I was an assistant writer on Ator: the Fighting Eagle. There were a LOT of us. If you want a peek behind the scenes, I can talk about that. I was a hardcore MST3K fan from the Mike days, but even while writing jokes for it, a dream of mine, I knew it wasn't going to work. I've never even finished the episode that I helped write.
@@SardonicSays Ok, let's do this. I was an assistant writer on Ator: the Fighting Eagle I am not in the WGA or in SAG, but a former friend of mine that I helped is in those; but hey I didn’t sign anything, and the word former is in there, the heck with it. I was an MST3K person from way back in the day, though my antiquated TV didn’t get the Comedy Channel for a stupid reason, my TV dial literally only went to 36 and the Comedy Channel was on 54 so I just didn’t get it. The Sci-Fi channel was 33, so that’s what I caught. In high school, we even made our own knockoff MST3K called “Interstellar Conundrum Today!” and watched bad movies that the guy at Suncoast would just let us have for a dollar each. There has always been this big Mike or Joel debate, and a lot of that comes down to their style in terms of performance and character, but there is a bigger factor: creative control of the property. I’ve got some tea to spill here and there, but let’s just say that I had an inside track knowledge on MST3K coming back at all, and let’s just leave it at that. The Netflix MST3K is a Joel piece though, through and through and Joel really likes to have locked-in creative control of a property. Why then there would be 17 writers if Joel wanted that much control is beyond me. The writer on the show calls us over and we do some riffing. By us, I mean me and like 4 other people, so those 17 writers, a lot of them have friends also helping so it’s jokes from maybe dozens or maybe a hundred people. They’re not supposed to do this, but it helps their profile to build this wall of humor. The issue with this sort of humor is that you don’t get a spectrum, it’s just nerdy guys and their nerdy (mostly guy) friends. So, when you mentioned the McPherson Suspension System, nobody is going to float that in the room. But you do get a TON of “hey, remember this movie from 40 years ago that was also bad” but NOBODY watching is going to get that, but all the writers do and then they assume everyone will. References to other movies are soft jokes. But hey, I teach history and am an educator, so I’ve got more of a range beyond just obscure movies from 40 years ago and Marvel comics. The movie is carved up into 15 or 20-minute chunks, so you’re not usually riffing the entire movie. Jeez, in high school WE would riff the whole thing, thus the running joke of “Big McLargeHuge” and “Beef Steakface” runs through the whole episode of Space Mutiny. (I have all of them on a shirt somewhere) One writer MIGHT get the whole movie to riff, but they might not. With it carved up this way, the kinds of jokes will have a cut-off point of that style of humor from one writer (or team of writers) to another at a predictable point in the show. We would have a timeline on a laptop to log jokes. Not who says the joke, but let’s be real, the Netflix riffers all have the same sort of comedy voice. It’s not like having Kevin Murphy sing something, because he's a singer, or Mike deliver something in that different sort of tone. Bill Corbet has more of an irritated voice, like when he complains about the hero being the hero in "Time Chasers". What we're building is a wall of jokes and time codes by the time we’re done. Often different jokes at the same timecode, meaning hey, they’ll pick the best ones later when making the episode. Fine, lots of variety is helpful, so why not! But with that many writers, this might be thousands of jokes per episode. Maybe even 10,000 or more of them to sift through. That’s why it feels overwritten because it absolutely is. It's joke joke joke joke joke and they don't have time to land or run all over the movie, your brain can't absorb joke power of that magnitude! Also, the writer I wrote with would reject jokes he didn’t get, and he has the final say because he’s the official writer, making that corridor of humor really narrow. He didn’t get a joke I pitched when a guy asks a girl her name (and she was clearly not interested) and I said “My name is no” because of that famous (at the time) Meghan Trainor song of the same name. He had never heard of this song and because he didn't get it, he assumed that nobody would. We even played it on UA-cam, and he was like no. Wouldn’t even put it in the wall of jokes he was compiling. But the show isn’t for you as a writer, it’s for a common audience, and you’ve got to cast a wide net. That’s why the show has this sort of bad, inside-joke college improv comedy feel. It's also why the jokes feel overexplained. Because the performers aren’t writing them like in Space Mutiny, we would often write in explanations into the notes part of the jokes. Like “sing this in this tune: link to Meghan Trainor song” but a lot of those notes saying this is from X Y or Z feel like they made it into the performance in the final product. So many writers not being in the same room means that everything needs to be explained, but even to the audience. I also don’t know if this is a Joel thing either, but it might be, like if he doesn’t get the joke does it need to be explained? Another major issue: Joel has the final say in a lot of things, even in pre-production. He also picks all the movies. He’ll have directives about what the jokes should be in the writing process. For “Ator: the Fighting Eagle” I was told to not joke about 2 elements. 1: No jokes about incest. 2: No jokes about how Ator’s first fighting style move is kicking people in the crotch. If you’ve seen the movie, that’s most of the first 15 minutes. I managed to sneak an incest joke in there, when told they’re not brother and sister “Oh, now I’m not into it”, but they have a whole plot about him getting married to his sister and then they have a wedding, it’s so full of incest! Afterward, Ator meets his fighting mentor, and the first move he learns is a kick to the junk. Another thing we were told specifically NOT to joke about. WHY EVEN PICK THIS MOVIE JOEL? But that’s about the first 15-20 minutes, so that’s what we had. That just about ends my journey with this. But with the jokes written with that density, with nothing given time to breathe, it’s so taxing to watch that I didn’t even finish the episode that I wrote part of. A childhood dream of mine turned into “ehh… what else is on”
@@mr.layman1060 Dark Corners Review of Ator has much funnier riffing and all in under ten minutes. Plus it was all written by one person! Check that one out and compare it to the MST3K reboot version.
@@a.champagne6238 I'm weirdly curious about that! I also think there is a rifftrax of Ator too? I don't know, I need a little time between all of this incest and crotch-kicking.
@@SardonicSays what about moon zero two it’s so unwatchable without mst3k loved the starcrash and mac and me episodes of Netflix’s mst3k i saw mac and me when i was 6 in 1990 on vhs a family member forced me to watch it 12 times on vhs gave me nightmares for life glad mst3k made fun of it one of their funniest episodes as well as moon zero two and starcrash is a great b movie and one of the funniest mst3k episodes ever made im talking about the mst3k episode starcrash saw it on dvd from my library in 2011 ❤
You can't go home again. That's what it comes down to. There was magic in a show that was written/produced/filmed in a business park outside Minneapolis.
I totally agree. I don't outright hate the newer seasons but it's just not the same, and that's ok. I don't waste my time hating new Star Trek shows, I move on to other things and can still enjoy DS9 if I want to.
When you have someone like Patton Oswald and Felicia Day on your show, you have to put the kid gloves. Those people need to go to parties with celebrities who might have a joke made about them on the show. And Hollywood folk are very sensitive to criticism. When the show was made in Minnesota by Midwestern comedians who would never meet Joe Don Baker while walking down the street, well you have some freedom to not pull your punches.
I think there's more to it than that, but I do agree that that is part of it. With MST3K you had a small, tightly knit crew working on a shoestring budget and most of the crew were all in on the writing so they all flowed together and apparently all liked each other as well (with one notable exception - Jim Mallon but.. that's another topic for another time). Now you have a really large crew for the new show and a rather large budget for each episode, and it often feels like actors are just reading a line rather than riffing a show and they never seem to make mistakes. In the old MST3K and Rifftrax Live shows, they make mistakes, flub lines, tell a line too early - that all adds to the experience Example: Can you remember any times in the new seasons where you can hear Jonah, Baron or whatshisface as Crow (or the girl crew) stifling their laughter from a recent joke? I can't. I don't know if there are any cases of it happening or not, but I can't recall any. Hearing Mike lose his shit in The Brute Man when Crow is imitating the old ornery shop keep: "God is dead? GOOD!" we just don't get that now. Rifftrax is kinda starting to do that too where it feels like they are just sort of going through the motions, but the end product still has enough charm that I still come back to buy more every holiday period. Jeez I ended up writing way more than I intended. But I hope I made my point clear enough
Looking over all of this, I really didn't realize how much MST needed its Midwestern passive aggression until it was gone. What makes Joel screaming "DO SOMETHING!" at Manos so hilarious is how out of his nature it is; compare that with Jonah and the Bots spending the whole time bouncing around the theater like they're hopped up on PixyStix and something is definitely lost. The new seasons have some good episodes and lots of funny jokes, but they can't help but come across as L.A. hipsters doing a solid impression of the real thing. IMHO, I still think that Rifftrax is the true heir of the MST legacy. Something else that gets overlooked is how much consistency there was in the original series. Kevin was there from the very beginning to the very end, Mike was head writer almost as long, and even the people who eventually left had plenty of time to make their marks and shape the show. Joel bringing in a bunch of newbies (talented as they are) and declaring the results as MST sort of feels like Paul McCartney hiring a new backing band and calling it the Beatles...
It's funny, because I myself remarked many times, myself a southerner having moved to the midwest, "it just lacks that Midwestern bored, stressed complaining feeling" that the old ones had. And you nailed it. The Midwestern passive aggression made it so enjoyable. It just felt like the previous guys were just having fun and the new ones all feel like they're trying really, really hard.
Yes exactly- Mike and Joel’s vibe was aloof, disinterested and vaguely bored observers of the movies and of society through the lens of the movies. In fact part of the schtick of their being launched into space was they were considered lazy and incompetent by their overlords. It was almost like they were doing you (the viewer) a favor by commenting, and almost couldn’t be bothered. On the other hand, Jonah and the rest come off as being desperate to keep their jobs as commentators and heirs to the franchise. Terrible.
24:00 Wide eyed frizzy haired women were visual code for 'crazy lady' since silent film, up to Rocky Horror and Young Frankenstein. The second example, well, the actress bears a stark resemblance to the first silent movie Nosferatu actor, they could be twins.
Frizzy hair and wild eyes probably goes back to Vaudeville. It's a stage actor thing, not meant to be offensive. Imagine you're in the cheap seats at the back of a theater and they have a character who's supposed to pop out and hiss. Big hair, dramatic makeup, wild eyes. So even the people in the back can see. That's the joke. Similar to Japanese noh theater.
Very late reply here, but I always saw it as them just adding a zinger to uncomfortable close ups. For example, they do this several times with Troy in 'The Final Sacrifice'. Not sure what made Sardonicsays so uncomfortable about it (although I can guess).
Jonah and Emily also don't have any relationship to the bots. Joel built the bots, both within the show and behind the scenes, giving him a father, children relationship with them. Mike was sort of the brother they liked to pick on.
Noe entirely true.Emily had a hand in designing the Simulator of Love,and in giving her Crow and Servo their own personalities.She's more like the cool babysitter,playing along with the 'bots during the host segments,especially in her first episode,Beyond Atlantis=Mother Crabber,anyone?
@@clarencesmith3522 Ok but she didn’t build them…. And probably wasn’t even born when the original show was on the air. It would be like child Shirley Temple suddenly being 50 year old John Wayne’s sidekick.
I just didn’t find the new ones with Jonah, or the other female host funny at all. Didn’t like the concept of the Moon base or “ Kinga”. Why that name for Pearl’s grand daughter? I thought from Season 8, that female forressters had names that were all Gemstone names.
I actually enjoyed a few of the episodes from the Netflix run, but my two chief complaints were that the bots sounded too similar to each other, and they would NOT... LET... JOKES... LAND! Just a stream of rapid fire sentences that didn't even let you process the punchline before the next one was fired off.
Looking back at the first season 1 Joel episodes, and the original before-Comedy Central series episodes, I noticed those hardly had any riffing, and frankly I'll take too many riffs over none at all. I think the timing got a bit better after the first few Jonah episodes. It's nothing new, people back in the 90s were divided on the "Joel VS Mike" episodes too.
I can't help but think of the time the bots were trying to figure out why wet t-shirt contests were popular. And they proceeded to test water absorbance of 2 different shirts
Something I noticed was: When they make fun of BLAST HARDCHEESE, when he makes that girlish scream, they giggle at their own joke and then mock the scream again. It feels like they're making the riff ON THE SPOT, it feels genuine. Joel had more restraint when it came to laughing at their own riffs, but he still would from time to time. This new Netflix series, feels a bit forced. It very rarely feels "organic" like they're making stuff up on the fly. Sure, you knew when the riffs were prepared and scripted with the "classic" show, but they would add moments that felt as if the joke was made on the spot and maybe they were sometimes. But that spontaneity seems to be missing, at least that's how it seems to me.
Let's be honest, MST was always based on the premise of a couple of friends finding a bad movie playing on TV and making fun of it to entertain themselves. When you watch the original show, the audience has time to absorb the movie with the hosts as they start to tell the jokes. That's what helps make the riffs funny. You see and understand what's happening in the movie which helps you to understand the riffs. In season 11 and 12 its like the first thing they thought was "Rifftrax has X amount of jokes in their movies so we have to do twice as much!" The actor in the movie says one line and each host belts out a riff at lightning speed and then the other actor in the movie says his line and each host tells another breakneck joke. 5 seconds has gone by in the film and the audience hasn't even started to know what's happening in the scene and we've already heard 6 jokes. It doesn't feel natural like friends sitting around watching a bad movie coming up with jokes on the fly. It feels like 17 writers all trying to get their jokes in. You wouldn't think of a joke that fast to say right after the movies actor completes his line, let alone all three of you having a joke ready to go. It's just so horribly executed. Quality is so much more important then quantity!
It went from a show made by the stoners/weirdos/class clowns to a show made by hyperactive theater kids who want so, so badly to impress their older siblings. The older episodes aren't always great and the new ones are never outright bad...yet why is it I can struggle through a season one episode in one go but it took me over two months to get through the six episodes of season 12?
That's exactly right. Theater kids (and post-relevance Patton Oswalt) dragged the whole thing down with those interminable intermission segments. It was a chore to get through the episodes I watched. A tiny fraction of the charisma of the original runs.
Biggest problem I had with the Netflix seasons was the rapid pace of the jokes - it was relentless. It reminded me of that episode of Community where they invite Pierce to riff over movies, he hires people to write jokes for him and delivers all of his jokes, one after another, without a pause for breath, all in the same tone of voice. That was S11&12 in a nutshell, and finding out they were churning episodes out behind the scenes explains a lot. Classic MST felt like making fun of a movie with friends, something all of us who watched the series did and still do. New MST felt like a production line, assembling 'product'.
I really appreciate the noticing that MST3K was Midwestern and very working class. There were jokes that came out of my own upbringing like "church hopping" relatives, Promise Keepers, all the trucker, mechanics, low level admin references reflected everyday life for 90 percent of the population. They also took pot shots at "coastal sensibilities", whereas most comedy condescends flyover states. We don't work as a hobby, and we don't need dehumanizing.
I can't tell you how hard my family and I laughed when the sirens went off in Teenagers From Outer Space (I think?) and Joel went "Ope, first Wednesday of the month."
Wow you're really projecting so much onto this show. Sounds like you've got some kind of inferiority complex. Might want to leave your flyover state for a few weeks to see that people on coasts are mostly blue collar workers too. See a psychologist bro.
@@parasol.p Or Giant Spider Invasion which was just one big laugh towards Mike and Wisconsin. Being from Indiana, EVEN I GOT SO MANY OF THE JOKES. And the best part was how years later, the 'PACKERS WON THE SUPER BOOOOOWL!' joke still hold power that when they DID win, my whole friend group was shouting that line. 😂
The flatness of characterization is a huge factor. You can't tell Crow from Tom from Jonah, they're just interchangeable riff-delivery devices, and none particularly charismatic. They're just kinda... there.
When new MST was announced, I was excited like everybody else. And my enthusiasm waned every time new info was released. Nobody from the original show? A bunch of comedians from L.A. doing all the hosting and voices? No "Minnesota-isms"? I stopped caring about ten minutes into the first episode I watched. It was like a lower quality MST3K knock-off. Nobody on-screen felt like they were friends and liked joking with each other, they're just reading off a teleprompter fairly lifelessly. And not paying attention to the new series, it seems that suddenly there seem to be new hosts and voice actors? Again, there's no real bond between the new people, whereas you could tell the original MST3K team were old friends and genuinely like riffing with each other. And the sad thing is, all the original group are all still doing very similar things to MST3K and are available.
Comedians from L.A.? Why are you blaming this crap on Los Angeles? Felicia Day is from Alabama, Patton Oswalt is from Virginia, Jonah Ray is from Hawaii, Rebecca Hanson is from Iowa. Head writer Elliot Kalan is from New York, writer Dan Harmon is from Wisconsin, and writer Joel McHale was born in Italy. How does L.A. figure into this equation at all?
Anyone who has spent their lives getting socially normalized in LA for the past decade or more has nothing interesting to say. At least not to the 99.9% rest of the nation.
I've watched EVERY mst3k and all the rifftrax I can get my hands on, so I think I can speak with quite a bit of authority when saying "what am I doing with my life!?" Also "the Netflix reboot sucked." I have a lot of problems with it but mostly it's that the new guys sounds like they're too rehired. The jokes are unnaturally fast and delivered with a smirk that I find profoundly unnatural and unfunny. Additionally it seems like every joke pitched makes it on the show. Like they feel a need to fill every second with "jokes" even if they can't think of anything funny to say. When I watched it I found myself making fun of the riffers. I contemplated removing my homemade MST3K bumper sticker because I don't want people to think I support the Netflix show.
I got in to MST3K during the Mike era and Mike has always been my favorite. His easy going attitude and deadpan delivery are what drew me in. Also Bill and Kevin ARE Crow and Servo for me, the other voice actors are jarring. That being said I still appreciate Joel and Jonah episodes. What really blew my mind is how cerebral the riffs were but the target audience seemed to be younger, the MST3K fan club was little kids sending in drawings of the robots. It is all really bizarre.
Now that you mention it, I too always did find the fan letters from little kids jarring and weird- I was in my 20s in the 90s and even I, an “old movie” buff myself, had trouble getting many of the obscure references back then. I remember wondering if the letters were fake and part of the gags….
@kenny3217 -- I agree with you that Kevin IS Servo, but Trace will always be the true Crow. Don't get me wrong, I really like Bill Corbett, and he did a *fantastic* job taking over as Crow. And Bill is light years better than whoever is voicing Crow these days.
To me, the most depressing thing about the revival of MST3K is that the two episodes that the fan channel MST3K vs Gamera: Round 2 made just *felt* more like MST3K than any episode of the new seasons. That actually still has the 'some dudes making this for $0 in the middle of nowhere' feel that makes the original series so special that the new seasons totally lack.
I'm reminded of Super Eyepatch Wolf's analysis on why modern SImpsons doesn't work where a big part of it is they're not putting enough time into crafting each joke and the comedy suffers for it. I remember a Comedy Central MST3K documentary (this is MST3k) where they're watching the movie being riffed twice, first with just taking notes and then trying to riff it. Regardless of how many writers this just seems like a more organic way to replicate the feel of watching a bad movie with friends
I've started to use the older episodes to go to sleep. Mostly, because I started to miss my brothers and friend just yelling insane bullshit and having fun with whatever it was they were doing. I only saw the intro of Season 11/12, but remembered how much modern entertainment was suffering without pleasure to it. From the little bit I saw my dad watching, it only got a smirk from one of the riffs. Just feels unnatural, as it were.
Nick and Norah Charles are by no means the most obscure MST3K reference. It took me literally years to finally get the Tom of Finland joke in Escape 2000.
My favorite joke that took me a bit to understand was from my personal favorite episode: "Deathstalker & The Warriors From Hell". Someone says the villain's name (Troxartas) and they reply, "...cool could you get the cover of Mars Hotel on the side of my van?" Eventually looked up "Mars Hotel" and finally understood it all. "Trucks Artist".
obscure references was part of the fun back in the day. Usually the line was funny just by the delivery and the situation in the film. If you actually got the reference it was icing on the cake.
Not only does the PlutoTV app (Available on Roku and other digital TV type things) have an MST3K channel, it has a RiffTrax channel and a Shout Factory channel that features "MySTie Mondays". So much content for free!
I always thought it was because they didn't have Mike Nelson as a writer. He was the head writer from season 2 onward. Even when Joel was the host, Mike Nelson was the head writer. In my opinion, that was what was missing.
Mike is hilarious even when he's on a podcast or stream trying to be halfway serious, like when he did some episodes of the Audio Mullet Christian podcast with Doug TenNapel and Ethan Nicole.
Mike is also a conservative Christian. Which you probably don't know because it rarely affects his writing. Joel was very liberal for his time. But the new cast are... Uh... Coastal. That doesn't work for the show. They lost the heart of the writing.
It's like how you can just feel when Conan was heading a simpsons episode. Both Conan and Mike have such unique comedic signatures that you can just sence them through the material. And with Mike yea, you can tell when he's not there. It lacks his charm and flair.
@@KevinJDildonik I think Mike being Christian really helps with his writing because he has a good sense of what's good or wrong and thus knows the bounds on how far to go with "dirty" jokes which there are plenty of but they're never so risque as to be considered offensive or pornographic. There's that line in the kathy Ireland song where crow says "I'd like to come over and roll in your clover and kiss your blarney stone" which is clearly sexual innuendo but it's not explicit or anything. I think him being a regular Christian American is a big reason why he's so funny because our society was founded on christian principles and practices, and he's honed his craft very well. He also writes in his own voice so it's genuine like it seems like he really is being held captive and forced to watch these movies even though he's just some guy from Wisconsin that worked random minimum wage temp jobs. Jonah it's like who the hell even is this nerd and why are they trying to make it seem like he's cool and not just some not quite hipster guy that plays bass guitar.
Oh man do I MISS annotated MST3K on UA-cam! It was so interesting. Great video and a side by side analysis of episodes, especially timing. I've always admired how original MST didn't step on movie lines.
The issue was there was no reason for MST3K. Mike, Kevin and Bill were still riffing, and the writing was far better. Also, they are good comedians, with timing.
@@jonahfalcon1970 Yep, I think it’s the only spin off series which lacks the silhouettes and the bots, that actually works, and is even better than the original. But alas, I must watch the Rue McClanahan episode 1000 times….
I ADORED MST3K (especially the Mike episodes). Can quote nearly entire episodes, and they still make me laugh. Absolutely love RiffTrax (Mike, Kevin, and Bill unhindered by censors) - it's sublime. When I heard a new MST3K was en route, I made 2 rather large donations and was EAGERLY anticipating it. Then I saw the first episode. Not one laugh. Reptilicus - REPTILICUS! - and not ONE laugh. I gave it the benefit of the doubt & watched all the other eps. It's SOOOOOOO not funny. There are episodes of "Small Wonder" that are funnier (for you youngsters, one of THE most unfunny shows ever produced). It's echt California semi-hipster 'tude and falls flat every single time. The REAL "tell" is that when you're group watching old eps of MST3K or group livestreaming RiffTrax with friends, nobody ever mentions the new MST3K. In a recent BIG livestream of Rifftrax where they had some of the new MST3K people, over half the livestream participants put up messages like "bathroom break" or "this totally takes the breath out of the room" when Jonah & Joel took the mic to riff. I'm sure there is an audience for the new MST3K, and more power to those fans. For me and mine... we're sticking with the originals and Rifftrax.
LOL I suspect we are of the same generation, when you mention Small Wonder, which incidentally I found VERY creepy, even at age 15 or so which I was at the time. I agree with you, none of the current iteration is funny. To be honest I think the secret to the success of the original show was Mike who I believe was always the head writer- Joel was more of a performer and producer than writer. But Joel was 1000 times as charismatic as Jonah or the rest.
@@historyandhorseplaying7374 There are some funny jokes of course as I do remember laughing here and there throughout the new season episodes but the host segments I could do entirely without as they're nowhere near as funny or engaging as the original series host segments. The Joel invention exchange segments were funny as were dr forrester and TVs Frank, the dynamic between them all was just fantastic they were all their own unique characters that played off each other well without having to always rely on writing tropes like the straight man, none of those three ever only play the straight man. The Mike segments starting with the invention exchange and then gradually shifting away from that was great as are all their interstitials with just Mike and the bots. I like pearl as well with brain guy and doctor bobo, the episode where mike is on trial for blowing up observers planet was great and so was quest of the delta nights having pearl switch places with mike at the start. Overall though the new show doesn't have any of those fun qualities in the host segments, the bots and jonah don't have any real chemistry based on their unique personalities. One of best bits ever was doctor forrester and tvs Frank had two ladies move in and come over so they tell mike to entertain them and they do that superfragicalalisticexpialaWACKY play about the government sucking ass which is true and it's an awesome bit but it ends up scaring off the women so dr f and Frank just keep on bagging their comic books, hilarious! None of that charm in the new show and the voice is obviously too coastal elitist, the midwest voice is far better as it's the heart of the country, we get all four seasons every year and people both visit here from all over the rest of the country and vice versa, people from the midwest travel a lot seemingly more overall in general than people in most other states. It's clear to see how people from California write differently from midwesterners because it's not always summer in the midwest you know? Not always sunny and nice out, much more gloomy weather that affects your mindset.
Netflix really did this to themselves by imposing such absurd deadlines for season delivery rather than treating the show as episodic content that could be developed over time. Their entire model is based on binge watching, and the show does not lend itself to that. S13 did a great job of demonstrating how 11 and 12 could have been SO MUCH BETTER had they been allowed to do it at a more relaxed pace.
I got a chance to watch Beyond Atlantis recently and despite being done with yet another entirely new cast, it somehow felt right at home with the older episodes.
Im so glad i found this vid. Every few years i go back and watch old episodes and i recently thought 'why do i never re watch the newer ones?" And realized i couldnt even remember them despite the fact that i saw them in my 30s and i first started watching the old ones when i was like 9. So then i thought it must be nostalgia making me biased but generally that is not how i roll so i did some searching and found this. Your video really helps put it into context.
I'm 58, my son is 34. We first started watching MST3K back in the mid-1990s, after he got over the fact that it was on at the same time as "Earthworm Jim" (we only had one cable-connected TV at that time). Neither one of us were really excited when Netflix brought the show back.
Yeah the clips of them riffing Twilight were hilarious. I recently watched their rifftrax of Chuck Norris's Breaker Breaker and it felt like classic Riding With Death
Don’t forget that there were rewards in the Netflix series crowdfunding that involved submitting your own riffs. How many of those riffs were they forced to cram in each episode?
I was a backer and if I remember correctly there wasn't lots of that. It was an expensive tier and (if memory serves correct) there were maybe a dozen openings for getting your own riff on the show.
I'm the same caliber of fan as you are (I go to sleep each night listening to MST3K) and you put your finger on exactly why the Netflix version didn't work for me, either. I couldn't articulate it until I saw your video. Also: you are correct that Space Mutiny is the greatest classic episode.
I first found this show back in the 90s when i was very young. I still remember at the time that my parent's cable provider used the same channel for comedy central and vh1, splitting the time up throughout the day. None of my friends had ever heard of it and it felt like a hidden gem that was all mine. I eventually learned later thru the internet that tons of other kids grew up with the same experience. We're all so connected now, i wonder if it's even possible for kids to have that same experience anymore, the feeling that you've found something great that no one else knows about.
Megaforce was covered by the old MST3K crew when they started Riff Trax. It is one if their best episodes, you should also contrast that to NF version of MST3K
Rifftrax did a riff of MegaForce back in August of 2015, so I took the reference in the new MST3k as a callback to *that* riff. Someone on the new MST3k saying, "Yes, we watch Rifftrax too!". I'm pretty sure there are some other new-MST3k riffs which seemed (to me) to be references to Rifftrax releases. It is certainly possible that is just because of how many Rifftrax I watch, and was not part of the process on new-MST3k.
Just FYI-- Nick and Nora Charles (played by William Powell and Myrna Loy) were a married couple famous for their witty, sophisticated banter in the "Thin Man" detective series back in the 30's. Makes it a pretty funny, spot-on riff.
"No politics" is the single most reassuring, inviting thing a decent human being can see going into a discussion room or reddit or whatever. Doesn't matter if they're "left", "right", or "other", if they're talking about it online (as opposed to face-to-face), they are going to be assholes about it. You want to discuss politics, you do it in person, where people have motivation to be civil. "Internet muscles" are steroid sized on people discussing politics online.
A wise man once said: "ALL media is political. If you think a piece of media isn't political, you either agreed with the message or you were too stupid to notice it."
@@rwulf A statement that broadly subjective can be dismissed out of hand. You don't even have to look into it to know it isn't true considering how expansive the term "media" is. Nevertheless, I will offer one of countless examples of non-political media: Gary Larson's Far Side cartoons. I mean, if you go look with enough intent, you could find some that you could desperately argue are political, but... Well, you know. Should I go on? You MUST know that statement isn't true, surely. "A wise man"?
Wow, what a video. While I'm hardly the most hardcore or old MST3K fan, I still consider it to be one of my all-time favorite shows, and my lack of love for the Netflix seasons definitely hit me in a way I couldn't quite articulate until recently, and your video is a phenomenal vessel for that. As someone who wanted to dig deep into why the show wasn't clicking for me, your research is honestly prize-worthy. Everything I would've liked to see is there, from the types of jokes made, frequency, and the more qualitative assessments of how similar jokes differ in timing and delivery, along with the character-adjacent stuff with Jonah and the Bots. It was cool to me seeing the difference in the relationship between Joel & Mike and the Bots, how they had more respect for Joel as their father and way less for Mike, it was interesting to see. The old hosts felt more like just some pals, when I get the impression the newer hosts are just entertainers. Also, dang, your bit on the puppetry hit home for me. Going back to classic episodes, I love how Kevin, Trace & Bill would make the most use of Tom/Crow's limited mobility, on top of being the voices for them. As an aspiring animator, I'm particularly drawn to how much more dynamic it looks when they would lean Crow or Tom back if something came barreling towards the screen, as opposed to the new bots holding their arms up somewhat slowly while the same gag occurs. The new bots seem far more static than the original crew. Even when just in their seats, I liked how Crow and Tom would fidget in the seats, how Tom would chuckle and bounce up and down a bit, or Crow lean in, down, or out to put emphasis on a riff. And yet, the new bots getting up and running around the theater doesn't have the same appeal to me, it's much more forced and less chill than previously. I haven't seen anything along the lines of "Hey, I figured it out, he's got his script taped to the floor!"- a-la Monster A-Go-Go- from the newer seasons. That said, I've been tepidly interested in Season 13, after catching some of Santo In The Treasure of Dracula during the Turkey Day Marathon. Noticing how it did feel considerably more in-line with the older style of delivery and timing, I thought it was a pleasant surprise. Still saving the end of this video for after I watch that, since I'd love to check out some newer MST3K I'm unfamiliar with that's well-done. Hope that trend continues, and seeing them go back to their small-budget roots and not Netflix is very promising. I'm sure it will never quite match the original or be the same, but hey, progress is progress. I will say, I'm not sure about what all went down behind the scenes, and how much lingering animosity there is among various cast members (if any)... but I would love it if we could at some point see not just guest appearances, but actual writing from more alumni, seeing Mike, Kevin, Bill, Trace, Frank or whoever else back for more than a guest appearance I bet would be lovely. To me, part of the appeal of the original run was how tight-nit the cast and crew were to the writing and performances, and I think helped keep the style and quality throughout all of it's cast and network changes. Obviously since Mike was the head writer, I definitely think a lot gets lost in the shift to a host of new writers, but I digress. In any case, phenomenal video, the MSTie crowd is lucky to have you in it!
To me, the Netflix series actually suffered from the success of the original. The original had a low budget, bunch of buddies watching crappy movies on the couch, feel. I grew up in north central Kansas, but the "Scandihoovian" feel of Minnesota and Wisconsin in the 70's and 80's drew me in immediately when I first discovered MST3K. It had an organic, local TV charm. It seemed like Netflix was trying too hard. The original felt like a labor of love, the Netflix episodes feel like a product. I doubt Netflix could ever have come up with something that was as brilliant on as many levels as the "slits and pier" joke from The Sword and the Dragon, or something a wonderfully simple as Joel reminding Gypsy that "Joel created you and has a wonderful plan for your life" when she wanted to riff in Hercules and the Captive Women. Also, not only were Tom and Crow's personalities pretty much deleted, you could hardly tell their voices apart.
The thing about the Netflix seasons not having much conflict, and the jokes being softer... I feel like they were trying to get kids on board. A lot of people grew up with MST3K, and maybe they were trying to appeal to kids more, so a new generation could have their own seasons of MST3K they watched as kids. Lots of parents put Netflix on for their kids, right?
I really hate the "This is a show/movie.for a new generation" horse shit - it's such a slap in the face to the loyal fans, and treats them like they don't matter anymore. I'm all for modernizing things....up to a point. But, more often than not these reboots are not focusing on entertaining the core audience - they're attempting to acquire new consumers. When you dismiss the fan base in favor of people who have no connection to the property you just end up pleasing neither- and pissing off the fans to boot.
The Nick and Nora Charles riff from Space Mutiny was a movie reference from the Thin Man films. The guys are big movie fans as are most Misties. Not just bad movies. Nobody is supposed to get ALL the references.
That was an odd example for him to use for an obscure reference. Even if someone doesn't know Nick and Nora Charles, one search will return several thousand results explaining who they are. Compare that to Appendix 2 in the _MST3K Amazing Colossal Episode Guide_ that listed their (as of 1996) 50 most obscure references many of which were of the Mary Jo Pehl's hometown is Circle Pines, MN level of niche information.
lol I thought the same thing. The first 3 Thin Man movies are really classics of screwball comedy most midwesterners have seen on odd hour uhf broadcasts or metv or what have you. I would have gone with like a firesign theatre reference from the fade out of track 5 on side c of dear friends or somethin lmao.
During the original run, Joel was asked if they ever were concerned about people not getting certain jokes/references. Joel said something along the lines of, "We don't ask ourselves 'will people get this?' we say 'the right people will get this.' "
I get comparing MST3K old vs new...but I would put the Netflix episodes against Rifftrax of the same years. The Rifftrax cast share a working relationship going back to the mid 90's in the original series. The new cast has never really jelled. There have been some gems, but I rarely laugh-out-loud like I do watching Rifftrax. To be fair though, I'm from MN and in my early 50's...they speak to me on a cultural level.
It’s not geographic, it’s cultural and generational. I’m in my 50s too, we grew up watching the same 4 TV channels, watching the same commercials and hearing the same jingles- of course we’re going to appreciate the same riffs on these familiar things. The new series can’t possibly be about the same things because the kids doing it didn’t grow up with what we did, and if they riffed what we’re familiar with, not what they know, they’d come off as insincere.
Older millennial here, I still watch MST3K every week! I'd say Mike was my favorite host.... I feel it shaped a big chunk of how comedy fits in my everydaylife. There has been no greater programming ever shown!
Older millennial here as well and I'm the same. Mike is also my favorite but I have favorite episodes from Joel as well. My dad actually introduced me to them growing up and we still joke with each other using MST3K riffs. Currently the Edmond Fitzgerald references at the beginning of Gorgo are stuck in my head. After my very first exam in college I was a bit overwhelmed wondering what I got myself into...I went and found Space Mutiny and immediately felt better.
For me, Netflix = Corporate MST. It has no soul, just designed to try and make money. I was very happy to see Mike, Kevin and Bill back, and will stay with Rifftrax and my MST classic library!
41:39 Hollywoob elite just see the show as “talking over a movie, the plebes will love.” They’re sort of like the Psychlos in Battlefield Earth who think rat is man’s favorite food.
I agree with you on a lot of this. A few other issues I have with the newer seasons are: 1. Joel created the robots, so he was sort of a father figure to them, scolding them when they misbehaved. Mike was more like their brother, so they picked on him a lot and could get away with silly, dangerous activities that Joel never would have allowed. I don't know what the robots' relationship is to the new hosts. They seem to be just people who happen to be on a ship together, making fun of bad movies out of boredom. 2. The host segments are unconnected to each other. I'm probably in the minority here, but I never cared for the invention exchanges. I liked the Mike era best because they were no longer trapped in orbit around Earth, and that made it possible to do host segments that told a continuous story, as opposed to, "We're going to do random funny things for a few minutes." Don't really care about the letters at the end, either. In the past, there weren't many MST fans and viewers didn't have any way to know what others thought about it except through Joel reading the letters. We have the Internet now, we can read a million letters, blogs, and social media posts about the show if we want to. Time spent on invention exchanges and reading letters could be used to create a coherent story, instead. 3. The voice of the new Crow sounds like it belongs in My Little Ponies. I keep expecting to see Rainbow Dash flying by. 4. In general, the show just seems way too shiny and perfect and scripted. The older shows had a certain charm to them, because not everything was perfect, they messed up occasionally, flubbed a line here and there, and the sets, props, and puppets were obviously made on a low budget from whatever they could find. The new episodes are a huge, glossy production and have far too many writers. You'll see this in a lot of Hollywood movies, which often have a huge number of writers and producers, and the movies are complete crap. There's a reason why "Too many cooks spoil the brew" is a popular saying. 5. The old series ended with Mike and the robots getting back to Earth. How are the robots trapped on yet another ship by yet another mad scientist? Did they explain that, and I missed it? 6. I don't care for the new robots that they added. They don't add anything interesting or different to the show, and now there are more characters to write for, which adds a complexity that isn't needed. A limited cast is one thing that made the original show so great.
The biggest problem for me by far was that the characters weren't given the chance to play off each other. In the original MST, Crow might laugh if Servo makes a good joke, or Mike might pick on Crow if he says something silly. That banter is so important, and it's completely missing in the Netflix version, making it a soulless joke factory.
Also, the new robots don't have any discernable individual personalities. Any line or joke from any of them could be given to any other and it wouldn't make a lick of difference. That's absolutely deadly for comedy; Joel seems to be under the impression that MST can operate like SNL and swap out performers/characters at will, but it really can't. Feeling like the characters are real people with distinct opinions and relationships was vital to the original show being so engaging. That's all lost with the reboot.
@@episodenull agreed. I love Joel but I think he George Lucas'd his own creation - He figured out the formula but messed it up by trying to make it better. Or he completely lost touch somewhere.
@@michaelmattioni4993 I met Joel at a con just before the new series started. He talked about “something new and big” being in the works. He was a nice guy- he even signed my Gizmonic helmet and gave me a poster, but if I’d known what was coming I would have warned him NOOOO!!!! Please don’t do it!
Well done on making a 1hr plus video essay! That's a lot of work and a lot more effort than people realize it is. I'm glad to see you're getting a lot of traction on this one as well. The context of how and when the 90s MST3k and the 2017 revival show were produced I think are really important factors in comparing the two shows. Throughout much of its earlier run (less so in the later years) Best Brains by and larger were lords of their own demesne. They had a small crew, and a small cast, they were all local and they had their little studio in an industrial estate where they cranked out this little movie-riffing puppet show getting little or no hassle from TV studio executives. The 90s show was a crew of people working out how to make a show as they went along. It started out improvised and moved to a scripted format. They were initially less rigorous about screening the movies. This led to Sidehackers being picked only for the production team to discover it had a violent SA scene. Most importantly there was fairly strong continuity with production, crew, and writers. Over 10 years they refined a workflow for making the show. There was a whole lot of lighting in a bottle about how that show got made. In 2017, you've got a 5 million dollar kickstarted show on the largest streaming platform. They've got to introduce the show to a new audience, try to reach the old audience and introduce a whole new cast of characters. The production was, by all accounts, a lot more hectic. There was a lot more tech involved. There are celeb cameos. There are a lot more moving parts. The more you introduce to a project the more complex it gets. The cast is by and large more "name" performers than the original series ever had. It was a bigger beast of a show than the original was. It mostly worked. Season 11 is stronger than 12 but that's my preference. The riffs are a little too fast but that seems like either a mandate or a failed experiment in trying to appeal to the assumedly short attention-spanned audience. Which they corrected in the Gizmoplex era. The amount of writers is necessarily a bad thing (it's particularly common for US shows to have multiple writers or even have writers just come in and do one or two episodes) nor do I think that the people who make the show necessarily also have to write the show (although everyone on current era-MST also writes on episodes). I think the issue of "voice" really comes down to the fact it's a whole new cast and for all intents and purposes a whole new show. So it's no surprise that by his 3rd season Jonah and his bots have found their feet a little more. Which I think the new shows have by now. Emily et all have a little headstart there because they've been doing the tours and you can tell there's a different chemistry there. What it comes down to is MST3k is a niche show. It's hard to binge and I don't think it was ever going to have a long run on Netflix. It's good that the show still exists and can hopefully exist for a while more.
Great video! You went over pretty much everything i thought was wrong with the Netflix era. Primarily and how a lot of the riffs were both wordy and rushed, a bad combination. I think another issue is how they didn't seem to want any moment of "dead air", so to speak, and thus tried to cram in as many riffs as they could whenever a character in a movie stopped talking. It really hurt the pacing of the jokes.
"I'm insane!" was a good one. Her eyes go cold and wide. Possibly the actress being nervous as well as not having a line with the camera on her for that amount of time.
As an old school MST3K fan (and since then a RiffTrax fan), I was … open, though guarded … about the reboot. I lasted one episode. My impression was that the original show riffs seemed organic and spontaneous. I know they were very much scripted and rehearsed but that’s how it seemed - it seemed REAL. Whereas the reboot lost that magic, and was too high-tempo, obviously planned and choreographed. It was like watching a 3-man fast break in basketball where the players are flying down court, passing back & forth, and you see them advancing to the goal and inevitably delivering a score. It was technically proficient and polished … and not funny or friendly or entertaining.
I've been enjoying RiffTrax too but to be honest, the last few years have been less funny. Comedy has been under attack so a lot of them are fearful of making any jokes that might get them in trouble. You watch original MST3K and early Rifftrax compared to today. They skew older if you've ever been to one of their live shows. So not sure why they feel the need to sanitize their content.
3:07 END!! END!! Lmao! now thats why i loved the old ones. Their movie watching pain was what i found the best. Rock climbing, sand storm aka deep hurting, Neptune men, manos the hands of fate sketch..glorious gold. I didn't find much of that in the new ones. Sure spot here or there (Hercules killin the dragon with crap weapons) but nothing like END!! END!! 🤣
My buddy told me mst3k would be at comic con San Diego. I passed and he couldn't understand why. I told him I was a mistie and it was a sorry rehashing. The event came and went and I asked was it worth it. He shrugged and said 'meh'. He also paid $300 a ticket. Dodged that bullet but also was pissed they feel they can profit off the name alone when they can't hold a candle to the original
You can still access the annotations using a chrome plugin. At some point all the annotations were archived, and can be re-added to videos where they existed previously.
You did a fantastic job analyzing this. The video was also well put together and though out. I'm even more impressed you did this without professional writing experience. Because you hit nearly everything on the head in terms of collaboration and chemistry. Re-writes are the best thing you can do in comedy if something doesn't work . But you explain the extremely rushed pace of the netflix series which simply doesn't allot time for this crucial step in comedy. Kudos to you !
Even if Netflix couldn't recapture that old lightning in a bottle, it's heartening to see how many people had their world outlook molded by MST3K. I appreciate your effort in identifying what made a whole generation fall in love with Joel, Mike, the Bots, and the Mads. I hope The Gizmoplex is more successful in passing the torch to the next generation of potential Mysties than seasons 11 and 12 were.
Don't know why you find the "SA" scene somewhat offensive. It's a direct quote from the opening lyrics of the early 90's rap song 'Insane In The Membrane' by Cypress Hill. Opens with, "Who you tryin' to get crazy with ése? Don't you know I'm loco?" Was a pretty popular song at the time.
For me, honestly, it was the Mads above all that held it back. I like Jonah just fine in his role and he's a nice guy in person to boot. Some of the movies, like Cry Wilderness and Circus Magic, are absurdities for the ages. Day and Oswalt, though, despite being the biggest named actors ever associated with the project, have negative chemistry and together manifest an absolute void in the fabric of comedy as we know it. It's downright *weird* how poorly the Mads are handled here. Like they're written and performed by space aliens trying to imitate the outward form of something like the Forrester/Frank dynamic while actually understanding nothing of these strange hyoomon emotions.
For me it was this: the original had an intimate feel and felt like it was made by a small group, the new one feels over produced and too dense. Never gonna beat the original EVER!
Great vid! I'm probably about a lone voice here, but I really enjoyed "The Gauntlet" the second season of the Netflix show. I thought it was settling into a rhythm and I actually really like the host segments in general in the Netflix show and the increased musical/song elements. I've been dragging my feet on season 13 but yea, I'll start watching those now! In general I appreciate the care taken in your comparisons and even though I still like the Netflix years, and wasn't disappointed by them, you've made a lot of good points and ensured that I will be taking in the new stuff! PS, 44 year old fan of MST3K since almost the beginning (got into about '91!)
I think MST3K inspired an entire generation of UA-camrs. I don't think the channel I'm with, RBComics, probably wouldn't exist without it. So when I saw this video, I felt it hit home. I don't know anyone who prefers the Netflix series to the original. It just feels...toothless.
44:15 This reminds me so much of the when the Star Wars Prequels were coming out, and the the actors were all struggling during interviews to try and explain who their characters were supposed to be.
I'm a veteran MST3K fan since the 90s, through the various hosts and channels, plus the fantastic experiences of live shows with everyone except Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett. And I enjoy Rifftrax. I couldn't put my finger on what troubled me about the Netflix seasons. I admired everyone involved. I didn't warm up to the big production values and couldn't figure out the deal with Gypsy dropping down. Now, this video has answered it. I didn't think over an hour would be necessary, but I loved everything covered. I'm glad some of the issues you raised are being addressed. Thanks for the many hours of analysis you devoted. Better you than me 🙂
I’m 49 and the first time I saw a MST3K episode was in 1992 when I was visiting some family. I was instantly hooked and have seen most of the episodes. Personally, I don’t mind the Netflix episodes. Avalanche is at the top of the list and I love the 2 Wizards episodes, so I don’t know…I don’t have the hang up about them as others. Maybe it’s because humor is subjective and I’m a “you do you” type person? Maybe it’s because I truly have bigger worries in my life than when I was 18 and I watch MST3K to get away from my problems? Or maybe it’s because it’s just a show and I should pretty much relax?? Whatever it is, I appreciate taking the time to do an analysis, but I think it is what it is and I still get a chuckle out of things regardless of the era. Cheers!
A friend of mine tuned me into this video because it was exactly what we were talking about weeks ago, XD well done. I worked with Joel before the kickstarter and did storyboards. It was going to be a MUCH grander remake of the series with a new robot and Bill Hader was originally going to be the host before Jonah if I remember correctly, haha. Ultimately I think there were a lot of big ideas that had to be cut down for Netflix because it's a company that basically picks and chooses how much money they give a production. (also, a big problem in EVERY studio is that more X (writers, board artists, animators, etc etc) means that fixes the issue of less time. I dunno when productions will learn that time helps more than anything. They need to release the Live shows... those were great.
Thank you for making this exhausted look into MST3K. This show holds a special place for me as my brother and I would watch it growing up. To this day I can randomly say a line as Crow and he responds with Servos line. I love the show, the ups and downs, I still love it and man do I miss those annotated videos that helped me get some of the references kid me missed. Space Mutiny remains my favorite, but this Island Earth is close. Lastly, flawless use of the first Red Letter Media video I saw all those years ago with Phantom Menace. Layers of reference, every scene is so dense.
I thought all the hissing and "I'm insane" riffs of Lt. Lamont were a continuing gag that started with "It's Melissa Manchester!" when she's first on screen in Space Mutiny.
I started watching MST3K back from the "shared tapes" back in the day and I was excited about the Netflix reboot. I tried watching and quickly discovered several things: First, the new show had no "heart". These didn't feel like friends watching a movie together, they felt like actors delivering lines. There was no sense of a shared sensibility. Second, everything felt too polished. You get the feeling that the actors are delivering the lines for the 35th time rather than the second or third. Third, (and I realize this is a just taste) Felicia Day is a wonderful actress but she's just not great at "wacky" comedy and Patton Oswald is never, EVER funny in any circumstance. Finally, the whole thing feels a bit...neutered. A percentage of funny comments about old films will inevitably skew to subjects such as the breast size of an actress or the phallic shape of a space ship. The episodes of the new series always seemed to avoid these jokes for something less likely to offend anyone but also less funny. They don't sound like real people riffing. I now simply watch the Comedy Channel episodes when I can find them.
Nailed it. This is almost exactly the way I explained to my wife why the new season wasn't working for me. I also feel many if the "riffs" feel either forced or overly simplistic. For instance, whenever anyone says something like "I thought I was Dale", I have no confidence whoever said it even understands what that even is outside of a recurring MST joke. And when a character in Reptilicus shows up who looks like Sailor Moon, the joke is literally, " Sailor Moon?". Certainly there are hundreds of ways to make that joke without being so deliberate.
24:21 This Nosferatu reference is easy to explain. The villain in the 1922 film _Nosferatu_ has a passing resemblance to the actress they are riffing on here. A quick Google Images search for Nosferatu will show you what I mean.
I can't stand Patton Oswald, and the other Mad's come off as try hards, especially Felicia Day. Jonah is ok and I eventually got used to the Tom and Crow's Netflix voices, but their voices for the Emily episodes of season 13 are God awful. Crow sounds like a bratty little kid because he's being voiced by a woman doing a kid voice. And Emily is another try hard. None of the new cast members come off as genuine where in the original series Joel and Mike just felt like themselves.
The Megaforce reference was probably put in there for the benefit of those who had seen the Megaforce Rifftrax; which was done about 4 years before the Netflix Return
@@SardonicSays Well, it was a "lol latino people talk like this" joke. Part of the joke is indeed rooted in the Latino gang stereotype... but it's a meme, not some bizarro racial attack clear out of left field. The rapper who dropped the original line is half Mexican and half Cuban. He is Latino. He talked like that... that is who he was and good for him. At the end of the day, it's ok to chuckle at absurdity... even if that absurdity comes from a different skin color like goofy 90s rapper street gangs who aren't Scandinavian.
The one on Netflix didn't have the best writers or riffers. It felt like L.A. hipsters who were like oh I loved that show I bet I could do that. No, no you can't. Your not as funny. And it felt a lot more scripted.
Hey this was lovely, also you have good taste in both media and politics, which goes to show that MSTies are still one of the best fanbases. You touched on the biggest thing that bothered me watching season 11 was the lack of chemistry between the bots and the host. Some of my all time favorite segments in both MST3K and Rifftrax (even in The Film Crew) is the banter or authentic giggle fits the crew have with each other. Mike breaking down in The Brute Man with the cashier for example, or pretty much any of the live shows, you can feel the love and resentment the guys have with their material and each other. Two other issues I had with the new show, again already touched upon, was the jokes just felt rushed and lifeless. Like they had to hit a quota, not letting the jokes settle. Some of the jokes were coming in so fast that they hit before the set-up, which was weird as hell. Finally my other issue was I also wanted the bots to be swapped out, and I know Joel has his heart set on keeping them a fixture for the show, but it is off-putting. I have zero qualms with new hosts, but when I see the bots I just hear the voices I grew up with. Also you got me sold on trying out season 13, which is quite the feat because I thought I was done with MST3K. My poor wallet. Thank you for this.
Yeah the new season had some good moments, Jonah is great in the skits (that Kaiju song is 10/10) but the riffs were way too rapid fire. They need room to breathe. There’s also a weird little lie I’ve seen going around that “MST never made political jokes”. Joel and Crow bashed Clintons, Kennedys and Republicans relentlessly (I’m rewatching Joel’s era right now) and Mike was constantly having a go at Democrats. If anything, they were less directly political and went too soft in Netflix stuff.
@@CrowTRobot Hell, I distinctly remember a joke from Zombie Nightmare being Mike saying something to the effect of 'George Bush (sr) tried to warn us about the Canadian healthcare system!'
@@CrowTRobot Mike was also constantly making fun of the South (Laserblast), putting down white people (Catalina Caper), etc etc… and in his book he’s very Leftist. I don’t remember him ever being conservative?
It felt softer, like the PG version of MST. It wasn't a train wreck, in fact a lot of the stuff with the mads was fun, and the callbacks were just as enjoyable to watch. Even the minimal set design was fun to get accustomed to. Thing is is that humor sometimes fall flat because they seemed to have focused on telling more jokes and doing stuff with the silhouette rather than keeping hold to the insanity of the movie. It's not the best, but it wasn't a deal breaker either.
I had to chime in on your "greatest classic episode" pick. It's kinda funny how everyone has different favorites. I do love Space Mutiny and the 'squeaky man scream' always makes me laugh. Personally, though, my favorite is The Final Sacrifice simply because Rowsdower is the greatest hero this side of Canada. My mom prefers Eegah and "Hooray I won!" while my dad leans more towards The Horrors of Spider Island and the hilarious fiery plane crash scene.
To quote Pearl, the new MST3K 'sucks on toes'. It was devoid of the soul that made the original so heartwarming and enjoyable. TY for making this breakdown
Popped up in my feed. Awesome video. You hit the nail right on the head with this. I didn't hate the Netflix run, but something was just off compared to Sci-Fi and Comedy Central eras.
The problem for me was the guys playing Tom & Crow don't give them the personalities they had in the classic show. I can't even tell who say what line. The host scenes aren't that funny and go on too long sometimes. Jonah isn't as cynical as Mike or Joel, I don't recall him scolding the bots the way they did.. Good analysis. The PTSD joke doesn't bother me, it's about a character in a film, not a real child. I liked when they got dark. I recall even the classic series had riffs on something in the background that I would need many repeat viewings to finally get. Haven't seen Gizmoplex yet.
@43:40 hits it in the head for me.. Jonah is just kinda...there. so much of the Netflix run has him just kinda feeling like he's just...there. so very LA.
As a fan of Baron, Hampton and Jonah's standup. Jonah's specific history as a kid from Hawaii with MST fandom, he named all of his comedy specials after lines from the MST Movie This Island Earth, and witnessed the seed of him interviewing Joel on the Nerdist podcast with Chris Hardwick & Matt Mira, I'm happy for him and have no issues. I do admit the LA-ness of the fellows is present but the newer references are just fine with me.
I'm only 25 minutes in, so not sure if you mention this (sorry, eager to comment), but for me the huge, huge problem is that not only did the actors all record the riffing separately, but that it was sped up in post so they could squeeze more riffs in. Timing is everything in comedy. BTW, someone I know who knows someone who worked on the audio end of things confirmed this for me.
@@SardonicSaysYeah it’s such a bad instinct to do that. If you have to squeeze them in, you’re not doing it right. I just reread the email and he says it only happened “5 or 6 times” in the entire season, but it’s emblematic of a problem: too many riffs, and too many of them rambling on and on rather than being short and to the point. Personally I think the far worse issue is recording each riffer separately. That is how you kill chemistry.
For me, the reason why the Netflix series doesn't work is 1. The new hosts just... don't have the "it factor", or charisma to pull the show off. and 2. The writing just... isn't funny for the most part. The jokes with the original MST3K people felt natural, and there was a smooth flow with their riffing and their comedy segments. The delivery of the new hosts completely lacks that smooth, comfortable flow. It seems like they're primed to be in "WACKY LOUD COMMENT!" mode rather than the smooth, very jaded and "So this is my life now... *sigh*" feel that the original show's characters had. Riffs in the old show are smooth and match what's on screen. In the new show, they're often shouted in a wacky tone, and this makes each joke rather jarring. I can make this analogy. Watching the riffing and comedy in the original show was like a smooth ride in a car from one destination to another. The new show is like riding in a car that's loud, riding a bumpy, rock covered road, with no suspension, where the brakes are being slammed on every couple seconds. The delivery in the new show is just... jarring... and a lot of the delivery takes away a lot even from their funny rifts. I really gave the new series a chance. I watched the whole thing. But at this point, I can't stand it. It just... doesn't work. Watching the new show just makes me want to watch the far better original series.
"The new show is like riding in a car that's loud, riding a bumpy, rock covered road, with no suspension..." So you're saying it's like a car with... no springs? :)
I agree. The entire schtick of the original show was that the guys were forced to watch movies and forced to comment…. So they did, but only grudgingly. The new one on the other hand… is “how many scripted lines can I enthusiastically yell out per minute”
Thank you! This is a topic that's bugged me for a long time. For some reason the Netflix just didn't have the magic of the original or even of the better Rifftrax.
I was an assistant writer on Ator: the Fighting Eagle. There were a LOT of us.
If you want a peek behind the scenes, I can talk about that. I was a hardcore MST3K fan from the Mike days, but even while writing jokes for it, a dream of mine, I knew it wasn't going to work.
I've never even finished the episode that I helped write.
Oh I think we'd all be very interested in any details you want to provide!
@@SardonicSays Ok, let's do this.
I was an assistant writer on Ator: the Fighting Eagle
I am not in the WGA or in SAG, but a former friend of mine that I helped is in those; but hey I didn’t sign anything, and the word former is in there, the heck with it.
I was an MST3K person from way back in the day, though my antiquated TV didn’t get the Comedy Channel for a stupid reason, my TV dial literally only went to 36 and the Comedy Channel was on 54 so I just didn’t get it. The Sci-Fi channel was 33, so that’s what I caught. In high school, we even made our own knockoff MST3K called “Interstellar Conundrum Today!” and watched bad movies that the guy at Suncoast would just let us have for a dollar each.
There has always been this big Mike or Joel debate, and a lot of that comes down to their style in terms of performance and character, but there is a bigger factor: creative control of the property. I’ve got some tea to spill here and there, but let’s just say that I had an inside track knowledge on MST3K coming back at all, and let’s just leave it at that.
The Netflix MST3K is a Joel piece though, through and through and Joel really likes to have locked-in creative control of a property. Why then there would be 17 writers if Joel wanted that much control is beyond me.
The writer on the show calls us over and we do some riffing. By us, I mean me and like 4 other people, so those 17 writers, a lot of them have friends also helping so it’s jokes from maybe dozens or maybe a hundred people. They’re not supposed to do this, but it helps their profile to build this wall of humor.
The issue with this sort of humor is that you don’t get a spectrum, it’s just nerdy guys and their nerdy (mostly guy) friends. So, when you mentioned the McPherson Suspension System, nobody is going to float that in the room. But you do get a TON of “hey, remember this movie from 40 years ago that was also bad” but NOBODY watching is going to get that, but all the writers do and then they assume everyone will. References to other movies are soft jokes. But hey, I teach history and am an educator, so I’ve got more of a range beyond just obscure movies from 40 years ago and Marvel comics.
The movie is carved up into 15 or 20-minute chunks, so you’re not usually riffing the entire movie. Jeez, in high school WE would riff the whole thing, thus the running joke of “Big McLargeHuge” and “Beef Steakface” runs through the whole episode of Space Mutiny. (I have all of them on a shirt somewhere) One writer MIGHT get the whole movie to riff, but they might not.
With it carved up this way, the kinds of jokes will have a cut-off point of that style of humor from one writer (or team of writers) to another at a predictable point in the show.
We would have a timeline on a laptop to log jokes. Not who says the joke, but let’s be real, the Netflix riffers all have the same sort of comedy voice. It’s not like having Kevin Murphy sing something, because he's a singer, or Mike deliver something in that different sort of tone. Bill Corbet has more of an irritated voice, like when he complains about the hero being the hero in "Time Chasers".
What we're building is a wall of jokes and time codes by the time we’re done. Often different jokes at the same timecode, meaning hey, they’ll pick the best ones later when making the episode. Fine, lots of variety is helpful, so why not!
But with that many writers, this might be thousands of jokes per episode. Maybe even 10,000 or more of them to sift through. That’s why it feels overwritten because it absolutely is. It's joke joke joke joke joke and they don't have time to land or run all over the movie, your brain can't absorb joke power of that magnitude!
Also, the writer I wrote with would reject jokes he didn’t get, and he has the final say because he’s the official writer, making that corridor of humor really narrow. He didn’t get a joke I pitched when a guy asks a girl her name (and she was clearly not interested) and I said “My name is no” because of that famous (at the time) Meghan Trainor song of the same name. He had never heard of this song and because he didn't get it, he assumed that nobody would. We even played it on UA-cam, and he was like no. Wouldn’t even put it in the wall of jokes he was compiling. But the show isn’t for you as a writer, it’s for a common audience, and you’ve got to cast a wide net. That’s why the show has this sort of bad, inside-joke college improv comedy feel.
It's also why the jokes feel overexplained. Because the performers aren’t writing them like in Space Mutiny, we would often write in explanations into the notes part of the jokes. Like “sing this in this tune: link to Meghan Trainor song” but a lot of those notes saying this is from X Y or Z feel like they made it into the performance in the final product. So many writers not being in the same room means that everything needs to be explained, but even to the audience. I also don’t know if this is a Joel thing either, but it might be, like if he doesn’t get the joke does it need to be explained?
Another major issue: Joel has the final say in a lot of things, even in pre-production. He also picks all the movies. He’ll have directives about what the jokes should be in the writing process. For “Ator: the Fighting Eagle” I was told to not joke about 2 elements.
1: No jokes about incest.
2: No jokes about how Ator’s first fighting style move is kicking people in the crotch.
If you’ve seen the movie, that’s most of the first 15 minutes. I managed to sneak an incest joke in there, when told they’re not brother and sister “Oh, now I’m not into it”, but they have a whole plot about him getting married to his sister and then they have a wedding, it’s so full of incest! Afterward, Ator meets his fighting mentor, and the first move he learns is a kick to the junk. Another thing we were told specifically NOT to joke about. WHY EVEN PICK THIS MOVIE JOEL?
But that’s about the first 15-20 minutes, so that’s what we had.
That just about ends my journey with this. But with the jokes written with that density, with nothing given time to breathe, it’s so taxing to watch that I didn’t even finish the episode that I wrote part of. A childhood dream of mine turned into “ehh… what else is on”
@@mr.layman1060 Dark Corners Review of Ator has much funnier riffing and all in under ten minutes. Plus it was all written by one person! Check that one out and compare it to the MST3K reboot version.
@@a.champagne6238 I'm weirdly curious about that! I also think there is a rifftrax of Ator too? I don't know, I need a little time between all of this incest and crotch-kicking.
@@SardonicSays what about moon zero two it’s so unwatchable without mst3k loved the starcrash and mac and me episodes of Netflix’s mst3k i saw mac and me when i was 6 in 1990 on vhs a family member forced me to watch it 12 times on vhs gave me nightmares for life glad mst3k made fun of it one of their funniest episodes as well as moon zero two and starcrash is a great b movie and one of the funniest mst3k episodes ever made im talking about the mst3k episode starcrash saw it on dvd from my library in 2011 ❤
You can't go home again. That's what it comes down to. There was magic in a show that was written/produced/filmed in a business park outside Minneapolis.
I totally agree. I don't outright hate the newer seasons but it's just not the same, and that's ok. I don't waste my time hating new Star Trek shows, I move on to other things and can still enjoy DS9 if I want to.
You’re right. You can’t go home again, but the nice thing about UA-cam is you can watch most of the episodes of the original series whenever you want.
When you have someone like Patton Oswald and Felicia Day on your show, you have to put the kid gloves. Those people need to go to parties with celebrities who might have a joke made about them on the show. And Hollywood folk are very sensitive to criticism. When the show was made in Minnesota by Midwestern comedians who would never meet Joe Don Baker while walking down the street, well you have some freedom to not pull your punches.
YEP.
I think there's more to it than that, but I do agree that that is part of it. With MST3K you had a small, tightly knit crew working on a shoestring budget and most of the crew were all in on the writing so they all flowed together and apparently all liked each other as well (with one notable exception - Jim Mallon but.. that's another topic for another time).
Now you have a really large crew for the new show and a rather large budget for each episode, and it often feels like actors are just reading a line rather than riffing a show and they never seem to make mistakes. In the old MST3K and Rifftrax Live shows, they make mistakes, flub lines, tell a line too early - that all adds to the experience
Example: Can you remember any times in the new seasons where you can hear Jonah, Baron or whatshisface as Crow (or the girl crew) stifling their laughter from a recent joke? I can't. I don't know if there are any cases of it happening or not, but I can't recall any. Hearing Mike lose his shit in The Brute Man when Crow is imitating the old ornery shop keep: "God is dead? GOOD!" we just don't get that now. Rifftrax is kinda starting to do that too where it feels like they are just sort of going through the motions, but the end product still has enough charm that I still come back to buy more every holiday period.
Jeez I ended up writing way more than I intended. But I hope I made my point clear enough
Looking over all of this, I really didn't realize how much MST needed its Midwestern passive aggression until it was gone. What makes Joel screaming "DO SOMETHING!" at Manos so hilarious is how out of his nature it is; compare that with Jonah and the Bots spending the whole time bouncing around the theater like they're hopped up on PixyStix and something is definitely lost. The new seasons have some good episodes and lots of funny jokes, but they can't help but come across as L.A. hipsters doing a solid impression of the real thing. IMHO, I still think that Rifftrax is the true heir of the MST legacy.
Something else that gets overlooked is how much consistency there was in the original series. Kevin was there from the very beginning to the very end, Mike was head writer almost as long, and even the people who eventually left had plenty of time to make their marks and shape the show. Joel bringing in a bunch of newbies (talented as they are) and declaring the results as MST sort of feels like Paul McCartney hiring a new backing band and calling it the Beatles...
L.A. hipsters doing an impression. My god, that's so spot on.
You nailed it, that lack of Minnesota was the heart of MST3K.
Exactly right. Me personally the last straw was when I noticed Justin Roiland's name in the credits. It's not for me and I moved on
It's funny, because I myself remarked many times, myself a southerner having moved to the midwest, "it just lacks that Midwestern bored, stressed complaining feeling" that the old ones had. And you nailed it. The Midwestern passive aggression made it so enjoyable. It just felt like the previous guys were just having fun and the new ones all feel like they're trying really, really hard.
Yes exactly- Mike and Joel’s vibe was aloof, disinterested and vaguely bored observers of the movies and of society through the lens of the movies. In fact part of the schtick of their being launched into space was they were considered lazy and incompetent by their overlords. It was almost like they were doing you (the viewer) a favor by commenting, and almost couldn’t be bothered. On the other hand, Jonah and the rest come off as being desperate to keep their jobs as commentators and heirs to the franchise. Terrible.
24:00 Wide eyed frizzy haired women were visual code for 'crazy lady' since silent film, up to Rocky Horror and Young Frankenstein. The second example, well, the actress bears a stark resemblance to the first silent movie Nosferatu actor, they could be twins.
Same thing i gathered, plus i think the headturn on the first woman was a bit Quick and horror like
Frizzy hair and wild eyes probably goes back to Vaudeville. It's a stage actor thing, not meant to be offensive. Imagine you're in the cheap seats at the back of a theater and they have a character who's supposed to pop out and hiss. Big hair, dramatic makeup, wild eyes. So even the people in the back can see. That's the joke. Similar to Japanese noh theater.
Very late reply here, but I always saw it as them just adding a zinger to uncomfortable close ups. For example, they do this several times with Troy in 'The Final Sacrifice'. Not sure what made Sardonicsays so uncomfortable about it (although I can guess).
Every time I see Kevin Murphy talk, I'm struck by how well Tom Servo is able to operate that human puppet.
Jonah and Emily also don't have any relationship to the bots. Joel built the bots, both within the show and behind the scenes, giving him a father, children relationship with them. Mike was sort of the brother they liked to pick on.
Noe entirely true.Emily had a hand in designing the Simulator of Love,and in giving her Crow and Servo their own personalities.She's more like the cool babysitter,playing along with the 'bots during the host segments,especially in her first episode,Beyond Atlantis=Mother Crabber,anyone?
@@clarencesmith3522 Ok but she didn’t build them…. And probably wasn’t even born when the original show was on the air. It would be like child Shirley Temple suddenly being 50 year old John Wayne’s sidekick.
I just didn’t find the new ones with Jonah, or the other female host funny at all. Didn’t like the concept of the Moon base or “ Kinga”. Why that name for Pearl’s grand daughter? I thought from Season 8, that female forressters had names that were all Gemstone names.
@@clarencesmith3522no she didn't. In the narrative of the show yes, but in reality she did nothing.
I actually enjoyed a few of the episodes from the Netflix run, but my two chief complaints were that the bots sounded too similar to each other, and they would NOT... LET... JOKES... LAND! Just a stream of rapid fire sentences that didn't even let you process the punchline before the next one was fired off.
This. 100% this. No sense of timing whatsoever.
Completely agree on both accounts. The timings felt off and I had a hard time telling who was talking at times.
I still enjoyed it, but yeah, the timing is often off.
The voices being too similar and not much differentiation or distinction in the overall personalities.
Aside from that, I liked Netflix seasons.
Looking back at the first season 1 Joel episodes, and the original before-Comedy Central series episodes, I noticed those hardly had any riffing, and frankly I'll take too many riffs over none at all.
I think the timing got a bit better after the first few Jonah episodes.
It's nothing new, people back in the 90s were divided on the "Joel VS Mike" episodes too.
I love the KTMA experience in the dead of a calm night, the crunching of popcorn, characters coming in and out of the theatre. It's almost dreamlike
ngl “I broke down the structure of the jokes and assigned them categories” seems like the kind of thing that Tom and Crow would do in a host segment
Lol omg yes!! And they'd have a visual, like a chart, and they'd use a pointer!
I can't help but think of the time the bots were trying to figure out why wet t-shirt contests were popular. And they proceeded to test water absorbance of 2 different shirts
Something I noticed was:
When they make fun of BLAST HARDCHEESE, when he makes that girlish scream, they giggle at their own joke and then mock the scream again. It feels like they're making the riff ON THE SPOT, it feels genuine. Joel had more restraint when it came to laughing at their own riffs, but he still would from time to time. This new Netflix series, feels a bit forced. It very rarely feels "organic" like they're making stuff up on the fly. Sure, you knew when the riffs were prepared and scripted with the "classic" show, but they would add moments that felt as if the joke was made on the spot and maybe they were sometimes. But that spontaneity seems to be missing, at least that's how it seems to me.
"WHO TOOK MY PURSE!"
My point elsewhere was that the Mike/Joel and the bots were REacting, not acting. The other Jonah and the bots were acting, not reacting.
Let's be honest, MST was always based on the premise of a couple of friends finding a bad movie playing on TV and making fun of it to entertain themselves. When you watch the original show, the audience has time to absorb the movie with the hosts as they start to tell the jokes. That's what helps make the riffs funny. You see and understand what's happening in the movie which helps you to understand the riffs. In season 11 and 12 its like the first thing they thought was "Rifftrax has X amount of jokes in their movies so we have to do twice as much!" The actor in the movie says one line and each host belts out a riff at lightning speed and then the other actor in the movie says his line and each host tells another breakneck joke. 5 seconds has gone by in the film and the audience hasn't even started to know what's happening in the scene and we've already heard 6 jokes. It doesn't feel natural like friends sitting around watching a bad movie coming up with jokes on the fly. It feels like 17 writers all trying to get their jokes in. You wouldn't think of a joke that fast to say right after the movies actor completes his line, let alone all three of you having a joke ready to go. It's just so horribly executed. Quality is so much more important then quantity!
It went from a show made by the stoners/weirdos/class clowns to a show made by hyperactive theater kids who want so, so badly to impress their older siblings.
The older episodes aren't always great and the new ones are never outright bad...yet why is it I can struggle through a season one episode in one go but it took me over two months to get through the six episodes of season 12?
That's exactly right. Theater kids (and post-relevance Patton Oswalt) dragged the whole thing down with those interminable intermission segments. It was a chore to get through the episodes I watched. A tiny fraction of the charisma of the original runs.
I never even once got the impression my favorite comedy series of all time was made by or for stoners.
@@bigduke5902 Yeah .. me either ... I'm not quite buying that analogy.
@@bigduke5902 not sure it was made for stoners, but they can enjoy it!
You answered your own question beautifully.
Biggest problem I had with the Netflix seasons was the rapid pace of the jokes - it was relentless. It reminded me of that episode of Community where they invite Pierce to riff over movies, he hires people to write jokes for him and delivers all of his jokes, one after another, without a pause for breath, all in the same tone of voice. That was S11&12 in a nutshell, and finding out they were churning episodes out behind the scenes explains a lot. Classic MST felt like making fun of a movie with friends, something all of us who watched the series did and still do. New MST felt like a production line, assembling 'product'.
No, it's more like you felt they were actually watching the movie, reacting to it, while the new show seemed like they were acting, not reacting.
I really appreciate the noticing that MST3K was Midwestern and very working class. There were jokes that came out of my own upbringing like "church hopping" relatives, Promise Keepers, all the trucker, mechanics, low level admin references reflected everyday life for 90 percent of the population. They also took pot shots at "coastal sensibilities", whereas most comedy condescends flyover states. We don't work as a hobby, and we don't need dehumanizing.
I can't tell you how hard my family and I laughed when the sirens went off in Teenagers From Outer Space (I think?) and Joel went "Ope, first Wednesday of the month."
@@parasol.p😂😂😂😂
Wow you're really projecting so much onto this show. Sounds like you've got some kind of inferiority complex. Might want to leave your flyover state for a few weeks to see that people on coasts are mostly blue collar workers too. See a psychologist bro.
welp, your name is appropriate, at any rate.
@@parasol.p Or Giant Spider Invasion which was just one big laugh towards Mike and Wisconsin. Being from Indiana, EVEN I GOT SO MANY OF THE JOKES.
And the best part was how years later, the 'PACKERS WON THE SUPER BOOOOOWL!' joke still hold power that when they DID win, my whole friend group was shouting that line. 😂
The flatness of characterization is a huge factor. You can't tell Crow from Tom from Jonah, they're just interchangeable riff-delivery devices, and none particularly charismatic. They're just kinda... there.
When new MST was announced, I was excited like everybody else. And my enthusiasm waned every time new info was released. Nobody from the original show? A bunch of comedians from L.A. doing all the hosting and voices? No "Minnesota-isms"? I stopped caring about ten minutes into the first episode I watched. It was like a lower quality MST3K knock-off. Nobody on-screen felt like they were friends and liked joking with each other, they're just reading off a teleprompter fairly lifelessly. And not paying attention to the new series, it seems that suddenly there seem to be new hosts and voice actors? Again, there's no real bond between the new people, whereas you could tell the original MST3K team were old friends and genuinely like riffing with each other. And the sad thing is, all the original group are all still doing very similar things to MST3K and are available.
Comedians from L.A.? Why are you blaming this crap on Los Angeles? Felicia Day is from Alabama, Patton Oswalt is from Virginia, Jonah Ray is from Hawaii, Rebecca Hanson is from Iowa. Head writer Elliot Kalan is from New York, writer Dan Harmon is from Wisconsin, and writer Joel McHale was born in Italy. How does L.A. figure into this equation at all?
Anyone who has spent their lives getting socially normalized in LA for the past decade or more has nothing interesting to say.
At least not to the 99.9% rest of the nation.
They really should’ve hired actors who had serious voice skills. Listening to the new guys it just sounds like they hired some dudes from a ComicCon
I've watched EVERY mst3k and all the rifftrax I can get my hands on, so I think I can speak with quite a bit of authority when saying "what am I doing with my life!?" Also "the Netflix reboot sucked." I have a lot of problems with it but mostly it's that the new guys sounds like they're too rehired. The jokes are unnaturally fast and delivered with a smirk that I find profoundly unnatural and unfunny. Additionally it seems like every joke pitched makes it on the show. Like they feel a need to fill every second with "jokes" even if they can't think of anything funny to say. When I watched it I found myself making fun of the riffers. I contemplated removing my homemade MST3K bumper sticker because I don't want people to think I support the Netflix show.
@@ClayLoomis1958 Harmon, McHale and Oswalt? This should have been gold.
I got in to MST3K during the Mike era and Mike has always been my favorite. His easy going attitude and deadpan delivery are what drew me in. Also Bill and Kevin ARE Crow and Servo for me, the other voice actors are jarring. That being said I still appreciate Joel and Jonah episodes. What really blew my mind is how cerebral the riffs were but the target audience seemed to be younger, the MST3K fan club was little kids sending in drawings of the robots. It is all really bizarre.
actual kids dont mind if jokes go over their heads, but no one likes to feel condescended to.
Now that you mention it, I too always did find the fan letters from little kids jarring and weird- I was in my 20s in the 90s and even I, an “old movie” buff myself, had trouble getting many of the obscure references back then. I remember wondering if the letters were fake and part of the gags….
@kenny3217 -- I agree with you that Kevin IS Servo, but Trace will always be the true Crow. Don't get me wrong, I really like Bill Corbett, and he did a *fantastic* job taking over as Crow. And Bill is light years better than whoever is voicing Crow these days.
@@TheOneTrueChris somehow to me, both trace and bill work for me. I don't know why, but it was a rare change that just worked for me.
To me, the most depressing thing about the revival of MST3K is that the two episodes that the fan channel MST3K vs Gamera: Round 2 made just *felt* more like MST3K than any episode of the new seasons. That actually still has the 'some dudes making this for $0 in the middle of nowhere' feel that makes the original series so special that the new seasons totally lack.
Where do I go to buy a copy of "MST3K vs Gamera: Round 2"? How do I go about getting a copy?
Never heard of this but have been checking it out, this stuff is great! Never would have thought Helmut would be the name of the next host!
I'm reminded of Super Eyepatch Wolf's analysis on why modern SImpsons doesn't work where a big part of it is they're not putting enough time into crafting each joke and the comedy suffers for it. I remember a Comedy Central MST3K documentary (this is MST3k) where they're watching the movie being riffed twice, first with just taking notes and then trying to riff it. Regardless of how many writers this just seems like a more organic way to replicate the feel of watching a bad movie with friends
I've started to use the older episodes to go to sleep. Mostly, because I started to miss my brothers and friend just yelling insane bullshit and having fun with whatever it was they were doing. I only saw the intro of Season 11/12, but remembered how much modern entertainment was suffering without pleasure to it.
From the little bit I saw my dad watching, it only got a smirk from one of the riffs. Just feels unnatural, as it were.
Nick and Norah Charles are by no means the most obscure MST3K reference. It took me literally years to finally get the Tom of Finland joke in Escape 2000.
You got Oarfolk at Jokeopus?
My favorite joke that took me a bit to understand was from my personal favorite episode: "Deathstalker & The Warriors From Hell". Someone says the villain's name (Troxartas) and they reply, "...cool could you get the cover of Mars Hotel on the side of my van?" Eventually looked up "Mars Hotel" and finally understood it all. "Trucks Artist".
obscure references was part of the fun back in the day. Usually the line was funny just by the delivery and the situation in the film. If you actually got the reference it was icing on the cake.
Not only does the PlutoTV app (Available on Roku and other digital TV type things) have an MST3K channel, it has a RiffTrax channel and a Shout Factory channel that features "MySTie Mondays". So much content for free!
Go away, bot.
@@suchiuomizu Beep boop no
I always thought it was because they didn't have Mike Nelson as a writer. He was the head writer from season 2 onward. Even when Joel was the host, Mike Nelson was the head writer. In my opinion, that was what was missing.
I agree, having watched some of Joel's Cinematic Titanic and Mike's Riff Trax its clear to me that Mike is just the funnier writer.
Mike is hilarious even when he's on a podcast or stream trying to be halfway serious, like when he did some episodes of the Audio Mullet Christian podcast with Doug TenNapel and Ethan Nicole.
Mike is also a conservative Christian. Which you probably don't know because it rarely affects his writing. Joel was very liberal for his time. But the new cast are... Uh... Coastal. That doesn't work for the show. They lost the heart of the writing.
It's like how you can just feel when Conan was heading a simpsons episode. Both Conan and Mike have such unique comedic signatures that you can just sence them through the material. And with Mike yea, you can tell when he's not there. It lacks his charm and flair.
@@KevinJDildonik I think Mike being Christian really helps with his writing because he has a good sense of what's good or wrong and thus knows the bounds on how far to go with "dirty" jokes which there are plenty of but they're never so risque as to be considered offensive or pornographic.
There's that line in the kathy Ireland song where crow says "I'd like to come over and roll in your clover and kiss your blarney stone" which is clearly sexual innuendo but it's not explicit or anything.
I think him being a regular Christian American is a big reason why he's so funny because our society was founded on christian principles and practices, and he's honed his craft very well.
He also writes in his own voice so it's genuine like it seems like he really is being held captive and forced to watch these movies even though he's just some guy from Wisconsin that worked random minimum wage temp jobs.
Jonah it's like who the hell even is this nerd and why are they trying to make it seem like he's cool and not just some not quite hipster guy that plays bass guitar.
Oh man do I MISS annotated MST3K on UA-cam! It was so interesting. Great video and a side by side analysis of episodes, especially timing. I've always admired how original MST didn't step on movie lines.
You can still get the annotations, but it requires a chrome extension.
The issue was there was no reason for MST3K. Mike, Kevin and Bill were still riffing, and the writing was far better. Also, they are good comedians, with timing.
Damn good point.
@@michaelmattioni4993 (On a side note, I wish The Film Crew was still going on.)
Completely agree 👍
@@jonahfalcon1970 Yep, I think it’s the only spin off series which lacks the silhouettes and the bots, that actually works, and is even better than the original. But alas, I must watch the Rue McClanahan episode 1000 times….
I've always thought that Millennial Science Theater 3000 was basically a grade school production of MST3K.
I ADORED MST3K (especially the Mike episodes). Can quote nearly entire episodes, and they still make me laugh. Absolutely love RiffTrax (Mike, Kevin, and Bill unhindered by censors) - it's sublime. When I heard a new MST3K was en route, I made 2 rather large donations and was EAGERLY anticipating it. Then I saw the first episode. Not one laugh. Reptilicus - REPTILICUS! - and not ONE laugh. I gave it the benefit of the doubt & watched all the other eps. It's SOOOOOOO not funny. There are episodes of "Small Wonder" that are funnier (for you youngsters, one of THE most unfunny shows ever produced). It's echt California semi-hipster 'tude and falls flat every single time. The REAL "tell" is that when you're group watching old eps of MST3K or group livestreaming RiffTrax with friends, nobody ever mentions the new MST3K. In a recent BIG livestream of Rifftrax where they had some of the new MST3K people, over half the livestream participants put up messages like "bathroom break" or "this totally takes the breath out of the room" when Jonah & Joel took the mic to riff. I'm sure there is an audience for the new MST3K, and more power to those fans. For me and mine... we're sticking with the originals and Rifftrax.
I just barely found rifftrax, and I fell in love it instantly... especially samurai cop
LOL I suspect we are of the same generation, when you mention Small Wonder, which incidentally I found VERY creepy, even at age 15 or so which I was at the time. I agree with you, none of the current iteration is funny. To be honest I think the secret to the success of the original show was Mike who I believe was always the head writer- Joel was more of a performer and producer than writer. But Joel was 1000 times as charismatic as Jonah or the rest.
@@historyandhorseplaying7374 There are some funny jokes of course as I do remember laughing here and there throughout the new season episodes but the host segments I could do entirely without as they're nowhere near as funny or engaging as the original series host segments.
The Joel invention exchange segments were funny as were dr forrester and TVs Frank, the dynamic between them all was just fantastic they were all their own unique characters that played off each other well without having to always rely on writing tropes like the straight man, none of those three ever only play the straight man.
The Mike segments starting with the invention exchange and then gradually shifting away from that was great as are all their interstitials with just Mike and the bots.
I like pearl as well with brain guy and doctor bobo, the episode where mike is on trial for blowing up observers planet was great and so was quest of the delta nights having pearl switch places with mike at the start.
Overall though the new show doesn't have any of those fun qualities in the host segments, the bots and jonah don't have any real chemistry based on their unique personalities.
One of best bits ever was doctor forrester and tvs Frank had two ladies move in and come over so they tell mike to entertain them and they do that superfragicalalisticexpialaWACKY play about the government sucking ass which is true and it's an awesome bit but it ends up scaring off the women so dr f and Frank just keep on bagging their comic books, hilarious!
None of that charm in the new show and the voice is obviously too coastal elitist, the midwest voice is far better as it's the heart of the country, we get all four seasons every year and people both visit here from all over the rest of the country and vice versa, people from the midwest travel a lot seemingly more overall in general than people in most other states.
It's clear to see how people from California write differently from midwesterners because it's not always summer in the midwest you know? Not always sunny and nice out, much more gloomy weather that affects your mindset.
Rifftrax is still good it’s wild
one of the biggest issues for me was how Tom and Crow sounded too similar, I found my self unsure which was talking on more than one session.
Also, the voices just are not funny.
And jonah sucked dont forget that
Agree they just weren’t as funny…also it seems like the pacing / timing of the jokes was also off
Yeah, I noticed that too.
For me it was Tom and Jonah I couldn't tell apart.
Netflix really did this to themselves by imposing such absurd deadlines for season delivery rather than treating the show as episodic content that could be developed over time. Their entire model is based on binge watching, and the show does not lend itself to that. S13 did a great job of demonstrating how 11 and 12 could have been SO MUCH BETTER had they been allowed to do it at a more relaxed pace.
I got a chance to watch Beyond Atlantis recently and despite being done with yet another entirely new cast, it somehow felt right at home with the older episodes.
@@z-beeblebrox I enjoyed the Beyond Atlantis episode,too.Emily Marsh,the new host would have been right at home with Joel and Mike,I believe.
Except Season 13 was even worse.
@@matane2465exactly.
Im so glad i found this vid. Every few years i go back and watch old episodes and i recently thought 'why do i never re watch the newer ones?" And realized i couldnt even remember them despite the fact that i saw them in my 30s and i first started watching the old ones when i was like 9. So then i thought it must be nostalgia making me biased but generally that is not how i roll so i did some searching and found this. Your video really helps put it into context.
Much thanks! If you like this you'll love the RiffTrax vid I have coming later this year.
Considering your channel has both this and an Alpha Centauri joke video, you have earned yourself a sub.
I'm 58, my son is 34. We first started watching MST3K back in the mid-1990s, after he got over the fact that it was on at the same time as "Earthworm Jim" (we only had one cable-connected TV at that time). Neither one of us were really excited when Netflix brought the show back.
wait, there was an earthworm jim cartoon?!?!
@@hagerthehorrible1892 Indeed, there was.
Now that's something that needs to come back
Rifftrax is the real MST now.
Hell yeah 👍
Yup, NuMST3K needs to die and Joel needs to lose the rights. The man has clearly fallen in with the Hollywood crowd.
@@matane2465definitely. He lost his roots, it seems.
I have to agree. Personally, joel really let me down, when he fled
Yeah the clips of them riffing Twilight were hilarious. I recently watched their rifftrax of Chuck Norris's Breaker Breaker and it felt like classic Riding With Death
Don’t forget that there were rewards in the Netflix series crowdfunding that involved submitting your own riffs. How many of those riffs were they forced to cram in each episode?
Great point. And riffing is not as easy as it seems so something like that could go sideways really quick. And probably did.
I was a backer and if I remember correctly there wasn't lots of that. It was an expensive tier and (if memory serves correct) there were maybe a dozen openings for getting your own riff on the show.
the fact rich people could BUY their own custom jokes into the episodes is disgusting.
I'm the same caliber of fan as you are (I go to sleep each night listening to MST3K) and you put your finger on exactly why the Netflix version didn't work for me, either. I couldn't articulate it until I saw your video. Also: you are correct that Space Mutiny is the greatest classic episode.
I first found this show back in the 90s when i was very young. I still remember at the time that my parent's cable provider used the same channel for comedy central and vh1, splitting the time up throughout the day. None of my friends had ever heard of it and it felt like a hidden gem that was all mine. I eventually learned later thru the internet that tons of other kids grew up with the same experience. We're all so connected now, i wonder if it's even possible for kids to have that same experience anymore, the feeling that you've found something great that no one else knows about.
Megaforce was covered by the old MST3K crew when they started Riff Trax. It is one if their best episodes, you should also contrast that to NF version of MST3K
Rifftrax did a riff of MegaForce back in August of 2015, so I took the reference in the new MST3k as a callback to *that* riff. Someone on the new MST3k saying, "Yes, we watch Rifftrax too!". I'm pretty sure there are some other new-MST3k riffs which seemed (to me) to be references to Rifftrax releases. It is certainly possible that is just because of how many Rifftrax I watch, and was not part of the process on new-MST3k.
Just FYI-- Nick and Nora Charles (played by William Powell and Myrna Loy) were a married couple famous for their witty, sophisticated banter in the "Thin Man" detective series back in the 30's. Makes it a pretty funny, spot-on riff.
I thought everyone had seen after-school The Early Show old movies like I did in Champaign, Ill. It's Thin Man Week on The Early Show, haha.
Someone among the riffers is a real "Thin Man" fan-- Nick and Nora are referenced again in "Deathstalkers and the Warriors from Hell"!
"No politics" is the single most reassuring, inviting thing a decent human being can see going into a discussion room or reddit or whatever. Doesn't matter if they're "left", "right", or "other", if they're talking about it online (as opposed to face-to-face), they are going to be assholes about it. You want to discuss politics, you do it in person, where people have motivation to be civil. "Internet muscles" are steroid sized on people discussing politics online.
What? No politics?
Um... Check out The Starfighters sometime.
A wise man once said: "ALL media is political. If you think a piece of media isn't political, you either agreed with the message or you were too stupid to notice it."
"Look out! Ted Kennedy's driving home!" -Mike during The Horror of Party Beach S8E17
@@rwulf A statement that broadly subjective can be dismissed out of hand. You don't even have to look into it to know it isn't true considering how expansive the term "media" is. Nevertheless, I will offer one of countless examples of non-political media: Gary Larson's Far Side cartoons. I mean, if you go look with enough intent, you could find some that you could desperately argue are political, but... Well, you know. Should I go on? You MUST know that statement isn't true, surely. "A wise man"?
"Bob Dole, ma'am. Where's the outrage? "
Wow, what a video. While I'm hardly the most hardcore or old MST3K fan, I still consider it to be one of my all-time favorite shows, and my lack of love for the Netflix seasons definitely hit me in a way I couldn't quite articulate until recently, and your video is a phenomenal vessel for that.
As someone who wanted to dig deep into why the show wasn't clicking for me, your research is honestly prize-worthy. Everything I would've liked to see is there, from the types of jokes made, frequency, and the more qualitative assessments of how similar jokes differ in timing and delivery, along with the character-adjacent stuff with Jonah and the Bots. It was cool to me seeing the difference in the relationship between Joel & Mike and the Bots, how they had more respect for Joel as their father and way less for Mike, it was interesting to see. The old hosts felt more like just some pals, when I get the impression the newer hosts are just entertainers.
Also, dang, your bit on the puppetry hit home for me. Going back to classic episodes, I love how Kevin, Trace & Bill would make the most use of Tom/Crow's limited mobility, on top of being the voices for them. As an aspiring animator, I'm particularly drawn to how much more dynamic it looks when they would lean Crow or Tom back if something came barreling towards the screen, as opposed to the new bots holding their arms up somewhat slowly while the same gag occurs. The new bots seem far more static than the original crew. Even when just in their seats, I liked how Crow and Tom would fidget in the seats, how Tom would chuckle and bounce up and down a bit, or Crow lean in, down, or out to put emphasis on a riff. And yet, the new bots getting up and running around the theater doesn't have the same appeal to me, it's much more forced and less chill than previously. I haven't seen anything along the lines of "Hey, I figured it out, he's got his script taped to the floor!"- a-la Monster A-Go-Go- from the newer seasons.
That said, I've been tepidly interested in Season 13, after catching some of Santo In The Treasure of Dracula during the Turkey Day Marathon. Noticing how it did feel considerably more in-line with the older style of delivery and timing, I thought it was a pleasant surprise. Still saving the end of this video for after I watch that, since I'd love to check out some newer MST3K I'm unfamiliar with that's well-done. Hope that trend continues, and seeing them go back to their small-budget roots and not Netflix is very promising. I'm sure it will never quite match the original or be the same, but hey, progress is progress.
I will say, I'm not sure about what all went down behind the scenes, and how much lingering animosity there is among various cast members (if any)... but I would love it if we could at some point see not just guest appearances, but actual writing from more alumni, seeing Mike, Kevin, Bill, Trace, Frank or whoever else back for more than a guest appearance I bet would be lovely. To me, part of the appeal of the original run was how tight-nit the cast and crew were to the writing and performances, and I think helped keep the style and quality throughout all of it's cast and network changes. Obviously since Mike was the head writer, I definitely think a lot gets lost in the shift to a host of new writers, but I digress.
In any case, phenomenal video, the MSTie crowd is lucky to have you in it!
To me, the Netflix series actually suffered from the success of the original. The original had a low budget, bunch of buddies watching crappy movies on the couch, feel. I grew up in north central Kansas, but the "Scandihoovian" feel of Minnesota and Wisconsin in the 70's and 80's drew me in immediately when I first discovered MST3K. It had an organic, local TV charm. It seemed like Netflix was trying too hard. The original felt like a labor of love, the Netflix episodes feel like a product.
I doubt Netflix could ever have come up with something that was as brilliant on as many levels as the "slits and pier" joke from The Sword and the Dragon, or something a wonderfully simple as Joel reminding Gypsy that "Joel created you and has a wonderful plan for your life" when she wanted to riff in Hercules and the Captive Women.
Also, not only were Tom and Crow's personalities pretty much deleted, you could hardly tell their voices apart.
I thoroughly appreciated your Žižek joke.
The thing about the Netflix seasons not having much conflict, and the jokes being softer... I feel like they were trying to get kids on board. A lot of people grew up with MST3K, and maybe they were trying to appeal to kids more, so a new generation could have their own seasons of MST3K they watched as kids. Lots of parents put Netflix on for their kids, right?
I'd believe it. Likely a mandate from Netflix, given how the focus changed once they entered the Gizmoplex era
@@blackscreenstories3704 Please don't use my comment as as fuel for a snipe. I very much enjoyed the video.
I really hate the "This is a show/movie.for a new generation" horse shit - it's such a slap in the face to the loyal fans, and treats them like they don't matter anymore. I'm all for modernizing things....up to a point. But, more often than not these reboots are not focusing on entertaining the core audience - they're attempting to acquire new consumers. When you dismiss the fan base in favor of people who have no connection to the property you just end up pleasing neither- and pissing off the fans to boot.
They tamed and dumbed it down for those born after 1995. Zoomers find everything offensive and can’t get any reference past telli tubies.
Plus you have a super Woke Comedian like Patton
The Nick and Nora Charles riff from Space Mutiny was a movie reference from the Thin Man films. The guys are big movie fans as are most Misties. Not just bad movies. Nobody is supposed to get ALL the references.
That was an odd example for him to use for an obscure reference. Even if someone doesn't know Nick and Nora Charles, one search will return several thousand results explaining who they are. Compare that to Appendix 2 in the _MST3K Amazing Colossal Episode Guide_ that listed their (as of 1996) 50 most obscure references many of which were of the Mary Jo Pehl's hometown is Circle Pines, MN level of niche information.
lol I thought the same thing. The first 3 Thin Man movies are really classics of screwball comedy most midwesterners have seen on odd hour uhf broadcasts or metv or what have you. I would have gone with like a firesign theatre reference from the fade out of track 5 on side c of dear friends or somethin lmao.
ua-cam.com/video/6iYBm9H9l7w/v-deo.html
During the original run, Joel was asked if they ever were concerned about people not getting certain jokes/references. Joel said something along the lines of, "We don't ask ourselves 'will people get this?' we say 'the right people will get this.' "
I get comparing MST3K old vs new...but I would put the Netflix episodes against Rifftrax of the same years. The Rifftrax cast share a working relationship going back to the mid 90's in the original series. The new cast has never really jelled. There have been some gems, but I rarely laugh-out-loud like I do watching Rifftrax. To be fair though, I'm from MN and in my early 50's...they speak to me on a cultural level.
It’s not geographic, it’s cultural and generational. I’m in my 50s too, we grew up watching the same 4 TV channels, watching the same commercials and hearing the same jingles- of course we’re going to appreciate the same riffs on these familiar things. The new series can’t possibly be about the same things because the kids doing it didn’t grow up with what we did, and if they riffed what we’re familiar with, not what they know, they’d come off as insincere.
Older millennial here, I still watch MST3K every week! I'd say Mike was my favorite host.... I feel it shaped a big chunk of how comedy fits in my everydaylife. There has been no greater programming ever shown!
It greatly affected and influenced my sense of humor, for sure!
Older millennial here as well and I'm the same. Mike is also my favorite but I have favorite episodes from Joel as well. My dad actually introduced me to them growing up and we still joke with each other using MST3K riffs. Currently the Edmond Fitzgerald references at the beginning of Gorgo are stuck in my head.
After my very first exam in college I was a bit overwhelmed wondering what I got myself into...I went and found Space Mutiny and immediately felt better.
For me, Netflix = Corporate MST. It has no soul, just designed to try and make money. I was very happy to see Mike, Kevin and Bill back, and will stay with Rifftrax and my MST classic library!
The hissing is a call back to the Escape 2000 girl. It's cause she looks like a vampire that's all. It's not complicated.
41:39 Hollywoob elite just see the show as “talking over a movie, the plebes will love.”
They’re sort of like the Psychlos in Battlefield Earth who think rat is man’s favorite food.
This comment deserves a crown because yup, you got it.
I agree with you on a lot of this. A few other issues I have with the newer seasons are:
1. Joel created the robots, so he was sort of a father figure to them, scolding them when they misbehaved. Mike was more like their brother, so they picked on him a lot and could get away with silly, dangerous activities that Joel never would have allowed. I don't know what the robots' relationship is to the new hosts. They seem to be just people who happen to be on a ship together, making fun of bad movies out of boredom.
2. The host segments are unconnected to each other. I'm probably in the minority here, but I never cared for the invention exchanges. I liked the Mike era best because they were no longer trapped in orbit around Earth, and that made it possible to do host segments that told a continuous story, as opposed to, "We're going to do random funny things for a few minutes." Don't really care about the letters at the end, either. In the past, there weren't many MST fans and viewers didn't have any way to know what others thought about it except through Joel reading the letters. We have the Internet now, we can read a million letters, blogs, and social media posts about the show if we want to. Time spent on invention exchanges and reading letters could be used to create a coherent story, instead.
3. The voice of the new Crow sounds like it belongs in My Little Ponies. I keep expecting to see Rainbow Dash flying by.
4. In general, the show just seems way too shiny and perfect and scripted. The older shows had a certain charm to them, because not everything was perfect, they messed up occasionally, flubbed a line here and there, and the sets, props, and puppets were obviously made on a low budget from whatever they could find. The new episodes are a huge, glossy production and have far too many writers. You'll see this in a lot of Hollywood movies, which often have a huge number of writers and producers, and the movies are complete crap. There's a reason why "Too many cooks spoil the brew" is a popular saying.
5. The old series ended with Mike and the robots getting back to Earth. How are the robots trapped on yet another ship by yet another mad scientist? Did they explain that, and I missed it?
6. I don't care for the new robots that they added. They don't add anything interesting or different to the show, and now there are more characters to write for, which adds a complexity that isn't needed. A limited cast is one thing that made the original show so great.
The biggest problem for me by far was that the characters weren't given the chance to play off each other. In the original MST, Crow might laugh if Servo makes a good joke, or Mike might pick on Crow if he says something silly. That banter is so important, and it's completely missing in the Netflix version, making it a soulless joke factory.
Right. In the new MST3K they coordinated, but they never gel.
Also, the new robots don't have any discernable individual personalities. Any line or joke from any of them could be given to any other and it wouldn't make a lick of difference. That's absolutely deadly for comedy; Joel seems to be under the impression that MST can operate like SNL and swap out performers/characters at will, but it really can't. Feeling like the characters are real people with distinct opinions and relationships was vital to the original show being so engaging. That's all lost with the reboot.
@@episodenull agreed. I love Joel but I think he George Lucas'd his own creation - He figured out the formula but messed it up by trying to make it better. Or he completely lost touch somewhere.
Shut up Iris
@@michaelmattioni4993 I met Joel at a con just before the new series started. He talked about “something new and big” being in the works. He was a nice guy- he even signed my Gizmonic helmet and gave me a poster, but if I’d known what was coming I would have warned him NOOOO!!!! Please don’t do it!
Wasn't expecting the Sim Copter menu music making an appearance. Nice video!
Well done on making a 1hr plus video essay! That's a lot of work and a lot more effort than people realize it is. I'm glad to see you're getting a lot of traction on this one as well.
The context of how and when the 90s MST3k and the 2017 revival show were produced I think are really important factors in comparing the two shows. Throughout much of its earlier run (less so in the later years) Best Brains by and larger were lords of their own demesne. They had a small crew, and a small cast, they were all local and they had their little studio in an industrial estate where they cranked out this little movie-riffing puppet show getting little or no hassle from TV studio executives.
The 90s show was a crew of people working out how to make a show as they went along. It started out improvised and moved to a scripted format. They were initially less rigorous about screening the movies. This led to Sidehackers being picked only for the production team to discover it had a violent SA scene. Most importantly there was fairly strong continuity with production, crew, and writers. Over 10 years they refined a workflow for making the show. There was a whole lot of lighting in a bottle about how that show got made.
In 2017, you've got a 5 million dollar kickstarted show on the largest streaming platform. They've got to introduce the show to a new audience, try to reach the old audience and introduce a whole new cast of characters. The production was, by all accounts, a lot more hectic. There was a lot more tech involved. There are celeb cameos. There are a lot more moving parts. The more you introduce to a project the more complex it gets. The cast is by and large more "name" performers than the original series ever had. It was a bigger beast of a show than the original was. It mostly worked. Season 11 is stronger than 12 but that's my preference. The riffs are a little too fast but that seems like either a mandate or a failed experiment in trying to appeal to the assumedly short attention-spanned audience. Which they corrected in the Gizmoplex era.
The amount of writers is necessarily a bad thing (it's particularly common for US shows to have multiple writers or even have writers just come in and do one or two episodes) nor do I think that the people who make the show necessarily also have to write the show (although everyone on current era-MST also writes on episodes). I think the issue of "voice" really comes down to the fact it's a whole new cast and for all intents and purposes a whole new show. So it's no surprise that by his 3rd season Jonah and his bots have found their feet a little more. Which I think the new shows have by now. Emily et all have a little headstart there because they've been doing the tours and you can tell there's a different chemistry there.
What it comes down to is MST3k is a niche show. It's hard to binge and I don't think it was ever going to have a long run on Netflix. It's good that the show still exists and can hopefully exist for a while more.
Great video! You went over pretty much everything i thought was wrong with the Netflix era. Primarily and how a lot of the riffs were both wordy and rushed, a bad combination. I think another issue is how they didn't seem to want any moment of "dead air", so to speak, and thus tried to cram in as many riffs as they could whenever a character in a movie stopped talking. It really hurt the pacing of the jokes.
"I'm insane!" was a good one. Her eyes go cold and wide. Possibly the actress being nervous as well as not having a line with the camera on her for that amount of time.
I feel like she was oddly trying to look appealing or attractive.
I dunno, some of the jokes just fell flat and felt forced. That was true even in the strongest episodes.
Well, she died and came back to life, so there was an element of craziness to her.
As an old school MST3K fan (and since then a RiffTrax fan), I was … open, though guarded … about the reboot. I lasted one episode. My impression was that the original show riffs seemed organic and spontaneous. I know they were very much scripted and rehearsed but that’s how it seemed - it seemed REAL. Whereas the reboot lost that magic, and was too high-tempo, obviously planned and choreographed. It was like watching a 3-man fast break in basketball where the players are flying down court, passing back & forth, and you see them advancing to the goal and inevitably delivering a score. It was technically proficient and polished … and not funny or friendly or entertaining.
I miss the bots they are so cute but Rifftrax is ok for me.
I've been enjoying RiffTrax too but to be honest, the last few years have been less funny. Comedy has been under attack so a lot of them are fearful of making any jokes that might get them in trouble. You watch original MST3K and early Rifftrax compared to today. They skew older if you've ever been to one of their live shows. So not sure why they feel the need to sanitize their content.
I highly recommend giving it another shot. Cry Wilderness and Avalanche are both so good they’d fit in the top 20 mat3k of all time
3:07 END!! END!! Lmao! now thats why i loved the old ones. Their movie watching pain was what i found the best. Rock climbing, sand storm aka deep hurting, Neptune men, manos the hands of fate sketch..glorious gold. I didn't find much of that in the new ones. Sure spot here or there (Hercules killin the dragon with crap weapons) but nothing like END!! END!! 🤣
My buddy told me mst3k would be at comic con San Diego. I passed and he couldn't understand why. I told him I was a mistie and it was a sorry rehashing. The event came and went and I asked was it worth it. He shrugged and said 'meh'. He also paid $300 a ticket. Dodged that bullet but also was pissed they feel they can profit off the name alone when they can't hold a candle to the original
You can still access the annotations using a chrome plugin. At some point all the annotations were archived, and can be re-added to videos where they existed previously.
You did a fantastic job analyzing this. The video was also well put together and though out. I'm even more impressed you did this without professional writing experience. Because you hit nearly everything on the head in terms of collaboration and chemistry. Re-writes are the best thing you can do in comedy if something doesn't work . But you explain the extremely rushed pace of the netflix series which simply doesn't allot time for this crucial step in comedy. Kudos to you !
Even if Netflix couldn't recapture that old lightning in a bottle, it's heartening to see how many people had their world outlook molded by MST3K. I appreciate your effort in identifying what made a whole generation fall in love with Joel, Mike, the Bots, and the Mads. I hope The Gizmoplex is more successful in passing the torch to the next generation of potential Mysties than seasons 11 and 12 were.
You can't write good riffs without Mike Nelson
Don't know why you find the "SA" scene somewhat offensive. It's a direct quote from the opening lyrics of the early 90's rap song 'Insane In The Membrane' by Cypress Hill. Opens with, "Who you tryin' to get crazy with ése? Don't you know I'm loco?" Was a pretty popular song at the time.
Humor can never be offensive! Unless it's to say ACAB.
The guy is woke.
@@cactiguideJust look at some of his other videos - goes well beyond woke!
@@ARescueToaster yeah, otherwise he did a pretty good job breaking it down. But complaining that there weren’t more political jokes blew my mind.
White people always get the most offended for others
For me, honestly, it was the Mads above all that held it back. I like Jonah just fine in his role and he's a nice guy in person to boot. Some of the movies, like Cry Wilderness and Circus Magic, are absurdities for the ages.
Day and Oswalt, though, despite being the biggest named actors ever associated with the project, have negative chemistry and together manifest an absolute void in the fabric of comedy as we know it. It's downright *weird* how poorly the Mads are handled here. Like they're written and performed by space aliens trying to imitate the outward form of something like the Forrester/Frank dynamic while actually understanding nothing of these strange hyoomon emotions.
24:25
They literally spelled out the joke. In both instances the women resemble Nosferatu. I got that as a kid lol.
For me it was this: the original had an intimate feel and felt like it was made by a small group, the new one feels over produced and too dense. Never gonna beat the original EVER!
For me, Trace will always be Crow, Kevin will always be Tom, Joel will always be Joel, and Mike will always be Torgo.
The M m m master agrees.
@@historyandhorseplaying7374 I hear the Torgo music playing in my head.
😄😄😄
Rifftrax has about 20 full length movies free on UA-cam, and more shorts. Whizzo Is a great pick. They also have their own Pluto channel.
There are also a lot (ever-changing) on TubiTv - and on Prime if you're a member.
I looked up Whizzo after that Rifftrax and found out he was a beloved longtime local TV personality.
They're too rough on poor Whizzo. Who else would have been kind enough to show us department store displays?
Great vid! I'm probably about a lone voice here, but I really enjoyed "The Gauntlet" the second season of the Netflix show. I thought it was settling into a rhythm and I actually really like the host segments in general in the Netflix show and the increased musical/song elements. I've been dragging my feet on season 13 but yea, I'll start watching those now! In general I appreciate the care taken in your comparisons and even though I still like the Netflix years, and wasn't disappointed by them, you've made a lot of good points and ensured that I will be taking in the new stuff! PS, 44 year old fan of MST3K since almost the beginning (got into about '91!)
I think MST3K inspired an entire generation of UA-camrs. I don't think the channel I'm with, RBComics, probably wouldn't exist without it. So when I saw this video, I felt it hit home. I don't know anyone who prefers the Netflix series to the original. It just feels...toothless.
44:15 This reminds me so much of the when the Star Wars Prequels were coming out, and the the actors were all struggling during interviews to try and explain who their characters were supposed to be.
But on a positive note, the Netflix version did bring us Starcrash and Avalanche.
I'm a veteran MST3K fan since the 90s, through the various hosts and channels, plus the fantastic experiences of live shows with everyone except Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett. And I enjoy Rifftrax. I couldn't put my finger on what troubled me about the Netflix seasons. I admired everyone involved. I didn't warm up to the big production values and couldn't figure out the deal with Gypsy dropping down. Now, this video has answered it. I didn't think over an hour would be necessary, but I loved everything covered. I'm glad some of the issues you raised are being addressed. Thanks for the many hours of analysis you devoted. Better you than me 🙂
Thanks, I had about 90+ minutes of complaints regarding the Netflix attempt, and this basically covers all of it.
Thank you for watching! Glad to know I wasn't alone in my feelings on the netflix seasons!
I’m 49 and the first time I saw a MST3K episode was in 1992 when I was visiting some family. I was instantly hooked and have seen most of the episodes. Personally, I don’t mind the Netflix episodes. Avalanche is at the top of the list and I love the 2 Wizards episodes, so I don’t know…I don’t have the hang up about them as others. Maybe it’s because humor is subjective and I’m a “you do you” type person? Maybe it’s because I truly have bigger worries in my life than when I was 18 and I watch MST3K to get away from my problems? Or maybe it’s because it’s just a show and I should pretty much relax?? Whatever it is, I appreciate taking the time to do an analysis, but I think it is what it is and I still get a chuckle out of things regardless of the era.
Cheers!
A friend of mine tuned me into this video because it was exactly what we were talking about weeks ago, XD well done.
I worked with Joel before the kickstarter and did storyboards. It was going to be a MUCH grander remake of the series with a new robot and Bill Hader was originally going to be the host before Jonah if I remember correctly, haha. Ultimately I think there were a lot of big ideas that had to be cut down for Netflix because it's a company that basically picks and chooses how much money they give a production. (also, a big problem in EVERY studio is that more X (writers, board artists, animators, etc etc) means that fixes the issue of less time. I dunno when productions will learn that time helps more than anything.
They need to release the Live shows... those were great.
Thank you for making this exhausted look into MST3K.
This show holds a special place for me as my brother and I would watch it growing up. To this day I can randomly say a line as Crow and he responds with Servos line.
I love the show, the ups and downs, I still love it and man do I miss those annotated videos that helped me get some of the references kid me missed.
Space Mutiny remains my favorite, but this Island Earth is close.
Lastly, flawless use of the first Red Letter Media video I saw all those years ago with Phantom Menace. Layers of reference, every scene is so dense.
I thought all the hissing and "I'm insane" riffs of Lt. Lamont were a continuing gag that started with "It's Melissa Manchester!" when she's first on screen in Space Mutiny.
I started watching MST3K back from the "shared tapes" back in the day and I was excited about the Netflix reboot. I tried watching and quickly discovered several things: First, the new show had no "heart". These didn't feel like friends watching a movie together, they felt like actors delivering lines. There was no sense of a shared sensibility. Second, everything felt too polished. You get the feeling that the actors are delivering the lines for the 35th time rather than the second or third. Third, (and I realize this is a just taste) Felicia Day is a wonderful actress but she's just not great at "wacky" comedy and Patton Oswald is never, EVER funny in any circumstance. Finally, the whole thing feels a bit...neutered. A percentage of funny comments about old films will inevitably skew to subjects such as the breast size of an actress or the phallic shape of a space ship. The episodes of the new series always seemed to avoid these jokes for something less likely to offend anyone but also less funny. They don't sound like real people riffing. I now simply watch the Comedy Channel episodes when I can find them.
Patton Oswald is the definition of 'not funny but doesn't know it because flatterers dare not hurt his feelings"
I’m glad I’m not the only one that feels this way. How on earth does Patton Oswalt land so many roles?
Get out of my head! Rarely do I find myself agreeing with every single point in a YT comment but, yeah…pretty much *all* of this. ^
It really wasn't funny when Oswalt joked about providing potentially dubious drugs to his wife....Shortly before his wife overdosed.
Nailed it. This is almost exactly the way I explained to my wife why the new season wasn't working for me. I also feel many if the "riffs" feel either forced or overly simplistic. For instance, whenever anyone says something like "I thought I was Dale", I have no confidence whoever said it even understands what that even is outside of a recurring MST joke. And when a character in Reptilicus shows up who looks like Sailor Moon, the joke is literally, " Sailor Moon?". Certainly there are hundreds of ways to make that joke without being so deliberate.
24:21 This Nosferatu reference is easy to explain. The villain in the 1922 film _Nosferatu_ has a passing resemblance to the actress they are riffing on here. A quick Google Images search for Nosferatu will show you what I mean.
I can't stand Patton Oswald, and the other Mad's come off as try hards, especially Felicia Day. Jonah is ok and I eventually got used to the Tom and Crow's Netflix voices, but their voices for the Emily episodes of season 13 are God awful. Crow sounds like a bratty little kid because he's being voiced by a woman doing a kid voice. And Emily is another try hard. None of the new cast members come off as genuine where in the original series Joel and Mike just felt like themselves.
The Megaforce reference was probably put in there for the benefit of those who had seen the Megaforce Rifftrax; which was done about 4 years before the Netflix Return
"S A - don't you know I'm loco?" - Turning a bland shot of store signage into a fantastic Cypress Hill reference is a "bad joke"?
Admittedly I didn't get the reference. Had I, I'd have likely picked a different example.
@@SardonicSays It's less about missing the reference and more about why you thought it was a joke poor enough to highlight
@@control_the_pet_population Sounded like the joke was a somewhat questionable 'lol latino people talk like this' joke without the reference
@@SardonicSays That's what you brought to it, though.
@@SardonicSays Well, it was a "lol latino people talk like this" joke. Part of the joke is indeed rooted in the Latino gang stereotype... but it's a meme, not some bizarro racial attack clear out of left field. The rapper who dropped the original line is half Mexican and half Cuban. He is Latino. He talked like that... that is who he was and good for him. At the end of the day, it's ok to chuckle at absurdity... even if that absurdity comes from a different skin color like goofy 90s rapper street gangs who aren't Scandinavian.
It was the voice actors. The original cast perfected their art over years and have an endearing quality to their voices.
I love the KTMA episodes. Executed so well considering the riffing was improvised.
The one on Netflix didn't have the best writers or riffers. It felt like L.A. hipsters who were like oh I loved that show I bet I could do that. No, no you can't. Your not as funny. And it felt a lot more scripted.
The Netflix run feels coastal. A conventional writer’s room. The counter culture flyover vibe was gone.
Hey this was lovely, also you have good taste in both media and politics, which goes to show that MSTies are still one of the best fanbases.
You touched on the biggest thing that bothered me watching season 11 was the lack of chemistry between the bots and the host. Some of my all time favorite segments in both MST3K and Rifftrax (even in The Film Crew) is the banter or authentic giggle fits the crew have with each other. Mike breaking down in The Brute Man with the cashier for example, or pretty much any of the live shows, you can feel the love and resentment the guys have with their material and each other.
Two other issues I had with the new show, again already touched upon, was the jokes just felt rushed and lifeless. Like they had to hit a quota, not letting the jokes settle. Some of the jokes were coming in so fast that they hit before the set-up, which was weird as hell. Finally my other issue was I also wanted the bots to be swapped out, and I know Joel has his heart set on keeping them a fixture for the show, but it is off-putting. I have zero qualms with new hosts, but when I see the bots I just hear the voices I grew up with.
Also you got me sold on trying out season 13, which is quite the feat because I thought I was done with MST3K. My poor wallet. Thank you for this.
Yeah the new season had some good moments, Jonah is great in the skits (that Kaiju song is 10/10) but the riffs were way too rapid fire. They need room to breathe.
There’s also a weird little lie I’ve seen going around that “MST never made political jokes”. Joel and Crow bashed Clintons, Kennedys and Republicans relentlessly (I’m rewatching Joel’s era right now) and Mike was constantly having a go at Democrats. If anything, they were less directly political and went too soft in Netflix stuff.
@@CrowTRobot Hell, I distinctly remember a joke from Zombie Nightmare being Mike saying something to the effect of 'George Bush (sr) tried to warn us about the Canadian healthcare system!'
@@CrowTRobot Mike was also constantly making fun of the South (Laserblast), putting down white people (Catalina Caper), etc etc… and in his book he’s very Leftist. I don’t remember him ever being conservative?
It felt softer, like the PG version of MST. It wasn't a train wreck, in fact a lot of the stuff with the mads was fun, and the callbacks were just as enjoyable to watch. Even the minimal set design was fun to get accustomed to. Thing is is that humor sometimes fall flat because they seemed to have focused on telling more jokes and doing stuff with the silhouette rather than keeping hold to the insanity of the movie. It's not the best, but it wasn't a deal breaker either.
I had to chime in on your "greatest classic episode" pick. It's kinda funny how everyone has different favorites. I do love Space Mutiny and the 'squeaky man scream' always makes me laugh. Personally, though, my favorite is The Final Sacrifice simply because Rowsdower is the greatest hero this side of Canada. My mom prefers Eegah and "Hooray I won!" while my dad leans more towards The Horrors of Spider Island and the hilarious fiery plane crash scene.
The original was made with love, publicly traded corporations are incapable of emotion.
To quote Pearl, the new MST3K 'sucks on toes'. It was devoid of the soul that made the original so heartwarming and enjoyable. TY for making this breakdown
Sucks on _toast_
LOL all this time I thought it was “sucks on toast”
@@historyandhorseplaying7374 Me too and I'm going to keep on believing that.
@@historyandhorseplaying7374 This just in: it definitely IS on toast. I just watched Season 7 where she clearly says the "st". So we're right.
Popped up in my feed. Awesome video. You hit the nail right on the head with this. I didn't hate the Netflix run, but something was just off compared to Sci-Fi and Comedy Central eras.
i clicked your ad and watched your video
ty for supporting the forums
The problem for me was the guys playing Tom & Crow don't give them the personalities they had in the classic show. I can't even tell who say what line. The host scenes aren't that funny and go on too long sometimes. Jonah isn't as cynical as Mike or Joel, I don't recall him scolding the bots the way they did.. Good analysis. The PTSD joke doesn't bother me, it's about a character in a film, not a real child. I liked when they got dark. I recall even the classic series had riffs on something in the background that I would need many repeat viewings to finally get. Haven't seen Gizmoplex yet.
@43:40 hits it in the head for me.. Jonah is just kinda...there. so much of the Netflix run has him just kinda feeling like he's just...there. so very LA.
As a fan of Baron, Hampton and Jonah's standup. Jonah's specific history as a kid from Hawaii with MST fandom, he named all of his comedy specials after lines from the MST Movie This Island Earth, and witnessed the seed of him interviewing Joel on the Nerdist podcast with Chris Hardwick & Matt Mira, I'm happy for him and have no issues. I do admit the LA-ness of the fellows is present but the newer references are just fine with me.
I'm only 25 minutes in, so not sure if you mention this (sorry, eager to comment), but for me the huge, huge problem is that not only did the actors all record the riffing separately, but that it was sped up in post so they could squeeze more riffs in. Timing is everything in comedy. BTW, someone I know who knows someone who worked on the audio end of things confirmed this for me.
Hah, I didn't realize they even sped up the audio! It was bad enough how crunched it was even before that but that really compounds the problem.
@@SardonicSaysYeah it’s such a bad instinct to do that. If you have to squeeze them in, you’re not doing it right. I just reread the email and he says it only happened “5 or 6 times” in the entire season, but it’s emblematic of a problem: too many riffs, and too many of them rambling on and on rather than being short and to the point.
Personally I think the far worse issue is recording each riffer separately. That is how you kill chemistry.
G damn. You catalogued the ENTIRE RIFF CATALOGUE - you are the best kinda psycho
The Avalanche episode was hilarious.
The Kennedy Assassination bit is even funnier given what's recently been released on Twitter and in the news recently.
20:20 No better running joke than "Watch out for snakes!"
For me, the reason why the Netflix series doesn't work is 1. The new hosts just... don't have the "it factor", or charisma to pull the show off. and 2. The writing just... isn't funny for the most part. The jokes with the original MST3K people felt natural, and there was a smooth flow with their riffing and their comedy segments. The delivery of the new hosts completely lacks that smooth, comfortable flow. It seems like they're primed to be in "WACKY LOUD COMMENT!" mode rather than the smooth, very jaded and "So this is my life now... *sigh*" feel that the original show's characters had. Riffs in the old show are smooth and match what's on screen. In the new show, they're often shouted in a wacky tone, and this makes each joke rather jarring. I can make this analogy. Watching the riffing and comedy in the original show was like a smooth ride in a car from one destination to another. The new show is like riding in a car that's loud, riding a bumpy, rock covered road, with no suspension, where the brakes are being slammed on every couple seconds. The delivery in the new show is just... jarring... and a lot of the delivery takes away a lot even from their funny rifts. I really gave the new series a chance. I watched the whole thing. But at this point, I can't stand it. It just... doesn't work. Watching the new show just makes me want to watch the far better original series.
"The new show is like riding in a car that's loud, riding a bumpy, rock covered road, with no suspension..."
So you're saying it's like a car with... no springs? :)
I agree. The entire schtick of the original show was that the guys were forced to watch movies and forced to comment…. So they did, but only grudgingly. The new one on the other hand… is “how many scripted lines can I enthusiastically yell out per minute”
Genuine nerd humor vs Nerd Humor (R)
Thank you! This is a topic that's bugged me for a long time. For some reason the Netflix just didn't have the magic of the original or even of the better Rifftrax.