To be honest, MST3K was always a bit retro even for its time. Beyond the riffing, the whole thing was always something of a take on the syndicated late night or Saturday afternoon monster movie shows with hosts like Creature Feature or Svengoolie. And those were already mostly a thing of the past by the time the '90s rolled around and the show got popular. You can still see them in some markets but they're hardly common anymore.
Adam Hoffman It's more seen now that MeTV picks it up for stations nationwide, than it was when it only aired locally in Chicago. Everything about the show is a total throwback to the otherwise-long-vanished era of local horror hosts (to the point where a lot of the jokes about about how the jokes are a throwback) but being able to watch such a time capsule in 2016 is exactly what's so fun about it.
Could not agree with you more, Bob! I'm also one of those old guys (41) that grew up watching MST3K and it will always have relevance to me for nostalgic reasons alone. I am happy that they have found a group of talented and funny people to do the reboot and am really looking forward to it.
I think it'll still be relevant to today's younger viewers. After all, Let's Plays of games with wonky gameplay and/or storylines often get most of their entertainment value from the person or people doing the Let's Play riffing on these aspects of the game in a manner very similar to MST3K. Also, even with On Demand, Netflix, umpteen million channels, and the internet in general, you can still end up with nothing to watch and find yourself sitting there watching something like "Village of the Giants" or a cheesy old Blacksploitation film and riffing on that. So long as there is bad media, the "there's nothing good on" phenomenon, and the ability to find humor in anything, MST3K will always be relevant.
I'm not trying to go full on curmudgeon,...you never want to go full-on curmudgeon. :) It just gave me a laugh, out of no where. Bob's only 4 years older than my daughter.
My friends once took me to see the Maze Runner (That afternoon I saw GotG, so it evens out) and was, as quietly as I could, riffing it live with the two friends sitting next to me. I think the "living room" experience you described just moved to "going to see a movie against your will and having fun with it". Also, The MST3K youtube uploads old episodes monthly and it's great.
Cinema Snob, The Nostalgia Critic, Red Letter Media, and a plethora of similar UA-cam video channels exist because of MST3K, and prove that the basic concept behind the show is relevant. If anything, it is more relevant than ever. Movie fans young and old still enjoy -- and dare I say will always enjoy -- watching and riffing on those films that are "so bad, they're good." Fear not, Bob, one way or another, MST3K is here to stay. Heck, it's spirit has never really left, as those aforementioned YT channels, and Riff Trax, etc., have already proven.
Just introduced MST3K to my 8 year old son. Had to explain to him a lot of what you just said (how tv stations had to fill time, etc). He loved it and now wants to watch more episodes on Hulu.
You can always tell when movie bob is super passionate about something when he slips in and out of his actually speaking voice XD I love it, and love MST3K.
I also only heard about it for the first time on the internet, but I'm now in my second watch of the entire series. It's better the second time around somehow XD
I feel bad for all the kids growing up without MST3K. It might make me feel old, but it also makes me feel lucky to have seen it and understood it! My family was pretty poor and we even had an old black and white TV for a long time, well into the 90s. I can relate so hard to the MST3K experience! I hope the new version does well, even if the Hipster part of me kinda doesn't want to share it LOL
I think we still have the experience of finding something bad by accident and riffing on it. Even if we have more choice nowadays, that doesn't mean we're always going to find the good stuff immediately. And even if we find something and it turns out to be bad, I still find myself not wanting to stop it, legitimately wanting to see the whole story.
Honestly, I'm almost as old as Bob and *I* can barely relate to the notion of watching bad TV to make fun of it just because it's all that's on, because I had books and an NES.
I'm 33, and even the way Bob described how he found MST3K was dead on, for me. I think Bob raised a lot of good points, but they don't have to mean MST3K will fail. Relax.
why does it need to be a "one size fits all" theory? Obviously it wont fit every person on the planet, but I think it's a valid argument for most of MST3k's audience. Myself included
I don't think he's saying it will fail, but he's saying that most of the audience will view it less than what it originally was and more "Rifftrax with puppets" and that the whole reason the show became a success in the first place will be lost on the younger audience.
This video made me happy. I love my MSTies. I was a bit weird about hearing the show was coming back in a new way, but as long as it still has the same heart, it'll be great!
This comment section is all people Bob's age saying how they have no idea what MST3K is, and Millennials trying to prove that they have culture by knowing what it is.
I imagine this is hard for kids to understand nowadays but I had internet access before 96 and it really was just something other rich kids had that was super limited and only had very little use in everyday life. I could chat with other kids whose parents had money, join message boards, and experience VERY limited media and a tiny bit of streaming now and again but that's about it. I was a little young to be "sexting" back then (over AIM mostly) but I did the rest of it and Jesus, it is essentially unrecognizable based on what we have today. The only "social network" type things we had were IRC channels and AOL. I don't know if kids would even recognize the internet as it existed back then.
You could get the WWW before 1996 on college campuses, but yes, the content was very limited. And the sites you might want to visit took forever to load even with computer lab connection speed. Then again veterans from the early days of TV have said similar things about that medium. That the content wasn't great.
I used to be a big fan of MST3K when I was a kid (30), but I think Bob's actually got a really good point here. I would be very surprised if the reboot caught on.
I'm 18 right now and I've been watching Mst3k and Rifftrax for awhile now. (probably 4-5 years) I've thought that it was hilarious ever since I started watching it, and I'm kind of surprised to see that so many of these people in the comment section have no idea what Mst3k is! If your worried about it not reaching children because of their age I don't think that will be a problem. Like I said I've enjoyed it since my early teens. The new show getting buried underneath the mass of entertainment options that have popped up recently does worry me though. That ,unfortunately, sounds totally possible. By the way, I actually had not heard anything about them rebooting the show! I'm absolutely going to have to start watching it again!
Glad the sound is back to good. Also, thanks for bringing to my awareness that there's new MST3K! With Eliott Kalan as head writer, no less! He's amazing with The Flophouse guys, so I'm sure he'll do a stand-up job here, as well.
Bob, that was an excellent description of what tv-watching used to be like. If there was a tv show you liked, you'd better be in front of the box when it came on -- their schedule, not yours. If you missed it, you'd try and catch the rerun a few months later. If you missed that -- tough luck, it'll never be on again.
Daniel Staples Just to be fair, I gave him a chance, and he's simply not funny... AT ALL. And now nine months later, he looks completely lost, and like he's phoning it in half the time. I keep hearing from Team Trevor "it's not fair, give him a chance, Stewart took years to become funny". I remember those early shows with Stewart, and while they weren't ha-ha hysterical, they weren't bad either. Second, this was a guy that all of his supporters touted as being a seasoned professional at the young age of 32 (supposedly he already had a show in South Africa which was similar to the Daily Show, but I can not find any evidence of it on the net, almost as if it's existence been scrubbed away), so much so that they hired him WITHOUT AN AUDITION. Give him nine months or two years, this is as good as he's going to get. They've clearly overestimated his ability to carry a show like this. He may have been a star in South Africa, but in the U.S. he's painfully average. And there's a lot of average comedians here.
I used to feel bad for not liking trevor noah at the outset, but now, several months down the line I honestly feel like John (If he actually did make this choice) Should have picked either Samantha Bee, Or John Oliver. Noah doesnt have the comedic chops to pull this show off. Its like they got a wet behind the ears LA comedian to do Louis CKs material after having read the jokes an hour prior. For EVERY EPISODE.
I think youtube has proven that this concept is still viable. One of the bigger channels, Roosterteeth/Achievement Hunter, is about 8 episodes into a MST style show (they call it Thearter Mode) where they get a bunch of their personalities together to watch terrible horror movies and make jokes about what they are seeing. It cut out the extra bits of MST but its basically the same concept of remarking on old, bad or low budget movies. They are saying the reception was overwhelming, to the extent that they went from 4 total episodes on a once a month schedule to 8 episode seasons running weekly. The point is, if the talent is there and they are into it then the people will find it just as charming, humorous and relateable as before.
I'm also 35. Waking up on Sunday morning to a marathon of MST3K was like winning the lottery mixed with Christmas. Mom would tell us to go outside, but before long, she'd be watching and cracking up too. I've never met anyone who's familiar with the show and doesn't love it.
The Daily Show was a good example for my generation. I didn't grow up with MST3K, but I did grow up with the Daily Show, and while I still watch it, and think it's, objectively, as good as it's ever been - the writing is as clever and on-point as ever, and Trevor Noah's doing a good job - it definitely has lost relevance, as it's no longer the only or the best comedy news show. Similarly, MST3K has largely been eclipsed by its own progeny - not just its literal successors, but also all the web shows solely devoted to riffing movies, e.g. Nostalgia Critic. Simply put, MST3K was the first, but it remains to be seen if it's still the best.
The Daily Show was a thing before John Stuart. Craig Kilbourne hosted it and that era of the show is kind of its own thing because it was during the halcyon days of the Clinton administration and we didn't have the words recession or 9/11 in our vocabulary yet. Even with the nostalgia goggles off it's interesting to see what the satire and general comedic environment was like back then.
I'm kind of shocked that you overlooked how this influenced Twitch movie streaming and Lets Playing. Younger people who didn't grow up with MST3K have a frame of reference for this sort of thing, its just that its bad movies in the 80s. You've got spontaneous Lets Plays, gaming streams, movie streams, and there are people who go out of their way to buy terrible games so that they can play them, like with Jim Sterling's Worst of Greenlight series. There is some connective tissue still. Also, sorry Bob but Larry Wilmore is awful. Worst than TDS with Trevor Noah, worse than Colbert's late night show. I'm not a fan of John Oliver's humour but he does carry on the torch well while Sam Bee, while doing well, just doesn't have the audience reach yet.
I think it's telling that part of the big last-day pledge drive for the Kickstarter involved the Game Grumps and Crow doing a simultaneous Let's Play/riff on the "Manos: The Hands Of Fate" fangame. The basic infrastructure of media where people react in entertaining ways to other media has survived and even flourished into the internet age, with little modification from the mst3k days; I'd even go so far as to say it's something that modern audiences would innately recognize, legacy brand or no. Still, as Bob says, what's changed is that our reactions today are the result of a diverse, abundant deluge of content, rather than the highly regimented trickle that mst3k was born out of. But I think they can adapt - Joel's stated that his goal was always for the show to do just that, and it's only due to outside circumstances that we haven't had an unbroken chain of hosts, reacting to the times and the changing media landscape.
There's actually a whole industry on Steam revolving around making bad games specifically so that people on UA-cam will play them, mainly because "Look at how shit this shit game is," is a constant source of content. You can make a thousand of them within an hour and shelve it until you get sick, get distracted, or go to a convention.
This is exactly what I was thinking about. While the current culture doesn't have the captured attention that was around during the original run, we now have a whole genre of media that revolves around watching/listening to people react to things. I'm hoping the fact that there is a good deal of internet culture in the new cast reflects an acknowledgement of the shift in culture. Honestly, this is a great time for them to do the re-union as we currently have older generations befuddled and asking "So, you watch people watching things?" That we didn't have a couple of years ago.
There will always be an audience for MST3K as long as bad/cheesy media exists....and as long as there are people who appreciate sarcasm, biting wit and crushing social commentary around... Oh, and puns. Lot's of hilariously lame puns. Did I mention those?
I disagree. MST3K is dead in the water. It's basically going to be on life support courtesy of nostalgia. As Bob said, it will ALWAYS hold a place in my heart, but it's time to move onto something new. Perhaps even greater.
Well there are plenty of youtube channels and podcasts dedicated to bad movies and games, so I think there is an audience for that. Just hard to predict if that MST3K format would be to their liking. I think I would like it, but I'm also biased due to nostalgia.
I'm 29, and I had no idea what the _MST3K_ abbreviation meant when I saw this video's title. So I think that, no, this will fly waaaay under my radar when it's realeased xD
+MrHPfan4ever I was going to say something about how the MST3K kickstarter was the largest earning kickstarter beating out Jessica Mars, but I know you don't want to her that so I'm just going to let you win.
+Michael Housser And its Veronica Mars and when that movie got released it flew completely under the radar because the only people who cared about it were the fans, not anyone new.
I'm one of the younger generation he's talking about and I gotta say the idea of sitting around watching something bad and everyone sitting around cracking jokes about it is now a popularly beloved and sought out experience: I.E. Sharknado
So I guess Bob exists in that weird sub-realm where he thinks he's old enough to talk down to Millennials about how things were in the 80's like they have no idea or context for it, and young enough to believe his opinions gel with them.
While you, apparently, exist in that weird internet sub-realm where people are still surprised that other people have opinions on the internet and / or act surprised at MovieBob offering those opinions like he just started doing so yesterday, or something.
Bobbio does that and more. He seems to genuinely hate modern pop culture and worships his precious 80s era. It's very cringe worthy when you look at his past videos about it.
I'm the same age as Bob, but I don't consider myself so old as to pretend anyone born after 2000 is so disconnected and uneducated they need to be told what a living room is.
I think there's one very simple reason it will remain relevant: the popularity of Let's Plays. Let's Plays are basically MsT 3k with videogames, so it only makes sense that a modern MsT 3k would feel familiar to a younger audience.
I (20, Israel) discovered MST3K when i saw its Movie in a movie channel and it was glorious. I grew up in the last days of the TV Guide times in here so i remember some of the pain or wonder that came with it (at nights the toddler channel would stay on a "SLEEPY TIME" screensaver until a certein hour, then the channel was turned into extra bandwidth for Mezzo, classical music.
I think it's still relevant in the fact that since we have the ability to watch whatever, whenever, and in varying degrees of quantity that the idea of someone being imprisoned and forced to watch the worst of it against their will with no control over it exists as a great source conflict and comedy. It's not as if we still don't live with entertainment restrictions today despite how much space we have covered; the idea that anyone would be restricted in such a magnitude provides some strong commentary on our current expectations.
I was lucky enough to grow up in the Cleveland area so my entire 47 yrs had late night bad movies with hosts. I found MST3K by accident while my kids were little. They didn't understand b & w movies but loved Crow and Tom Servo. Together we've seen every episode and go to Rifftracks showings.
When I was about twelve, I wrote them via the P.O. box that flashed on the screen at the end of the episodes, and they wrote back! This was probably around 2008- so several years after the show ended, although I didn't know it at the time. They told me they didn't get many letters anymore, just emails, and gave me bumper stickers, one of which is currently on my car. So yeah, I know what a living room is.
Yep, totally a science show. Be sure to go try one of the Mads' experiments on a loved one right now! I recommend "Vend-A-Gut," loads of fun for all ages.
Only Doctor Forester's green jacket and TV's Frank's hair are similar to Beakman. I loved Beakman in the day, but only the Josie episodes. Ah, Josie such a lovely assistant....
FNA Best reaction, kudos...basically, a guy and two puppets make fun of old bad movies, interspersed with skits. It's worth a look at the VERY least...I'M a long time fan, but I'm also someone who's had to try and sell it to his son, so I know it ain't everyone's bag (although he's a fan now), I personally prefer the early Joel eps, but most of the more entertaining movies were from the later Mike era. I recommend "Werewolf" for a first taste, but just look at the channel (yeah, they have a UA-cam channel) or an episode guide and pick one that sounds good. Any of you other mooks got any suggestions for someone just coming in..?
Don't know if anybody will see this or not, but just to let people know, free over-the-air station Comet TV (In the Baltimore market, channel 54.3) will be airing 2 episodes of MST3K every Sunday night starting at 8pm beginning September 4th.
As someone who makes it a point to finish every single movie they ever start watching, and as someone who will never forget renting the old MST3K video tapes as a little kid, this show will always hold relevancy to me. Also my friend and I had a bad movie exchange where we would assign eachother cheesy movies, the worst we could find. We had to sit and watch them all. The first one I got was The Nutcracker in 3D... Google the trailer, then pray for me... oh God, pray for me...
Very interesting points. I'm also 35, and even though I didn't discover MST3K till college, it holds the same special place in my heart. You're right that nobody is "forced" to watch bad movies these days the same way that people were when they had to channel surf. The biggest connection I can think of is when you're into a TV or movie series and force yourself sit through the bad entries for the sake of completeness. That's why the Star Wars prequel Rifftraxs were so cathartic. I hope the new show can get the rights riff to that kind of material, but I worry it will be a lot of the modern day "bad on purpose" stuff like Sharknado.
The problem is the competition that MST3K will have to face is quite strong and has been doing similar things to what they do (ie making fun of bad movies or dumb things in all movies) for a good number of years online while they've been away. Off the top of my head we have Nostalgia Critic, CinemaSins, Honest Trailers, How it Should have Ended, and even RoosterTeeth got into this with "Theater Mode" though they're limited on what they do by comparison. The real question isn't if MST3K is relevant by its own conception, but will it feel relevant when so many other variants of its idea exist and have been doing the same thing for a while and on a more regular basis for a much smaller budget? It may be fine off nostalgia alone, but it's a valid question I'm surprised this video didn't consider asking instead.
I stumbled on MST3K in the same way; flipping channels one day and saw something really funny. If my dad hadn't walked in and told me what it was I probably never would have known.
I think Bob is asking two things here. The first is, is MST3K's style of humor still relevant, and the second is, is MST3K itself as a source of that humor still relevant. The first is undoubtedly yes. If anything, the riffing style of humor pioneered by MST3K is more relevant now than ever, especially on the Internet. Just look how popular Let's Play and Reaction style channels have become on UA-cam, or gaming livestreams on Twitch. People are more obsessed - now more than ever - with hearing the ongoing reactions of famous UA-camrs to shows, games, movies, etc. And you better believe that riffing on bad games and movies, in particular, gains a lot of views. While we're no longer in a world where you are forced to watch one channel and singularly subjected to the whims of bad TV, that doesn't change the fact that there is a timeless human joy in hearing people casually react to things, especially bad media. Call it curiosity or schadenfreude in the latter case. Maybe you just want to see how bad something can get, but you don't want to spend money on it or go it alone. Moreover, suffering can often bring out the most amusing reactions of the host, and there are a lot more comedic opportunities out there. Also, your analogy of the Daily Show exploding into many different other shows proves a point that people, more than ever, are still craving that type of political satire entertainment that TDS pioneered. (Hell, we live in a world with Trump, how can we not?) It's just not concentrated in one source anymore - competitors cropping up is bound to happen when something becomes so popular and inspires so many people. (For the record, I don't think Trevor Noah is that bad, BTW...also, just look how many views John Oliver is pulling in!) That brings us to the second question. In a world with so many competitors steeped in MST3K's style of humor, will people care about MST3K itself, just because it was the first to do it? That's a tougher one, but I still think the answer is yes. I believe there's enough respect for the originator of the medium that younger people will give it a shot, and the show has its own standalone appeal even in a saturated market. I do see a lot of views for full-episode MST3K videos on UA-cam, and the Kickstarter has been wildly successful, so I think there's still a lot of love out there. Either way, the impact MST3K has had on our viewing culture is immense, and I would say that makes it more relevant than ever.
Bob, thank you for explaining in to me why my mom would make snide comments at shows and songs I actually liked. I was like "Shut up, quit trying g to ruin my fun for me, do you out just HATE my happiness so you want t to try to ruin it why do you hate me!?" Now I get it.
At 4:07, it sounds like there's some cymbal sound or something when the Star Trek picture came up. Is there a music track for this video? I'm really straining to make it out.
You know, Bob, there was an original 'Mystery Science Theater' some decades ago, that riffed spaghetti westerns and stuff. MST3K was just a reboot of that concept itself.
Once I saw a review for one of the episodes on Netflix where the person complained about the characters sitting in the way and talking over the movie. I...what? Were they trolling? Never had I wanted so bad the ability to reply to a review. The best part was that the original unriffed version of the movie was freely available too.
I didn't grow up with the show, I only discovered it beyond seeing the dvd's out of the corner of my eye a couple of years ago, and was almost immediately hooked. Riffing bad movies was popular enough to give Rifftrax a market to sell a product too long after MST3K and you have several podcasts that do a similar thing (albeit not riffing as we watch the movie, but riffing on it after watching it) now which are pretty popular as far as podcasts go, so I'd this there style is still relevant and considering there specific kickstarter success, yes they are still relevant, althought they may be on the niche side of things. It's cute so many in the comments are basing it's relevance on whether they personally have heard of it.
i guess you could do a thing were a guy signs himself into helping someone make the perfect old/bad movie channel(by just clicking accept on a terms and conditions pop up). So he is locked away forced to watch the movies and maybe have others join him, they could either escape or outlive their appeal to the ones calling the shots so you could change people out if needed (kinda like doctor who)
I remember finding MST3k while visiting some relatives in Chicago (how funny it was to find out that they filmed it not too far from where I lived at the time) And I have good feelings about what's going to happen. Riffs have never left the culture, Game Grumps, TFS, and other youtubers thrive on doing it with Video Games, Rifftrax has done well for itself (though I don't think its nearly as popular as it should be yet) What really matters right now is where its going to be hosted and what library of videos it'll be offered. That'll be the defining factor on whether this succeeds or fails.
The problem isn't whether it's still relevant or not. The internet proves that it is. The problem is, as you pointed out, MST3K is no longer the only game in town. Not just rifftrax and all the rest but thanks to the internet, anyone can do a riff and upload it. Hell, Rooster Teeth just licensed a bunch of movies so they could effectively do MST3K with the Achievement Hunter crew. Plus it goes beyond movies with the thousands of Let's Plays. To me the question is more 'Can they compete' and since they only have the name and the names of their cast, they're going to need a really strong opening to grab people. Because if not, why waste my time waiting for them to find their groove when I can just watch any of the multiple options available?
My brother and I were just MST3King Godzilla this morning, and we pirated Man of Steel and Batman v Superman, just so we could MST3K it at home instead of going to the theater. In fact, even when we do go to the theater we spend the movie talking about it. In short I don't think watching bad movies to make fun of them is a dead art
BTW, I dont expect this to be as big of a deal because riffing is something that all of the internet now does with ALL media, so the competition will be there.
One other thing about MST3K that I love is that it helped really obscure movies find an audience. True, it's mostly an audience who watches ironically, but they're watching. Would anyone even know what Manos: The Hands of Fate was if not for MST3K? And there are tons of movies ripe for the riffing, and more new ones being made all the time. People may not sit around the TV to make fun of what's being played on cable, but people still watch movies, and will want to make fun of the ones they don't like. So long as there are movies, and a healthy desire from audiences to make fun of them, I'd like to think that MST3K will remain relevant.
5:05 It's a strange feeling, a strange thing to have to explain to people. People younger than me at any rate. Normal programming ran up until about midnight or 1 or so, then you had Weird Shit. Prior to the advent of the Infomercial, there was nothing to air in the wee hours so program directors would throw on anything they could find, until the sign-off. Oh yeah, by the way, stations with less than 24h of content to air during a day would, some time after midnight, play the national anthem, maybe a prerecorded message about the radio callsign of the TV station, it's frequency and transmitter power, and then display SMTE colour bars until 6am, when they would sign back on and start airing programs again.
"Space is warped and time is bendable." *Sarcastically* "Help I'm falling at a 90 degree angle even though it makes no sense according to the laws of physics!" "Boy. I'm sure glad I don't look stupid in this." I'd like to thank Linkara and atopthe4thwall.
I think an example from radio that would make a for a good analagous counterpart to MST3K as a treasured old favorite could very well be found in either of two long-running fixtures aired on National Public Radio: I am of course referring to Car Talk, and to A Prairie Home Companion.
Today, I find that the one advantage that television has over internet streaming is that you are more inclined to actually discovering new things via browsing on TV than on the internet. Searching definitely narrows the ability to actually find completely new things. If anything, a TV reboot of MST3K hopefully would enable new audiences to discover new hidden gems. Unless they wind up riffing the popular so-bad-its-good movies.
I'm 26 and still remember the mythological space called the living room, but aside from shitting I have done all those activities in it. as for MST3K I came into that one really late, which sucks seeing how that would have absolutely been a thing I would have loved. Sadly I grew up in crippling poverty in a small suburb outside of Detroit, so we didn't have cable or internet until I was around 13 which was right when the series was ending. I saw the movie they did and loved it as well as a few episodes here and there, mostly the Godzilla ones as I was and am massively obsessed with Godzilla. I'll definitely be checking the reboot series out.
You've got nothin' to worry about, Bob... MST3K as a franchise is not only immortal, it's also highly influential. "Incognito Cinema Warriors XP" is an independent DVD-series (with their own UA-cam channel, AgonyWolf Media, which is well worth seeking out) that takes the MST3K formula and plunks it smack-dab in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse. "Midnight's Haunted Drive-In" is an upcoming indy-project that's part MST3K, part "The Ghost Busters" (as in the 1975 Filmation series). Heck, I'M even working on something- a fantasy-themed movie-riffing puppet show I call "Dungeons & Cinema: Quest Of The Gamma Knights." What is dead may never die.
Really true and an interesting thought. The Daily Show comparison is rather apt, and while some parodies are timeless (Mark Twain), many are not. It's hard for people to realize that their unique moments and favorite shows are a token of its era, but being able to admit that before the reboot is not just classy, but you did it in a professional, thought-provoking way. Good for ya, Bob.
To be honest, MST3K was always a bit retro even for its time. Beyond the riffing, the whole thing was always something of a take on the syndicated late night or Saturday afternoon monster movie shows with hosts like Creature Feature or Svengoolie. And those were already mostly a thing of the past by the time the '90s rolled around and the show got popular. You can still see them in some markets but they're hardly common anymore.
Svengoolie is still on!
Joel Schlosberg
Yeah, you can see it on MeTV. Those kind of shows used to be more common, though.
+Adam Hoffman In fact, Trace and Frank just cameoed on Svengoolie last month
Adam Hoffman It's more seen now that MeTV picks it up for stations nationwide, than it was when it only aired locally in Chicago. Everything about the show is a total throwback to the otherwise-long-vanished era of local horror hosts (to the point where a lot of the jokes about about how the jokes are a throwback) but being able to watch such a time capsule in 2016 is exactly what's so fun about it.
Yeah. Kevin Murphy even said that himself in an interview.
Just repeat to yourself, it's just a show... I should really just relax.
Could not agree with you more, Bob! I'm also one of those old guys (41) that grew up watching MST3K and it will always have relevance to me for nostalgic reasons alone. I am happy that they have found a group of talented and funny people to do the reboot and am really looking forward to it.
I think it'll still be relevant to today's younger viewers. After all, Let's Plays of games with wonky gameplay and/or storylines often get most of their entertainment value from the person or people doing the Let's Play riffing on these aspects of the game in a manner very similar to MST3K. Also, even with On Demand, Netflix, umpteen million channels, and the internet in general, you can still end up with nothing to watch and find yourself sitting there watching something like "Village of the Giants" or a cheesy old Blacksploitation film and riffing on that. So long as there is bad media, the "there's nothing good on" phenomenon, and the ability to find humor in anything, MST3K will always be relevant.
"...but I'm an old man. (he's 35)" LMAO!
By comparison, especially to the target demographic of something like this. ^_^
I'm not trying to go full on curmudgeon,...you never want to go full-on curmudgeon. :)
It just gave me a laugh, out of no where. Bob's only 4 years older than my daughter.
My friends once took me to see the Maze Runner (That afternoon I saw GotG, so it evens out) and was, as quietly as I could, riffing it live with the two friends sitting next to me. I think the "living room" experience you described just moved to "going to see a movie against your will and having fun with it". Also, The MST3K youtube uploads old episodes monthly and it's great.
Cinema Snob, The Nostalgia Critic, Red Letter Media, and a plethora of similar UA-cam video channels exist because of MST3K, and prove that the basic concept behind the show is relevant. If anything, it is more relevant than ever. Movie fans young and old still enjoy -- and dare I say will always enjoy -- watching and riffing on those films that are "so bad, they're good." Fear not, Bob, one way or another, MST3K is here to stay. Heck, it's spirit has never really left, as those aforementioned YT channels, and Riff Trax, etc., have already proven.
Just introduced MST3K to my 8 year old son. Had to explain to him a lot of what you just said (how tv stations had to fill time, etc). He loved it and now wants to watch more episodes on Hulu.
You can always tell when movie bob is super passionate about something when he slips in and out of his actually speaking voice XD I love it, and love MST3K.
Well, seeing as a 27 year old (Me) didnt know what that abbreviation even means tells you a lot about its relevance.
33 here, only heard about the series on the internet...
I also only heard about it for the first time on the internet, but I'm now in my second watch of the entire series. It's better the second time around somehow XD
+EssThree Same! I'm 32 this year and I only heard of it via the internet.
25, been a MSTie for 13 years thanks to my best friend's older sister.
Good to see im not alone.
First seen when I was 16, turning 18 Thursday, and I absolutely love MST3K. I watch/listen to it all the time when gaming, walking, working.
Bob. I'm 24, I know what a living room is. It's where I clone my pets and charge my hover-board for work.
I am 21 years old, and I was lucky enough to see every single episode whilst growing up. My dad was a huge fan, and now so am I.
I love that you explain 'living room', 'tv' guide', and how a pre 1990s tv worked! Haven't laughed so hard in long time!
I feel bad for all the kids growing up without MST3K. It might make me feel old, but it also makes me feel lucky to have seen it and understood it!
My family was pretty poor and we even had an old black and white TV for a long time, well into the 90s. I can relate so hard to the MST3K experience! I hope the new version does well, even if the Hipster part of me kinda doesn't want to share it LOL
I think we still have the experience of finding something bad by accident and riffing on it. Even if we have more choice nowadays, that doesn't mean we're always going to find the good stuff immediately. And even if we find something and it turns out to be bad, I still find myself not wanting to stop it, legitimately wanting to see the whole story.
Honestly, I'm almost as old as Bob and *I* can barely relate to the notion of watching bad TV to make fun of it just because it's all that's on, because I had books and an NES.
Yeah. I just watched some Rifftrax trailers and.... it doesn't appeal to me at all.
To be clear, I wasn't saying I *don't like* MST3K, just that Bob's theory of its cultural relevance doesn't hold water with me.
I'm 33, and even the way Bob described how he found MST3K was dead on, for me.
I think Bob raised a lot of good points, but they don't have to mean MST3K will fail. Relax.
why does it need to be a "one size fits all" theory? Obviously it wont fit every person on the planet, but I think it's a valid argument for most of MST3k's audience. Myself included
I don't think he's saying it will fail, but he's saying that most of the audience will view it less than what it originally was and more "Rifftrax with puppets" and that the whole reason the show became a success in the first place will be lost on the younger audience.
This video made me happy. I love my MSTies. I was a bit weird about hearing the show was coming back in a new way, but as long as it still has the same heart, it'll be great!
This comment section is all people Bob's age saying how they have no idea what MST3K is, and Millennials trying to prove that they have culture by knowing what it is.
Bob is a millennial. The entire notion of a generation is fairly arbitrary, but the people you're talking about are Gen Z.
I imagine this is hard for kids to understand nowadays but I had internet access before 96 and it really was just something other rich kids had that was super limited and only had very little use in everyday life. I could chat with other kids whose parents had money, join message boards, and experience VERY limited media and a tiny bit of streaming now and again but that's about it. I was a little young to be "sexting" back then (over AIM mostly) but I did the rest of it and Jesus, it is essentially unrecognizable based on what we have today. The only "social network" type things we had were IRC channels and AOL. I don't know if kids would even recognize the internet as it existed back then.
You could get the WWW before 1996 on college campuses, but yes, the content was very limited. And the sites you might want to visit took forever to load even with computer lab connection speed. Then again veterans from the early days of TV have said similar things about that medium. That the content wasn't great.
im loving this new content structure, happy to be seeing more videos from your channel popping into my subscription feed, keep up the great work!
I used to be a big fan of MST3K when I was a kid (30), but I think Bob's actually got a really good point here. I would be very surprised if the reboot caught on.
Rifftrax is the real sequel
I may be late coming in on this, but if Svengoolie can still continue on, so can MST3K.
Simply put...
I'm 18 right now and I've been watching Mst3k and Rifftrax for awhile now. (probably 4-5 years) I've thought that it was hilarious ever since I started watching it, and I'm kind of surprised to see that so many of these people in the comment section have no idea what Mst3k is! If your worried about it not reaching children because of their age I don't think that will be a problem. Like I said I've enjoyed it since my early teens. The new show getting buried underneath the mass of entertainment options that have popped up recently does worry me though. That ,unfortunately, sounds totally possible. By the way, I actually had not heard anything about them rebooting the show! I'm absolutely going to have to start watching it again!
Glad the sound is back to good. Also, thanks for bringing to my awareness that there's new MST3K! With Eliott Kalan as head writer, no less! He's amazing with The Flophouse guys, so I'm sure he'll do a stand-up job here, as well.
Bob, that was an excellent description of what tv-watching used to be like. If there was a tv show you liked, you'd better be in front of the box when it came on -- their schedule, not yours. If you missed it, you'd try and catch the rerun a few months later. If you missed that -- tough luck, it'll never be on again.
6:27 "(Sorry, he's not getting better)"
THANK YOU, BOB!!!
I stopped watching the daily show when "HE" stepped in
I really like Trevor.
Daniel Staples Just to be fair, I gave him a chance, and he's simply not funny... AT ALL. And now nine months later, he looks completely lost, and like he's phoning it in half the time.
I keep hearing from Team Trevor "it's not fair, give him a chance, Stewart took years to become funny". I remember those early shows with Stewart, and while they weren't ha-ha hysterical, they weren't bad either. Second, this was a guy that all of his supporters touted as being a seasoned professional at the young age of 32 (supposedly he already had a show in South Africa which was similar to the Daily Show, but I can not find any evidence of it on the net, almost as if it's existence been scrubbed away), so much so that they hired him WITHOUT AN AUDITION. Give him nine months or two years, this is as good as he's going to get.
They've clearly overestimated his ability to carry a show like this. He may have been a star in South Africa, but in the U.S. he's painfully average. And there's a lot of average comedians here.
Samantha Bee and John Oliver are more or less the true Daily Show successors.
I used to feel bad for not liking trevor noah at the outset, but now, several months down the line I honestly feel like John (If he actually did make this choice) Should have picked either Samantha Bee, Or John Oliver. Noah doesnt have the comedic chops to pull this show off. Its like they got a wet behind the ears LA comedian to do Louis CKs material after having read the jokes an hour prior. For EVERY EPISODE.
I think youtube has proven that this concept is still viable. One of the bigger channels, Roosterteeth/Achievement Hunter, is about 8 episodes into a MST style show (they call it Thearter Mode) where they get a bunch of their personalities together to watch terrible horror movies and make jokes about what they are seeing. It cut out the extra bits of MST but its basically the same concept of remarking on old, bad or low budget movies. They are saying the reception was overwhelming, to the extent that they went from 4 total episodes on a once a month schedule to 8 episode seasons running weekly. The point is, if the talent is there and they are into it then the people will find it just as charming, humorous and relateable as before.
Well, if they screw it up, we've always got forklifts.
MST3K was ridiculously snarky and funny to me even as a little kid in the mid-late 1990s. Relevance aside I'm looking forward.
MST3K riffing Santa Claus changed my life; of course it'll be relevant to me
I'm also 35. Waking up on Sunday morning to a marathon of MST3K was like winning the lottery mixed with Christmas. Mom would tell us to go outside, but before long, she'd be watching and cracking up too. I've never met anyone who's familiar with the show and doesn't love it.
The Daily Show was a good example for my generation. I didn't grow up with MST3K, but I did grow up with the Daily Show, and while I still watch it, and think it's, objectively, as good as it's ever been - the writing is as clever and on-point as ever, and Trevor Noah's doing a good job - it definitely has lost relevance, as it's no longer the only or the best comedy news show. Similarly, MST3K has largely been eclipsed by its own progeny - not just its literal successors, but also all the web shows solely devoted to riffing movies, e.g. Nostalgia Critic. Simply put, MST3K was the first, but it remains to be seen if it's still the best.
Your profile picture is giving me a headache, can you please not have it upside-down
Very good point. Could this new series rise above what's already out there I wonder?
Ugggh. I haven't found the alternatives even come close to "eclipsing" MST3K. I've looked, but have been wholly unimpressed.
The Daily Show was a thing before John Stuart. Craig Kilbourne hosted it and that era of the show is kind of its own thing because it was during the halcyon days of the Clinton administration and we didn't have the words recession or 9/11 in our vocabulary yet. Even with the nostalgia goggles off it's interesting to see what the satire and general comedic environment was like back then.
I'm kind of shocked that you overlooked how this influenced Twitch movie streaming and Lets Playing. Younger people who didn't grow up with MST3K have a frame of reference for this sort of thing, its just that its bad movies in the 80s. You've got spontaneous Lets Plays, gaming streams, movie streams, and there are people who go out of their way to buy terrible games so that they can play them, like with Jim Sterling's Worst of Greenlight series. There is some connective tissue still.
Also, sorry Bob but Larry Wilmore is awful. Worst than TDS with Trevor Noah, worse than Colbert's late night show. I'm not a fan of John Oliver's humour but he does carry on the torch well while Sam Bee, while doing well, just doesn't have the audience reach yet.
I think it's telling that part of the big last-day pledge drive for the Kickstarter involved the Game Grumps and Crow doing a simultaneous Let's Play/riff on the "Manos: The Hands Of Fate" fangame. The basic infrastructure of media where people react in entertaining ways to other media has survived and even flourished into the internet age, with little modification from the mst3k days; I'd even go so far as to say it's something that modern audiences would innately recognize, legacy brand or no. Still, as Bob says, what's changed is that our reactions today are the result of a diverse, abundant deluge of content, rather than the highly regimented trickle that mst3k was born out of. But I think they can adapt - Joel's stated that his goal was always for the show to do just that, and it's only due to outside circumstances that we haven't had an unbroken chain of hosts, reacting to the times and the changing media landscape.
There's actually a whole industry on Steam revolving around making bad games specifically so that people on UA-cam will play them, mainly because "Look at how shit this shit game is," is a constant source of content. You can make a thousand of them within an hour and shelve it until you get sick, get distracted, or go to a convention.
I think there are also studios that make deliberately shitty movies so they will get riffed, like the Asylum did with the Sharknado series.
This is exactly what I was thinking about. While the current culture doesn't have the captured attention that was around during the original run, we now have a whole genre of media that revolves around watching/listening to people react to things. I'm hoping the fact that there is a good deal of internet culture in the new cast reflects an acknowledgement of the shift in culture. Honestly, this is a great time for them to do the re-union as we currently have older generations befuddled and asking "So, you watch people watching things?" That we didn't have a couple of years ago.
If Daniel Tosh had a pair of puppet sidekicks on Tosh.0, you'd have a modern MST3K.
liked solely for the "Look trust me on this living room thing" joke
I'm 28 and found it hysterical.
There will always be an audience for MST3K as long as bad/cheesy media exists....and as long as there are people who appreciate sarcasm, biting wit and crushing social commentary around...
Oh, and puns. Lot's of hilariously lame puns. Did I mention those?
I disagree. MST3K is dead in the water.
It's basically going to be on life support courtesy of nostalgia.
As Bob said, it will ALWAYS hold a place in my heart, but it's time to move onto something new. Perhaps even greater.
I disagree.
Aren't opinions fun?...;)
.
Yes, yes they are.
Well there are plenty of youtube channels and podcasts dedicated to bad movies and games, so I think there is an audience for that. Just hard to predict if that MST3K format would be to their liking.
I think I would like it, but I'm also biased due to nostalgia.
The popularity of Let's Play videos is proof that there will always be a market for the genre MST3K created.
I'm 29, and I had no idea what the _MST3K_ abbreviation meant when I saw this video's title. So I think that, no, this will fly waaaay under my radar when it's realeased xD
In this episode, Bob has to explain how 20th century television-watching worked. And I feel old.
If the kickstarter says anything about MST3K it's that it has relevance.
Not really. That just means what Bob said it did; that it's still relevant to the people who grew up with it. Not much else.
+MrHPfan4ever I was going to say something about how the MST3K kickstarter was the largest earning kickstarter beating out Jessica Mars, but I know you don't want to her that so I'm just going to let you win.
+Michael Housser Let me win? What are you on about? Even still, Kickstarter is still rather niche in terms of public awareness.
+Michael Housser And its Veronica Mars and when that movie got released it flew completely under the radar because the only people who cared about it were the fans, not anyone new.
+MrHPfan4ever good point, idk what I ment by you win
Quality video. I heard there was a new kick starter to fund the making of the highly anticipated "Earth vs, Soup".
I'm one of the younger generation he's talking about and I gotta say the idea of sitting around watching something bad and everyone sitting around cracking jokes about it is now a popularly beloved and sought out experience: I.E. Sharknado
So I guess Bob exists in that weird sub-realm where he thinks he's old enough to talk down to Millennials about how things were in the 80's like they have no idea or context for it, and young enough to believe his opinions gel with them.
I've got broken bones older than Bob
While you, apparently, exist in that weird internet sub-realm where
people are still surprised that other people have opinions on the
internet and / or act surprised at MovieBob offering those opinions like
he just started doing so yesterday, or something.
+Mishyana When he decides we need to be told what a living room is, yeah, I'm gonna start wondering where he gets the nerve.
Bobbio does that and more. He seems to genuinely hate modern pop culture and worships his precious 80s era. It's very cringe worthy when you look at his past videos about it.
I'm the same age as Bob, but I don't consider myself so old as to pretend anyone born after 2000 is so disconnected and uneducated they need to be told what a living room is.
the fact that a kickstarter worked as well as it did is a great sign
I think there's one very simple reason it will remain relevant: the popularity of Let's Plays. Let's Plays are basically MsT 3k with videogames, so it only makes sense that a modern MsT 3k would feel familiar to a younger audience.
There's nothing like a guy 8 years younger than you going on about the good old days and what an old man he is to make you feel really old!
Keep circulating the tapes!
"That's enough. Normal view. (queue music) Norm-al view, norm-al view, norm-al view, NORMAL VIEEEEEEEEEEEW! (cough)" That's probably my all-time favorite MST3K memory/line.
I am 25 and I used to watch mst3k with my father when I was younger on SciFi channel. I have bought couple of the box sets they've released.
25 years of mst3k I love it.
Every time I see the acronym for MST3K, I misread it as "MISTAKE". Every time.
Checking in on this video two years later. MST3K got a second season on Netflix and Trevor Noah found his voice on The Daily Show.
I (20, Israel) discovered MST3K when i saw its Movie in a movie channel and it was glorious.
I grew up in the last days of the TV Guide times in here so i remember some of the pain or wonder that came with it (at nights the toddler channel would stay on a "SLEEPY TIME" screensaver until a certein hour, then the channel was turned into extra bandwidth for Mezzo, classical music.
I think it's still relevant in the fact that since we have the ability to watch whatever, whenever, and in varying degrees of quantity that the idea of someone being imprisoned and forced to watch the worst of it against their will with no control over it exists as a great source conflict and comedy. It's not as if we still don't live with entertainment restrictions today despite how much space we have covered; the idea that anyone would be restricted in such a magnitude provides some strong commentary on our current expectations.
I was lucky enough to grow up in the Cleveland area so my entire 47 yrs had late night bad movies with hosts. I found MST3K by accident while my kids were little. They didn't understand b & w movies but loved Crow and Tom Servo. Together we've seen every episode and go to Rifftracks showings.
Fuck's sake, Bob... You just reminded me why I LOVE living in this age. So much change... So many things changed since the mid-90s...
When I was about twelve, I wrote them via the P.O. box that flashed on the screen at the end of the episodes, and they wrote back! This was probably around 2008- so several years after the show ended, although I didn't know it at the time. They told me they didn't get many letters anymore, just emails, and gave me bumper stickers, one of which is currently on my car. So yeah, I know what a living room is.
Never heard about it (25), but it seems to have a "Beakman's World" vibe to it. Is it something like that?
Yep, totally a science show. Be sure to go try one of the Mads' experiments on a loved one right now! I recommend "Vend-A-Gut," loads of fun for all ages.
Only Doctor Forester's green jacket and TV's Frank's hair are similar to Beakman. I loved Beakman in the day, but only the Josie episodes. Ah, Josie such a lovely assistant....
Don't know whether to 'thumbs down' for not knowing MST3K... or 'thumbs' up for a choice shoutout to Beakman's World...
HeckfireOG I don't know what that is, but somehow I sense this would be a bad idea lol
FNA
Best reaction, kudos...basically, a guy and two puppets make fun of old bad movies, interspersed with skits. It's worth a look at the VERY least...I'M a long time fan, but I'm also someone who's had to try and sell it to his son, so I know it ain't everyone's bag (although he's a fan now), I personally prefer the early Joel eps, but most of the more entertaining movies were from the later Mike era.
I recommend "Werewolf" for a first taste, but just look at the channel (yeah, they have a UA-cam channel) or an episode guide and pick one that sounds good.
Any of you other mooks got any suggestions for someone just coming in..?
Don't know if anybody will see this or not, but just to let people know, free over-the-air station Comet TV (In the Baltimore market, channel 54.3) will be airing 2 episodes of MST3K every Sunday night starting at 8pm beginning September 4th.
Lol. I liked the "I don't care what year it was invented, nobody had the internet before 1996!" Line. Somehow I can really relate to that statement.
I don't believe MST3K was ever on TV on my aria, I discovered it when I rented "The Movie" at a video store.
As someone who makes it a point to finish every single movie they ever start watching, and as someone who will never forget renting the old MST3K video tapes as a little kid, this show will always hold relevancy to me. Also my friend and I had a bad movie exchange where we would assign eachother cheesy movies, the worst we could find. We had to sit and watch them all. The first one I got was The Nutcracker in 3D... Google the trailer, then pray for me... oh God, pray for me...
Haha, what a genius review. I love the history lesson on what a TV is, and how MST3K was born out of the tube-culture.
Very interesting points. I'm also 35, and even though I didn't discover MST3K till college, it holds the same special place in my heart. You're right that nobody is "forced" to watch bad movies these days the same way that people were when they had to channel surf. The biggest connection I can think of is when you're into a TV or movie series and force yourself sit through the bad entries for the sake of completeness. That's why the Star Wars prequel Rifftraxs were so cathartic. I hope the new show can get the rights riff to that kind of material, but I worry it will be a lot of the modern day "bad on purpose" stuff like Sharknado.
Just don't ask Patton to have a sense of humor about ghostbusters.
Bob, young people know what a living room is and they know what a TV is. Acting like they're idiots isn't exactly a good joke.
The problem is the competition that MST3K will have to face is quite strong and has been doing similar things to what they do (ie making fun of bad movies or dumb things in all movies) for a good number of years online while they've been away. Off the top of my head we have Nostalgia Critic, CinemaSins, Honest Trailers, How it Should have Ended, and even RoosterTeeth got into this with "Theater Mode" though they're limited on what they do by comparison. The real question isn't if MST3K is relevant by its own conception, but will it feel relevant when so many other variants of its idea exist and have been doing the same thing for a while and on a more regular basis for a much smaller budget? It may be fine off nostalgia alone, but it's a valid question I'm surprised this video didn't consider asking instead.
I stumbled on MST3K in the same way; flipping channels one day and saw something really funny. If my dad hadn't walked in and told me what it was I probably never would have known.
I think Bob is asking two things here. The first is, is MST3K's style of humor still relevant, and the second is, is MST3K itself as a source of that humor still relevant.
The first is undoubtedly yes. If anything, the riffing style of humor pioneered by MST3K is more relevant now than ever, especially on the Internet. Just look how popular Let's Play and Reaction style channels have become on UA-cam, or gaming livestreams on Twitch. People are more obsessed - now more than ever - with hearing the ongoing reactions of famous UA-camrs to shows, games, movies, etc. And you better believe that riffing on bad games and movies, in particular, gains a lot of views.
While we're no longer in a world where you are forced to watch one channel and singularly subjected to the whims of bad TV, that doesn't change the fact that there is a timeless human joy in hearing people casually react to things, especially bad media. Call it curiosity or schadenfreude in the latter case. Maybe you just want to see how bad something can get, but you don't want to spend money on it or go it alone. Moreover, suffering can often bring out the most amusing reactions of the host, and there are a lot more comedic opportunities out there.
Also, your analogy of the Daily Show exploding into many different other shows proves a point that people, more than ever, are still craving that type of political satire entertainment that TDS pioneered. (Hell, we live in a world with Trump, how can we not?) It's just not concentrated in one source anymore - competitors cropping up is bound to happen when something becomes so popular and inspires so many people. (For the record, I don't think Trevor Noah is that bad, BTW...also, just look how many views John Oliver is pulling in!)
That brings us to the second question. In a world with so many competitors steeped in MST3K's style of humor, will people care about MST3K itself, just because it was the first to do it? That's a tougher one, but I still think the answer is yes. I believe there's enough respect for the originator of the medium that younger people will give it a shot, and the show has its own standalone appeal even in a saturated market. I do see a lot of views for full-episode MST3K videos on UA-cam, and the Kickstarter has been wildly successful, so I think there's still a lot of love out there.
Either way, the impact MST3K has had on our viewing culture is immense, and I would say that makes it more relevant than ever.
Bob, thank you for explaining in to me why my mom would make snide comments at shows and songs I actually liked. I was like "Shut up, quit trying g to ruin my fun for me, do you out just HATE my happiness so you want t to try to ruin it why do you hate me!?" Now I get it.
At 4:07, it sounds like there's some cymbal sound or something when the Star Trek picture came up. Is there a music track for this video? I'm really straining to make it out.
What kind of rabid 20 year olds are living in America right now that warrants slightly older people to always undermine them?
You know, Bob, there was an original 'Mystery Science Theater' some decades ago, that riffed spaghetti westerns and stuff. MST3K was just a reboot of that concept itself.
Once I saw a review for one of the episodes on Netflix where the person complained about the characters sitting in the way and talking over the movie. I...what? Were they trolling? Never had I wanted so bad the ability to reply to a review.
The best part was that the original unriffed version of the movie was freely available too.
I didn't grow up with the show, I only discovered it beyond seeing the dvd's out of the corner of my eye a couple of years ago, and was almost immediately hooked. Riffing bad movies was popular enough to give Rifftrax a market to sell a product too long after MST3K and you have several podcasts that do a similar thing (albeit not riffing as we watch the movie, but riffing on it after watching it) now which are pretty popular as far as podcasts go, so I'd this there style is still relevant and considering there specific kickstarter success, yes they are still relevant, althought they may be on the niche side of things. It's cute so many in the comments are basing it's relevance on whether they personally have heard of it.
IS MOVIEBOB STILL RELEVANT?
Your here aren't you?
Only for the MST3K video.
Was really expecting a "push the button, Frank" gag at the end (especially considering that intro).
i guess you could do a thing were a guy signs himself into helping someone make the perfect old/bad movie channel(by just clicking accept on a terms and conditions pop up). So he is locked away forced to watch the movies and maybe have others join him, they could either escape or outlive their appeal to the ones calling the shots so you could change people out if needed (kinda like doctor who)
I remember finding MST3k while visiting some relatives in Chicago (how funny it was to find out that they filmed it not too far from where I lived at the time) And I have good feelings about what's going to happen. Riffs have never left the culture, Game Grumps, TFS, and other youtubers thrive on doing it with Video Games, Rifftrax has done well for itself (though I don't think its nearly as popular as it should be yet) What really matters right now is where its going to be hosted and what library of videos it'll be offered. That'll be the defining factor on whether this succeeds or fails.
The problem isn't whether it's still relevant or not. The internet proves that it is. The problem is, as you pointed out, MST3K is no longer the only game in town. Not just rifftrax and all the rest but thanks to the internet, anyone can do a riff and upload it. Hell, Rooster Teeth just licensed a bunch of movies so they could effectively do MST3K with the Achievement Hunter crew. Plus it goes beyond movies with the thousands of Let's Plays.
To me the question is more 'Can they compete' and since they only have the name and the names of their cast, they're going to need a really strong opening to grab people. Because if not, why waste my time waiting for them to find their groove when I can just watch any of the multiple options available?
My brother and I were just MST3King Godzilla this morning, and we pirated Man of Steel and Batman v Superman, just so we could MST3K it at home instead of going to the theater. In fact, even when we do go to the theater we spend the movie talking about it.
In short I don't think watching bad movies to make fun of them is a dead art
I do not know if this question can be answered until the first episode, or forst two to three episodes of the new MST3K airs.
BTW, I dont expect this to be as big of a deal because riffing is something that all of the internet now does with ALL media, so the competition will be there.
One other thing about MST3K that I love is that it helped really obscure movies find an audience. True, it's mostly an audience who watches ironically, but they're watching. Would anyone even know what Manos: The Hands of Fate was if not for MST3K? And there are tons of movies ripe for the riffing, and more new ones being made all the time. People may not sit around the TV to make fun of what's being played on cable, but people still watch movies, and will want to make fun of the ones they don't like. So long as there are movies, and a healthy desire from audiences to make fun of them, I'd like to think that MST3K will remain relevant.
5:05 It's a strange feeling, a strange thing to have to explain to people. People younger than me at any rate.
Normal programming ran up until about midnight or 1 or so, then you had Weird Shit. Prior to the advent of the Infomercial, there was nothing to air in the wee hours so program directors would throw on anything they could find, until the sign-off.
Oh yeah, by the way, stations with less than 24h of content to air during a day would, some time after midnight, play the national anthem, maybe a prerecorded message about the radio callsign of the TV station, it's frequency and transmitter power, and then display SMTE colour bars until 6am, when they would sign back on and start airing programs again.
"Space is warped and time is bendable."
*Sarcastically* "Help I'm falling at a 90 degree angle even though it makes no sense according to the laws of physics!"
"Boy. I'm sure glad I don't look stupid in this."
I'd like to thank Linkara and atopthe4thwall.
I think an example from radio that would make a for a good analagous counterpart to MST3K as a treasured old favorite could very well be found in either of two long-running fixtures aired on National Public Radio: I am of course referring to Car Talk, and to A Prairie Home Companion.
Mike Nelson was just in the video game Armikrog. I recommend it to anyone, if it is on sale only haha. The music is the biggest selling point.
what an amazing point of view, cheers m8
I wish it well, Godspeed MST3K.
that bong at the end is too loud mate
Today, I find that the one advantage that television has over internet streaming is that you are more inclined to actually discovering new things via browsing on TV than on the internet. Searching definitely narrows the ability to actually find completely new things.
If anything, a TV reboot of MST3K hopefully would enable new audiences to discover new hidden gems. Unless they wind up riffing the popular so-bad-its-good movies.
If the popularity of lets plays is any indication it certainly will have an audience.
I think I'll catch this show one of these days.
I'm 26 and still remember the mythological space called the living room, but aside from shitting I have done all those activities in it. as for MST3K I came into that one really late, which sucks seeing how that would have absolutely been a thing I would have loved. Sadly I grew up in crippling poverty in a small suburb outside of Detroit, so we didn't have cable or internet until I was around 13 which was right when the series was ending. I saw the movie they did and loved it as well as a few episodes here and there, mostly the Godzilla ones as I was and am massively obsessed with Godzilla. I'll definitely be checking the reboot series out.
"Is MST3K still relevant?"
Yes. There, i saved you time.
You've got nothin' to worry about, Bob... MST3K as a franchise is not only immortal, it's also highly influential. "Incognito Cinema Warriors XP" is an independent DVD-series (with their own UA-cam channel, AgonyWolf Media, which is well worth seeking out) that takes the MST3K formula and plunks it smack-dab in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse. "Midnight's Haunted Drive-In" is an upcoming indy-project that's part MST3K, part "The Ghost Busters" (as in the 1975 Filmation series). Heck, I'M even working on something- a fantasy-themed movie-riffing puppet show I call "Dungeons & Cinema: Quest Of The Gamma Knights."
What is dead may never die.
Really true and an interesting thought. The Daily Show comparison is rather apt, and while some parodies are timeless (Mark Twain), many are not. It's hard for people to realize that their unique moments and favorite shows are a token of its era, but being able to admit that before the reboot is not just classy, but you did it in a professional, thought-provoking way. Good for ya, Bob.
As long as it is written,produced and performed well(which it is) the new series will be relivent.