MST3K on Kickstarter

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Apologies if I'm duplicating; couldn't find a relevant thread, so please merge/delete if this isn't necessary.

Apparently Joel Hodgson's bringing back Mystery Science Theater 3000. Goal is $2mm for (3) episodes and if they get to $5.5mm there will be a full season of (12) eps. The idea is to demonstrate there's an audience for this and see if anyone wants to pick it up. In today's lower-risk distribution environment (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon), I think it's got a chance.

As a confirmed Gen Xer, it's really weird seeing the pop culture of my youth doing the Altered Beast thing (Rise from your gwave!). Old confirmed.

What do GWJers think?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...

Barely up a day and it's already raked in $1.3 million. Yowza.

Clearly, the best way to get something funded rapidly on Kickstarter is to be Chris Roberts, LeVar Burton, or Joel Hodgson.

They're in the home stretch now and they've made it to nine episodes. Joel also released a list of their guest writers in the most recent update and it's pretty impressive. (These are in addition to the cast and staff writers)

Joel wrote:

4. OUR GUEST WRITERS

But remember, now that we’re doing somewhere between 9 and 12 episodes, I’m happy to report that a lot of our amazing friends have agreed to come join us as guest writers. Here’s a list of writers who have already agreed to come help out:

DAN HARMON, the incredible mind who created Community, hosts the Harmontown podcast, and co-creator of the very funny Rick & Morty.

JUSTIN ROILAND, the other creator of Rick & Morty, as well as a very talented voice actor/comedian/artist, and a huge MSTie.

ROB SCHRAB, an original remote writer for MST3K, co-founder of the seminal Channel 101… and now, director of the next Lego Movie.

NELL SCOVELL, a long-time collaborator and friend, will be “in the house” too. She’s currently writing on the The Muppet Show but has worked on The Simpsons, Newhart and It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, among others.

ERNIE CLINE, the New York Times best-selling author of Ready Player One, which will soon be a movie from Steven Spielberg! If you’ve read RP1, you know how good Ernie is with cultural references.

PAT ROTHFUSS, the New York Times best-selling author of The Name of Wind, has offered to have a “story breakfast” with me and go over “story beats” for the next series… and a few of you can join us!

PAUL & STORM, the hilarious musical act, W00tstock founders and stars, musical contributors to Despicable Me 2, my good friends and the hosts for Friday’s live “Final Countdown Telethon” will be contributing riffs and some special music!

DANA GOULD, the brilliant comedian and former Simpsons writer, who will also probably appear on camera as well for a cameo or two. But actually, that gets into the area of our Guest Cameos, which is a topic I want to save for tomorrow.

ROBERT LOPEZ, the EGOT-winning songwriter from Avenue Q, The Book of Mormon and Frozen, has offered to write some original songs for us!

Man, between this and the cast they've announced it's almost like Joel sat down during the planning stages of the kickstarter and said "how can I tailor this solely to ruhk's tastes?"

The Kickstarter just finished! They brought in 5.764 million from Kickstarter plus another 600k from tonight's (awesome) MST3K livestream telethon bringing the total up to just over 6.3 million, meaning we get a full 12 episode season plus a Christmas Special and a "Secret 14th Episode."

I'm very excited to see this come to fruition. Looks like some good actors but especially the writers should make this really, really good. Cameos will also be fun.

Good for Joel.

Do we have another thread for this?

Episodes are now available to backers. I've watched the first two episodes on their streaming service and they are pretty good.

The second episode was a step up from the first. The quips do sometimes come a bit too quick one right after the other.

I'm looking forward to the rest of them.

Holy shirt, Har Mar Superstar did the new theme!

This is the moment the new series won my unconditional love:

The new MST3K; I liked it! I was a little worried going in, but I laughed a lot. I saw it with a crowd of fellow fans, which is the best way to see anything, but I think it holds up. New host and new voices for the bots took some getting used to, but that's to be expected.

And man, BIG emotional reaction to hearing the theme song!

So apparently the consensus is that "Cry Wilderness" is the best of the early bunch. Hard to disagree, but the follow-ups "The Time Travelers" and "Avalanche" (both with goofy Danny!) weren't that bad either.

Felicia Day, heart emoji, heart emoji

Rat Boy wrote:

So apparently the consensus is that "Cry Wilderness" is the best of the early bunch. Hard to disagree, but the follow-ups "The Time Travelers" and "Avalanche" (both with goofy Danny!) weren't that bad either.

Cry Wilderness is the craziest damn movie I have ever seen now. Like, nothing that happens in makes any sense what-so-ever. Even Plan 9 From Outerspace makes more sense!

Reaper81 wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:

So apparently the consensus is that "Cry Wilderness" is the best of the early bunch. Hard to disagree, but the follow-ups "The Time Travelers" and "Avalanche" (both with goofy Danny!) weren't that bad either.

Cry Wilderness is the craziest damn movie I have ever seen now. Like, nothing that happens in makes any sense what-so-ever. Even Plan 9 From Outerspace makes more sense!

Even Starcrash makes more sense!*

* = Episode 6, by the way.

Edit: And yeah, that happened. And then Episode 7 is The Land Before Time. It's amazing what Kickstarter money can get you.

So I had a few friends over tonight and heard that the full first season of the new MST3K was on Netflix. The guests just left and I loaded up episode 1 and immediately had a nerdgasm. Will Wheaton and Erin Gray (looking very good for her age) on my TV screen at the same time. IMAGE(https://static-cdn.jtvnw.net/emoticons/v1/41/1.0)

Surely this awesomeness​ is just because it's reboot season 1 episode 1, but I'll take it.

[edit]

Now I'm 15 minutes into the actual movie riffing and that initial nerdgasm has quickly disappeared. I can clearly see why someone upthread said that they're trying too hard. The riffs are coming in like machine gun fire, most of which are falling flat.

I think I'll eventually watch all of these​ new episodes but, for now, I'lll stick with Rifftrax.

You should try the second episode first. Cry Wilderness is pretty good.

Took the first Ep. for a spin last night and quite enjoyed it.

Took me about 10-15 minutes to warm up to the new cast, but after that I had a good feeling about the immense shoes they were filling. I thought they actually started out pretty slow during the movie's opening credits which had me a bit concerned, but it picked up considerably after the first break and seemed to track quite nicely with pace of the originals. Jonah's Kaiju Rap really endeared me to Jonah Ray. Seems like he's gonna fit in just fine.

The whole production, from the modernized, miniature model sets to the house band in spandex and a brass section, the writing, the delivery...all has a great energy surrounding it and I can't wait to make my way through the first season.

Big thumbs up so far. It's soooo good to be back.

I'm on the third episode, Time Travelers, right now. I'm enjoying it, but not really as much as I had hoped. Maybe it's a combination of hype and nostalgia. I was so stoked when the kickstarter was launched. The voices of the robots aren't really even close to what they were, which should be a minor thing, but it's bugging me. Tom Servo should sound like Tom Servo (yes, I know Kevin Murphy is doing Rifftrax.) Crow is getting closer the more episodes I watch.
That being said, love Patton Oswalt and Felicia Day as the Mads. The skeleton crew... not really sold yet.
Going to keep watching, because I am enjoying it, just not as much as I had hoped.

Reaper81 wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:

So apparently the consensus is that "Cry Wilderness" is the best of the early bunch. Hard to disagree, but the follow-ups "The Time Travelers" and "Avalanche" (both with goofy Danny!) weren't that bad either.

Cry Wilderness is the craziest damn movie I have ever seen now. Like, nothing that happens in makes any sense what-so-ever. Even Plan 9 From Outerspace makes more sense!

Bigfoot warns a kid that his dad's in danger and he needs to go save him.
What danger? A mine collapse.
Why is the dad in a mine? Well, he's chasing after his son who's chasing another guy who's chasing Bigfoot.
So wait, ultimately Bigfoot is the reason the dad's in danger? Yeah, I guess.
But the kid saves him, right? Well actually the kid just yells and then Bigfoot saves the dad.
So Bigfoot warns the kid that his dad is in danger because of Bigfoot but then also Bigfoot saves the day and the kid never really factors into it in any meaningful way. Also there's a tiger.

What

"I'm his girlfriend; I only show up when he makes racist remarks."

We're watching g Cry Wilderness right now. Geezus.

This is all so great. I am so happy this is back.

As this is not on my country's Netflix: Does anyone know another legal way to watch this? I heard that backers have access to another way of streaming it... is there a way to access that retrospectively?

If you're a backer above a certain point, you can download the new season, but that's it I believe for the time being.

Technically this the link but if you didn't back it it'll cost you a cool million.

https://mst3k.vhx.tv/products/experiment085

Doug McClure:Edgar Rice Burroughs::Ian McKellan:J.R.R. Tolkien?

Veloxi wrote:

If you're a backer above a certain point, you can download the new season, but that's it I believe for the time being.

That's a bummer, as I guess it won't be one of the Netflix shows that will come out on DVD.

I've seen the first 3 new episodes so far. The pace of the riffs feels about the same as it was in seasons 2-10. It helps to remember that when they're in the writer's room they don't say "who will get this joke?"; they say "the right person will get this joke." They pack them in so that they have room for the obscure ones. And if a joke doesn't land then they'll be trying again momentarily so it's not the end of the world.

They do throw in some callback riffs to the old shows, like...

Spoiler:

"This is where the fish live."

I'm four episodes in, and it's mostly coming together. My only real complaint is that Servo's voice still doesn't feel right. Beyond sounding different (which is understandable), he's missing a lot of the mannerisms and personality previous voice actors gave him.

Stengah wrote:

I'm four episodes in, and it's mostly coming together. My only real complaint is that Servo's voice still doesn't feel right. Beyond sounding different (which is understandable), he's missing a lot of the mannerisms and personality Kevin Murphy gave him.

FTFY

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