f13.net

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mst3k/bringbackmst3k/ (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mst3k/bringbackmst3k/)

Give.  Give until your ass bleeds. 

Wonder what's going to happen with rights issues, given Mike is doing this: http://www.rifftrax.com/mst3k

Also, who are playing the robots, etc.

Hrrmmmmm.  Much as I enjoy MST3K, not 100% they can pull it off.  As they mention, there is already a lot of riffing being done out there.  Rifftraxs found the way to hit what ever movie they want.

One thing that worries me is that Rifftraxs is pretty damn funny as is already, though it suffers from one big thing I noticed.  It feels like they are live riffing on it, and just saying shit that comes to mind as they watch.  Which can still be funny, but tends to meander and also not be so great at times.  In the original MST3K episodes, you could tell they'd already seen the movie and had cut the dialog in and out over different takes, so that they burst in at the right time for perfect comedic effect.  Things were a lot more sharper and wittier in general.  The fact he mentions wanting to film the show in front of a studio audience or live stream it makes me think they'll make the same mistakes.


I'll still probably give to this out of nostalgia though.

I did go and see a live Rifftrax-ish thing once (Cinematic Titanic, with a bunch of the MST3k cast) and it was clear that they'd practiced and scripted it prior to the live performance, so filming in front of an audience doesn't necessarily mean it'll be bad -- but I don't see a point to it either, except insofar as they're able to raise money by selling tickets (which was the point of the show I went to -- they were able to pack a theater at $20 a head, that probably works better than trying to sell digital downloads or whatever).

Joel > Mike.

Joel tried this a few years ago with a project called Cinematic Titanic that also didn't involve Corbett, Murphy or Nelson and it just never worked for me.  I'll remain hopeful, but still skeptical.  I'm sure he'll get Trace Beaulieu to voice Crow but I'd be sad with a non-Murphy Tom Servo.  He was always my favorite of that cast and still is with Rifftrax (http://www.rifftrax.com/).

I'd like to see this work out since MST3K was such a formative show for me, but looking back, I really do prefer Mike Nelson as the host, and Rifftrax is already doing spectacular work.  As for worrying about the audience, I wouldn't give it much thought.  Rifftrax's live performances at least are highly scripted and you can tell because on occasion they miss a beat or get tongue tied on a clearly scripted joke.  Granted, this isn't Rifftrax, but Cinematic Titanic also performed in front of a live crowd for years and it wasn't an issue.  I don't think it adds anything either though.

http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/mystery-science-theater-3000-shout-factory-new-season-1201637585/

Trace has said he isn't involved.

Felicia Day is the new Scientist - and Patton Oswalt is the new (TV's Son of TV's) Frank. 

Kind of hating the loss of some of the key elements from the original, kind of loving some of the new cast members.

I was kinda meh on Felicia Day as the new Mad because I usually see her in more straight-man roles, but Patton Oswalt is a yes please.

Oswalt is always a yes please. I've never laughed so much I cried listening to any other commedian.

...and I never cringe so much as watching Felicia Day try and be funny in the "I'm nerdy and quirky cute!" sort of way...so it's really a wash for me.

They've treated the old cast pretty shabbily in this thing so it's left kind of a bitter taste for me.  I'm interested in new episodes but the way they have gone about it hasn't been great.

In what way?  I haven't really paid attention to any of the MST3K drama.

I don't know of anyone being treated shabbily, but I can't name a single person from the original MST3K besides Joel who is attached to this.  Which is bizarre considering just how many writers/voice actors they had over the course of the show who are still around and are obviously very talented.

Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff and Elvis Weinstein are very notably absent.  Beaulieu and Weinstein were co-founders of MST3K way back in the KTMA days along with Joel and stayed long after he left the show.  They even joined him for Cinematic Titanic until that ended in '12.  Nelson, Murphy and Corbett I can understand since they're with Rifftrax, but Beaulieu, Conniff and Weinstein not being involved seems really weird.

It feels like one of those things where a band member "reforms" the old group but he's the only one in it from the original. Even when the other originals don't care, it seems wrong to call it by the name of the old band.

MST3K came out in a time where nothing like it existed and became a cult thing.  Now, everyone does riffing on movies, video games, hell every fucking youtube reaction video is a sort of rifftrax9which is also a thing).  I just don't see a good way for them to renew this show in a way that won't be more than some weird web exclusive that will fade into obscurity.

I love me some Felicia Day, but she's not a comedian. She can write comedy, but her execution was always fairly wooden and I dunno if she's an asset in a remake of MST3K. As Lakov said, it came at a time when there just was a smattering of tv for nerds, and it hit the spot. Nowadays with the nerd chick culture we've developed (don't get me started on this), it may take more than Patton Oswalt to pull this off.

I find your lack of faith ... precitable.

Day's constrained crazy could work here.  We'll have to wait and see.  Her bits are only a few minutes on the show, anyways...

She gets her bits out ?

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/85916/nicholson_agree.gif)

Conniff tweeted he heard about Oswalt basically taking over his character after someone tweeted him about it after it was made public. He made comments like "Found out about it later than everyone did", etc.  They are clearly frozen out of the whole process without even a heads up.  Joel doesn't necessarily owe them anything as he now owns the rights, but the tone of both his and Trace's (and to a lesser extent Corbett) tweets leads me to think the process hasn't been handled very well.

I think it's more upsetting that they are making this a sequel with continuity and yet excluding those that helped create the original.

Dana Gould and Dan Harmon are writing for this too. They are both hilarious, so along with Patton I think they are in good hands. It won't have the same innocent vibe as the original, but it is almost impossible for it not to be funny.

I think Weinstien left at the end of the first season due to *drama*. He was the voice of Tom Servo, but then Kevin Murphy took it over. Kinda surprised that Joel froze the others out, I was under the impression there was genrally good relations between the cast members.

I think Day is stunning but I've never found her particularly funny.

Let's be honest here.  Do the sketches during the breaks in the movie really matter?  While sometimes amusing, they were always just something that was there to give the show some form of structure, and often just awkward/weird without actually being funny.  I usually just changed the channel while they were going on.  Who god damn cares who they cast as the mad scientist?

Well, one of them was also Crow and both of them helped write the thing, so they were fairly important parts of the show.

Well ok, in that regard, yes, they were important at the time.   :awesome_for_real: 

But from what I can see here, Day is just being hired to play the mad scientist.  Who only does shit on the weird commercial break skits.  So cares who the hell they cast.  Being concerned about the voice actors and (most importantly) the writers is the big part, and it looks pretty promising in that regard.

It's pretty shitty that most of the original cast has been cut, as you pointed out, and made me pretty hesitant.  My interest in this has renewed however since they announced other names involved in the project.

Oswalt and Dan Harmon's involvement probably have me the most intrigued.   

Yeah. Though I think that adds up to a really different likely tone. Another thing about MST3K that made it work back in the day is the palpable local-guys-made-good feel about it. I'm not sure having established people who are already big on metafictional comedy really fits the property.

Arise!

This has a release date of April 14th on Netflix, and they've released a cast photo.

(http://i.imgur.com/q0PLjdB.jpg)

Just not sure I can buy into this although the original people (beyond Joel who is involved so you would expect it) all seem pretty happy with how it is turning out, so who knows.

I have similar reservations, especially since I didn't care much for Cinematic Titanic.  Crow and Tom Servo without Beaulieu/Corbett and Murphy are the big problems for me.  That would've been fixed by the introduction of new robots, which I think was the best way to go, but I understand they want to maintain some continuity.  I know I'll still watch it and hope for the best though.

It would seriously fuck me up to have different robot voices, so I can't watch this.

Not like Crow and Servo didn't each change voices in the original series. That said, I have a bad feeling about this one.

They didn't change much.  Tom Servo was voiced by Kevin Murphy from seasons 2 to 10.  Josh Weinstein only voiced him during the KTMA season.  Crow was voiced by Trace Beaulieu from the KTMA season to season 7.  Then Bill Corbett from season 8 to 10.

KTMA and season1 when Josh was Dr. Erhardt and did Servo.

I think I have to give it a chance.  There are a lot of question marks, but a lot of really good signs, too.

Trailer up today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ct0Z2bQndM

Available on Netflix now: https://www.netflix.com/title/80128275

First one ("Reptilicus") was shockingly seamless with the old show. I feel like I was just watching back in 1993 and a new one aired suddenly except there were strange cultural references from a future I hadn't lived through yet.

Felicia Day feels as if she's trying just ever so slightly too hard but otherwise it's pitch perfect.

The second one ("Cry Wilderness") was an impressively bizarre movie.

I'm liking that they've managed to do a higher budget but still very similar feel production -- new intro is fun, the Mads having a house band (The Skeleton Crew) is highly amusing to me, and things generally just work.

The host segments are a little hit or miss (but weren't they always?), and stuff like the monster song from Reptilicus balances out the bits that don't land as well.

So...this is really good.  I've watched the first three episodes and it really is like MST3K has just moved forward without missing any beats.  It's more like a 28th season rather than an 11th season.  It's almost as if we just somehow missed the seasons from '00 to '16 and now suddenly we're able to see the '17 season and there is a new host.  I love it.

I do have some problems, but they're not enough to keep me from loving the show.  I think that there are way too many jokes.  At times it really feels like they're trying to fill as much dead air as possible during the movie.  It is wall-to-wall jokes, and while I appreciate the riffing, sometimes it feels like they'll make two or three jokes about the same situation, and I just need a break to actually watch the movie.  MST3K from the '90s seemed to have more respect for the timing of the actual film that was being riffed.

I also don't like the new person who is voicing Tom Servo.  Crow is fine, and I have no problem with Jonah.  In fact, I think he's pretty great.  But for some reason the Tom Servo voice bugs me.

That said, I'm amazed.  I'm not going to say I was against the revival, but I definitely had serious reservations.  After watching the first three episodes though, I'm a believer.  This iteration is wonderful and I hope it continues into many seasons.  MST3K has a bright future if it looks like this.

I certainly hope they get renewed for additional seasons.

There are rough spots, but it works, and I suspect it'd just keep getting better given more time to run with it.

Writing is solid. Not sold on the voices/host/mads quite yet.

Still don't like Felicia Day but there's is not enough of her for it to ever start bothering me.

God when pearl showed up I got hit hard in the nostalgia.

Goddammit Netflix, why is this a US/UK-only release. Are there really that many competitors in, say, Hungary that you'd have to fight for the right to broadcast MST3K? :oh_i_see:

MST3K MAGA!

I'd be willing to bet that negotiating rights for each of the films they view is a tangled mess for each new country.

God knows it took them long enough to unscrew them enough to start showing them even in the US/uk again. For a long time a lot of the old MST3k stuff just could not be shown because the trail of ownership for a lot of these old obscure films was so wacked they could not track anybody down to get authorization.

Felicia Day is always great, until she opens her mouth.

Wow.  That doesn't make you sound like a piece of shit at all.

That's good.

To be fair she's a terrible actress, she plays herself in every role and just changes outfits. Forrester and Pearl felt like real cheeseball characters, Day just seems stuck in awkward geek mode for the rest of her career.

Which is a far more in-depth critique than Captain "I Wanna Fuck Her But Not Even Going To Waste Words on Dismissing Her Entirely" and his loud Cod-Megaphone.  I guess she could hie herself to a nunnery.  I'm fed up with this shit.  Wheaton is a carbon copy of Day and I just don't see the same fucking nonsense anywhere because Cro-Magnon doesn't wanna dip his dick in that.

(Also, Wheaton was in the first episode and totally fucked his lines.  Also, right beside what appeared to be Erin Grey.  It takes a lot to fuck up lines next to Colonel Wilma Deering.)

Agreed. Wheaton plays Wheaton everywhere and less shy-awkward geek with a different name like Day, so I actually like him less for it. Same shtick but she's a nameless interchangeable fantasy while he's a guy so it has to be him. Neither can act for shit but he gets a pass.

Wheaton is fine, until he opens his mouth.

Day is actually funny in her way.  Wheaton is not.  He is just a putz with enough name recognition to play his geek card loudly.

I can't think of a single show I've ever cared about that Wheaton was a part of as more than a cameo, I didn't give a shit when Day was fucking around on supernatural either.  It's just a shame to have what I think is a very good reboot have that one bland spot on it.

I had to go to IMDB to find his only other role that was more than a cameo besides Big Bang Theory (which you could generously call "recurring"): Dark Matter, which I had completely forgotten he was in (and I like Dark Matter).

So, there's that.

--Dave

I skip the parts when the movie isn't playing, so it sounds like it's ok to check out.  :grin:

Obsessing over the quality of the host segments seems very strange to me.  It's not like the host segments on the earlier seasons set a really high bar.  I always found the cringeworthy public access quality level kinda charming.

As for the new show, I like it.  Agree with the general sentiment here that it very much has the feel of the old seasons, but I like that they didn't try to 100% mimic them either.

Except people aren't obsessing over the quality of the host segments, only the quality of the hosts.

The public-access-quality was always deliberate as well as necessitated by the shoestring budget. Did you not have Saturday/ Sunday Afternoon UHF channel movie hosts on the west coast growing up? It's 100% an homage to that once they realized they'd have shit for budget.

I've had 'every country has a monster' in my head for days. It's a pretty great bit, looks like they had a really fun time filming it.