006 - In The Not Too Distant Future
MST3K
I really wanted to talk about one of my favorite television shows of all time this week, because, mostly, I don’t want to pigeonhole this show to be about video games, or game shows or current events.
So I decided “why not mystery science theater 3000” that would be a great topic, it’s almost thanksgiving… by a few months, but still. BETTER NOW THAN WHEN EVERYBODY DOES IT FOR TURKEY DAY
I recently subscribed to “The Gizmoplex” a new streaming thing, that is really just a vimeo account, but with graffix, for all the MST3K nerds. Here’s the best part – the free version, that is FREE FREE, has almost everything from the 90s era of Mystery Science Theater, so if you want “Manos the Hands of Fate” or Joel saying “It Stinks” or Pearl Forrester getting revenge, it’s all there, for zero dollars. I wonder if it’s shout factory or not.
For Seasons 11 and 12, which are the Netflix Years with Jonah, you can buy them digitally for $40. I did not do this option, even though I unsubscribed to Netflix and I really love Mac and Me.
But this new season, Season 13 was the one that made me curious. It’s currently worth $150 for Season 13 and livestreams, $130 for just the episodes and $5 to rent an episode and so I rented a few episodes. And, admittedly, I was very, very, confused.
Mystery Science Theater now has two concurrent hosts going back and forth – Jonah and Emily. And everything looks to be done on a Green Screen. Felicia Day and Patton Oswalt continue their roles as Kinga Forrester and TV’s Son of TV’s Frank as they try and rebuild a legacy, by using their moon base as a theater to air the show itself, jokingly “stealing” the schematics from Netflix, and acknowledging the lack of budget.
And I like Emily as the host, she is a puppeteer by trade, so her interacting with the puppets, Tom Servo, Crow and GPC have been delightful. She is really good at reading lines, although on occasion the skits done on the show feel a little TOO Youtube Reviewer now, lots of “womp womp” at the cameras in the sketches.
The bad news is if continuity is what’s your fortay for what amounts to “comedians riffing on cheesy movies” – Jonah is sorta just, there now. What began as a “delivery driver helping” is now just sort of “guy in a few episodes reminding people he’s still a host”, so you get two flavors of host – Jonah and Emily, and it gets confusing, to make matters worse, Joel is back riffing as a bonus episode this year, which is also strange.
I would love to go through my history of the show, from watching a Turkey Day marathon in the 90s, and then trying to find the time to watch it on Sci-Fi with Mike, and then later, when it ended, to try and watch it again on Saturday Afternoons on Sci-Fi right around the time 4Kids ended their block, and then there is all sorts of other events.
From renting VHS tapes including Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie at Blockbuster Video to illegally downloading episodes on Kazaa on my PC I got in Middle School, to the countless streams I watched it on GBStv, back when Something Awful was an interesting place, and full of Mystery Science Theater 3000 nerds, and they ran a marathon of that show on Thanksgiving in Homage to it.
Then bringing it to modern day, where Shout Factory had Twitch Stream Marathons, and it leads to the kickstarters and the funding and now, this, the gizmoplex that for the price of a video game, about $60, you get a full season of Mystery Science Theater.
Well, a cheaper version of Mystery Science Theater, I am unsure if this was just because of Pandemic, or because they couldn’t afford a warehouse or studio for a few weeks to record host segments, but it was very cheap.
My biggest gripe with the Netflix MST3K episodes, was it felt “overproduced” – every nerdy comedian wanted to cameo or give a riff, MST3K fans donated to submit riffs, even if it felt unnecessary to a scene, that it felt like a “celebration of MST3K” instead of a new season. This version, feels like the “Tribute Concert” version if you go into the show only seeing Emily, Patton and Felicia and hearing new voices for Crow and Servo.
But that is not to say – it’s not terrible. Even if it’s low-cost version, it felt like it has a ton more heart, and more room to breathe, especially when it comes to movies like Munchie or Robot Wars.
Is it worth it? I think if you’re a hardcore fan of the show, absolutely, but if you aren’t, I suggest giving the old episodes a watch for free, and then see what the hubbub is.
The big elephant in the room, however – time has passed Mystery Science Theater by. Joel tried to resurrect the show with “Cinematic Titanic”, Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy have done “Rifftrax” back in 2006, at a time when “Podcasts” were novel, and now just about any jackass with a microphone can say whatever they want to a public, in the hopes of being recognized, but we all know is just a pitiful cry for help, and oh god, I’m talking about myself.
Rifftrax has carried the football when MST3K died, and it’s been over a decade. They riffed on bad movies like “The Room”, they have riffed on popular movies like “Star Wars” and “The Fast and Furious”, some of them have live shows and you can watch them on Amazon Prime Video, and others are still just the MP3s for you to look, and syncs automatically to the movie. They have celebrities do commentaries and riff with them, and they even have a video game made by the “What the Dub” people. And on the “Rifftrax” website, you can watch a few MST3K episodes as well, there is a bit of an overlap.
I’m not saying there is competition, but the one host who hasn’t shown up in the revival is Mike, and that’s been a frustration point, even though they are all friends ultimately in this weird riffing thing…
Which leads me to the last subject – the impact of MST3K. Back in “ye olden time” when I was a real internet asshole, I was commentating over people’s YouTube Videos, some have become common like “Kickassia” and others thankfully forgotten – remember retsupurae? Maybe making fun of children playing games is “not a good look” to anybody. And yes, I know I would look like a piece of shit, if you found out. Just giving you the heads-up, Cancel Culture isn’t “look they did the bad thing”, its “Holding them accountable” and, just up-front – hey did unpleasant things, know they are shitty, let’s move along.
Anyway, the riffing culture has now become a bit more mainstream. When you see Twitch streamers do watchalongs, they riff on the content, when you see the success of Let’s Play videos, the common response is “The Mystery Science Theater 3000 of Video Games”, because it’s commentating on a game as it is going on – although, I don’t know how many let’s play channels have puppets, but I’m sure there is a handful.
Commentating over videos is still a thing, rather it’s riffing on “current events” in the news, people doing “live reactions” to game events (newsflash – it’s all going to be very disappointing, you’ll probably preorder it when it’s available and wish it was “a full game” even though the $100 title you thought was “too much”) or it’s the cutaway commentary that you see sometimes done on YouTube, where people try to “um, actually” feminist youtubers or people crying because they were heartbroken. Yeah, there are real pieces of shit on the internet still, I do this thing now, but somewhere out there, is a guy pissed off some content creator played a video game incorrectly.
And the more you get invested in content creators and go down that rabbit hole, the more it just becomes creepy and awkward – like, I really don’t care DarkSydePhil is a piece of shit or is bad at games, he’s not the only guy in the world that plays games, there’s millions of people.
Why am I bringing all that yucky stuff up? Because that is NOT Mystery Science Theater 3000 or RiffTrax or the culture of it. When MST3K did a riff, they aren’t riffing to make a “call to action” to hurt Joe Don Baker or Harold P. Warren. It’s done to have light over the makings of movies. And unfortunately, that sort of cheerful opportune is lost in most media criticism these days – BUT THAT IS FOR ANOTHER EPISODE.
The modern day movie people are your “CinemaSins” nitpick fuckboys, ScreenJunkies which are SEO-Driven, and then you have RedLetterMedia who are most likely to be the “Next Generation’s MST3K”, given Mike and Jay and Rich seen as “characters” while also offering their criticisms of modern movies, and really tacky black-spine how-to videos, that BACK IN THE DAY, would be called “Shorts” on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Yes, that was all this was about. The internet is a cruel, brutal place, MST3K is done out of love, and while the original MST3K was based out of Minnesota and RLM is based in Wisconsin, there is somewhat of the same attitude of movies with both.
I came into this article wondering “Do we still need a Mystery Science Theater 3000?” after watching the new version, that is “Back to Basics”, watching a Rifftrax episode, a RLM “Best of the Worst” review, and just searching “commentary” on YouTube and Twitch – I’ve come to the conclusion that is not really the best way to end this – Not Really, but it’s better than most of the homages online.
Not everybody is good at writing jokes, or telling improvised jokes off the top of their head. Not everybody understands why movies are weird or boring or bad or cheesy – and you can’t just 1:1 that style, Trust Me, I live react to GamesMaster on the Patreon. Sometimes I’m just awkwardly sitting there.
And honestly, if I had the money, time and budget, and a legal team to not get Nintendo or Sega or Sony mad at me, I would try and figure out what “The MST3K of Games” really is, because I don’t think it’s just “playing while talking over it” (GameCenterCX does it better), and it’s not “pre-record the game footage and then commentate over it with scripted riffs” (Because video games take too long, and even if you have the gameplay footage, take into consideration failures or retries or just “rest breaks”)
And the more and more you go into just “riffing on the story” the more it becomes a game review, and game reviews exist online. That’s Angry Video Game Nerd, That’s XPlay, It already exists.
Ah fuck, now I am just going around in circles because the talk was Mystery Science Theater, and we’re on Internet People, Which Leads Back To That Riffing I Did Earlier, Which Leads Back to My History of MST3K which leads to questioning the storyline of the new version, which leads back to the final thought…
It's just a show, I should really just relax.
IN THE FULL VERSION OF THE PODCAST
A REVIEW OF ARCADE PARADE
A REVIEW OF DREAMLIGHT VALLEY
JACKBOX PARTY PACK 4 RECAP
A LOOK AT D23
AND A PAYWALLED NEWS SEGMENT!
