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The Official and Very Rifftastic Mystery Science Theater 3000 Thread

The Salt Umpire said:
What about Mike Nelson? What happened to him?
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I don't think Joel and Mike have had any sort of falling out, however, I do think things are decidedly cool between them.

Maybe it's because Mike was able to take the concept of riffing a movie, and after a false start with 'The Film Crew', find a measure of success with Rifftrax on a relatively modest budget; whereas Joel maybe went to the well one too many times with the Kickstarter campaigns and fans didn't really see the return on their investment that they were expecting, which is why the last Kickstarter campaign failed to reach its goal.

Just speculation on my part.​
 
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Redfern said:
Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. Though it's ironic that the...might we call it "Joel's Project" wound up having less elaborate sets than what the Comedy Central Sci-Fi Channel eras had, reduced to flat backdrops or CSO backgrounds compared to the fully realized bridge of the '90s. I know part of that was Covid restrictions. They had to stay safe. I will admit that I really liked the "door sequence" of the NetFlix and GizmoPlex runs. And I say that as a fan who was "initiated" during the Sci-Fi Channel years. I know part of the fun is that we had this bizarre lineup of doors that make no sense aboard a space station, but I really got a kick seeing these various but cohesive "bays" as we ran for the theater with Jonah and Emily. I imagine for these RiffTrax episodes, they will return to the tradition of "out of place" doors like drawbridges, latticed gates, hospital doors and the like.
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That was one of my issues as well.
How could something that reportedly cost that much look that cheap?
That, and the celebrity cameos.
It's like Joel was trying to say, "Look at all these cool people I know who are willing to make an appearance and poke fun at themselves".
 
DarrenTR1970 said:
That was one of my issues as well.
How could something that reportedly cost that much look that cheap?
That, and the celebrity cameos.
It's like Joel was trying to say, "Look at all these cool people I know who are willing to make an appearance and poke fun at themselves".
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You may have just answered your own question. Most of the budget may have gone to paying the celebrity guests rather than creating the sets and FX.
 
It occurred to me last night as I was drifting off to sleep that one of the reasons for this announcement from Mike, is that Shout! Factory partnered with Filmrise to form Radial Entertainment in July 2025 and shut down its physical production of DVDs/Blu-Ray at the end of the year in order to concentrate on their YouTube channel and streaming.

What better way to launch a new streaming service than with a MST3K revival with Mike, Kevin and Bill?

We will probably hear an announcement about where to watch these new episodes in the near future and one might be a new app/streaming platform.​
 
Redfern said:
The team at RiffTrax has started a KickStarter to produce 4 new MST3K episodes. Not just the off camera voices of Mike, Kevin and Bill, but a return of their puppet 'Bot alter egos, Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot!
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Awesome. This is my personal favorite iteration of MST3K.
 
Mike, Kevin, and Bill released another video discussing why they are returning to MST3K now.

In it, Kevin is speaking about how he was drawn to it because of the prospect of building physical sets, doing effects in-camera, etc. and he says "as little CGI or any of that BS..."

It's hard to read that as anything other than a swipe at Joel and the way the revival series completely abandoned the "cowtown puppet show" ethos of the original show.

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It definitely reads as a response to season 13, at least. The prior reboot seasons didn't really use that much in the way of VFX; they had real sets, they were just very large and didn't look all that good (IMO). I have some sympathy's for Joel here, as far as all the bluescreen goes; the pandemic being what it was, virtual production seemed like a good idea and on paper the hand-illustrated 2.5D backgrounds seemed like they should be charming. They just didn't work at all, visually.
 
I never really had a problem with Jonah or Emily as hosts, it was the writers that let them down, a lot of the jokes didn't land or sounded too polished/well rehearsed.

With Joel and Mike, you got the feeling they were watching the movie for the first time, along with the audience, and were making the riffs up on the spot.

Another thing that bothered me about the revival was that there never seemed to be any genuine interaction between Jonah or Emily and Day and Oswald.

It always felt like segments were recorded in blocks, then inserted into the episodes where they should go.

It always felt like there was a lag between something Jonah would say and Day and Oswald's reaction, like they were waiting for their cues to speak.
 
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