenezer Scrooge is mired in a deep malaise. Not about Christmas: his coworkers are begging him to join their carpool. Usually Scrooge is an unsympathetic character, but him not wanting to jam into a van full of chattering accountants before he’s even had his first cup of coffee is one of the most relatable things in the RiffTrax library. Scrooge needs to be taught a lesson about conserving fuel, and it was either “be visited by three spirits” or “be forced to watch a beige educational film.”

You know the drill: Marley’s chains, Fezziwig, “Boy, what day is it?", etc. But no other adaptation has been bold enough to show a televised Jimmy Carter speech smack dab in the middle of the story! Too bad, that really would have been a bold choice for The Muppet Christmas Carol…

As Ol’ Charlie Dick himself said, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor (this was the first quote on Goodreads, we didn’t even have to scroll!) so please join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for A Conservation Carol!

 

[MirrorNoir]

I completely forgot but the original kickstarter was $2 million for three episodes so it kinda makes sense in a very simplistic and dumb kind of way. I still am not sure why it costs that much to make a puppet show that's mostly green screened and watches public domain movies. The cheapness of the original show was part of it's charm.

Problem is that they don't want to do just public domain films (and in our new HD era, the HD prints of a lot of public domain films are private property and have to be licensed sadly) combined with Joel convincing Shout to go against one of the central pillars relating to WHY Shout agreed to resurrect the show in the first place: that the show would use films owned by Shout Factory lock stock and barrel so they never have to worry about losing the rights to the film and being able to do DVD/streaming releases for the revival show for an added stream of revenue off the revival.

 

[Commander X]

Oh, even more Christmas shorts released, first up was The Christmas Spirit, where a cranky stable owner comes to grips with his negative feelings towards the holiday as one half-brother's desire for a pony threatens the fabric of his blended family in a vague mix of (possibly) the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

You want folksy? We’ve got folksy. You want old-timey Christmas? Buddy, we’re soaking in it. The Christmas Spirit is chock full of that homespun Americana yesteryear type stuff, with additional splashes of boyhood sadness, ponies, and a man whose bushy eyebrows threaten to overtake his face.

A Present for Santa Claus, a mother tells her children that since Santa Claus may have had to downgrade this year, they shouldn't set their expectations for their presents too high. But they decide to leave a little something out for him, and it pays off for them.

MIKE: "The lesson here is, bribery works."

 

[Flexo]

MIKE: "The lesson here is, bribery works."

Lines like that are always why I slightly preferred Mike to Joel. Especially as I can already hear his delivery of it in that perfectly pitched sarcasm tone of his.