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Post by Grape on Apr 24, 2021 8:26:12 GMT -5
When I first came across MST3K on late night satellite TV some 20 years ago, I was instantly hooked. I trawled the schedules and made sure that I taped (one for the teenagers there) every episode that I could. I then imported as many DVD's from the US as I could find (different regions back then). Then, moved onto downloading as many as I could. If I started today with the last couple of series, I simply wouldn't have bothered. Some good movie choices, some reasonable one liners but on the whole, poor.
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Post by dudehitscar on May 2, 2021 21:58:01 GMT -5
guess I'll throw in here.. the Jonah era had some growing pains (not unlike the joel and mike eras).. but overall Seasons 11 and 12 are absolutely on par with the other eras. Not quite up there with Season 3 or the second half of season 8-10 for me but plenty of top 10 of all time classics that stand with the best of any season..
love the new crew, love the new songs, love the new mads, love the new bots, great movie selection..
It made me more of a fan of the show. Even if I have some gripes with it and some episodes I didn't like (I feel the same about all the old seasons and eras too). This show has always been a mixed bag for me.
more please.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Dec 18, 2021 0:25:34 GMT -5
I had the week off, so I decided to revisit Seasons 11 and 12 to see if any of my prior opinions had changed a few years on and to prep for Season 13. Its been a few years since I sat down and watched any of these episodes, and the last time was to revisit Killer Fish to time how chopped down the movie was, not to really watch.
In any case, I wasn't going to watch 20 full episodes, I just didn't have the time, but I wanted to revisit a majority of the episodes. So I watched the first 35-40 minutes of a majority of each season, avoiding the episodes I'd watched more than once or twice previously so I wouldn't recall as much. I didn't want to make a new thread since this is mostly just my musings in retrospect for the brief Netflix era.
I revisited Cry Wilderness, Starcrash, The Land That Time Forgot, Loves of Hercules, Wizards 1 & 2, Carnival Magic, Christmas That Almost Wasn't, Atlantic Rim, Lords of the Deep & Day Time Ended. So a majority. Some I watched a bit further than 35-40 mins, but all at least that much.
The main issues I recall with Season 11 are still issues. The pre-riffing/editing issues in the theater. The TOO rapid-fire of the riffs is present in the first half of the season and eases back by the end. The whole thing still seems very assembly line, particularly the host segments which all seem rushed, unrehearsed and half-done.
But! The saving grace is that Season 11 had decent riffing. Not GREAT with any consistency, but fairly decent riffing throughout. There's far too much of it and could've used a good edit to pick out the best bits, but I get they had LOTS of guest writers to include.
There are issues there though. The formatting of riffs is occasionally wonky, they do "bits" a bit too often that go on too long. And Barron's delivery of Servo in Season 11 is absolutely dreadful. And they lean WAY too heavily on forced catchphrases (Paul, Bang, Capsule, Pretty Nice, etc) that echo Crow's fake catchphrase (You know you want me baby!) but miss the point that sketch was trying to make.
But otherwise, the actual content of the riffs is generally fairly good...for the first half of the season or so. There's a reason most of the episodes I rewatched (that I hadn't seen more than once or twice) were in the back half of Season 11. The riff pacing does get better, but also oddly stale and dull, just not as funny. This got worse in Season 12 (though that's easier to pinpoint why, as Season 12's writing sucked, but more on that later).
I THINK I know why this drop off happened, and it has to do with the editing of the movies and the pace of the riffs. One stayed consistent throughout the season and the other decreased.
So as we all know, the films are more edited down than they used to be. In the old show the average theater time was something like 72-76 minutes, sometimes breaking past 80 minutes. Season 11 averaged something like 66-70 minutes. Season 12 was shorter, 65 mins or less.
In the old show we were watching the overwhelming majority of a movie, especially some of those cheap oldies that were only 70ish minutes already. Enough movie was there to follow the plot. They might've cut an extraneous side-plot here and there, but you could generally follow the movie itself with the riffing on top of it. The editors knew how much they could cut down before the movie became totally incoherent. And I think that's the key to how I personally (and I think a decent amount of other fans) enjoy the show and how it works:
It's a movie with riffing on top. The movie is the vehicle for entertainment, the foundation. Everything else hangs on the movie. The riffs react to and depend on the movie. The viewer reacts to the movie first, then the riff that itself reacts to the movie. The host segments are tertiary and are built on top of the movie and the riffs. But the movie is vital.
If the viewer can't connect to the movie, if the movie has been cut up and edited down past the point of a followable narrative, the viewer can't care about what's happening on screen, it's just constant noise.
Add riffs on top and its basically just a reaction video like the ones on YouTube where someone watches the most exciting or funny or emotional parts of a movie/video game/etc. You as the viewer don't understand any of the context, you're just watching the "best bits". And frankly I find that a pretty empty experience.
But! And this is something I just realized on this last rewatch, the rapid fire riffing in the first half of Season 11 mostly overcomes the issue altogether. While I admit that I'm a traditionalist when it comes to how the show should be about the movie first and the riffing on top, the overwhelming amount of riffs (with a solid amount of them being actually funny) overcomes this issue. It becomes ABOUT the riffs, which I'm not wholly comfortable with in principle but I can forgive when its entertaining. It becomes its own thing. It isn't classic MST, but it works. This was most evident in Cry Wilderness.
But this didn't last. And its not hard to understand why, that kind of pace is untenable. So when the pace of riffs slowed mid-season the show shifted back towards the classic movie-riff dynamic where the movie needs to be the foundation for the riffs, but the movies had already been edited down so much that it was a weak foundation and I personally had a hard time keeping attention on the episode. The riffs weren't enough anymore and I couldn't follow the film enough to care. But! And I will give Season 11 this: the riffs, even once they slowed down, were generally passable. Not quite enough that I want to revisit most of the episodes. There's still enough annoyances throughout the episodes to make revisiting not worth it for most of them, but they are generally good riffs.
Now...Season 12...
Season 12 fixed a few things, but broke a few others that outweighed what they fixed. The riffs were now pre-recorded by all 3 performers in one sitting as opposed to totally separate in Season 11. So the riffs sounded more natural, less edited together. Barron toned down his Servo. The host segments seemed to be rehearsed and had a bit more polish.
But...the movies were now even shorter, barely over and hour, making 2+ hour movies like Killer Fish totally impossible to follow. Cutting out the best, goofiest bits of what should be a slam dunk like Mac and Me. Making a boring movie like Lords of the Deep even MORE boring because we don't know or care about anything happening on screen because all the establishing and characterization (what there was of it) is now gone. At this point the movies are just a blur of pre-edited, selected funny things the hosts can react against. They're YouTube reaction videos.
And on top of it, the riffing went wayyyyy down in quality. The normal pace of riffing remained, but the actual content of riffs had a notable shift to lowest-common-denominator humor. Broad toilet jokes and "nerd culture" humor. Anything remotely obscure was readily explained (the Myst and Diogenes riffs from Day Time Ended still infuriate me years later).
In the old show they often said they didn't ask who would get it, but that the right people would get it. They clearly were concerned about being too esoteric in Season 12.
In all Season 12 is a slog. The episodes are shorter, but they feel longer. I kept checking how much time had passed. The riffing is so bad, the movies so inconsequential that I have a really hard time getting through 35-40 minutes much less the whole thing.
Now, its obvious (in spite of what they've said publicly) that the changes made in Season 12 were to try and make the show more attractive to Netflix. And I think we all know Netflix was always the goal when Season 11 was announced. Now, the interesting thing will be to see what kind of show they put together without the pretext of making it for some other company's format (presumably).
I'm hopeful that they've finally realized they're making these for fans and don't feel the need to cut up the movies so much/make the riffing super accessible so it works better on Netflix for the general public.
I'm sure I have a whole bunch of other thoughts and episode-specific nitpicks, but that's just my overall thoughts on the Netflix era.
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Post by BoB3K on Dec 18, 2021 1:15:21 GMT -5
They're YouTube reaction videos. Oh my god, you've perfectly condensed everything that is wrong with the NuMST3K down to one sentence. It's MST3K for the YouTube generation. Imma gonna go watch a KTMA ep.
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Post by sol-survivor on Dec 18, 2021 2:35:18 GMT -5
I have made my lack of enthusiasm about the revival known before. I never finished Season 11 and have never again watched the episodes that I did get through, nor have I watched anything that came after. The episodes I did watch left such a bad taste in my mouth that it affected my enjoyment of the original recipe episodes for a couple of years, but I got over that. I have come to the conclusion that for me, but probably not that many others, the original recipe episodes are a freshly baked from scratch double chocolate chip cookie with real chocolate chips still warm from the oven with a cold glass of milk, and the revival episodes are a package of off brand chocolate chip cookies with imitation chocolate chips from the dollar store with a room temperature bottle of water. In other words, sort of the same flavor without the substance. Maybe I would like an episode or two if I had any desire to give them a chance. Emphasis on "if I had any desire to". Again, only my opinion. For everyone who does like the revival, I'm glad for you.
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Post by Megalon on Dec 18, 2021 11:30:26 GMT -5
I still haven't re-watched any of the reboot episodes, even though I greatly enjoyed many of them. If this has taught me anything, it's that discomfort is an independent factor in assessing an episode's quality. In other words, the good parts don't make up for the bad. An episode with an offensively racist joke (and there are many of them in Seasons 11-12) is always going to rate lower than other episodes, even if the riffing is otherwise superior. The same can be said for episodes with awful host segments, painfully bad singing, or pointless guest stars (all the things the new seasons are guilty of) -- these things can bring an episode down to the unwatchable level even if the other parts are great.
Some of the new episodes made me laugh as hard or harder than any of the funniest Classic episodes. But when I think about all the bad parts I have to endure in order to re-watch them, ehh... I'd rather just re-watch a Classic episode instead. Cozy and comfortable beats laughter, it seems.
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Post by BoB3K on Dec 18, 2021 13:20:39 GMT -5
This is interesting. I too liked Season 11 a good bit, but hated 12 and stopped watching it.
Season 11, I watched all of once, and then watched some of the 'better' ones again with my family (for us, that would be Reptilicus (hey, it's the first ep and has a giant rubber monster), Cry Wilderness, Yongary, Time Travelers, (I liked Avalanche possibly the best, but didn't rewatch with my family)). But, that's now been like 3 years. Since then I've watched a bunch of SciFi years in order with my son, and some various others here and there. In fact, it's time to watch SCCtM or Santa Clause some time this week. But no, we nor I have ever gone back to the Season 11/12. I think it's precisely because of what Megalon said, plus I was really soured by season 12, from movie choices to changed edited format, and oh god, the "binging" theme? Bleh.
The weird thing is, we all could start pondering whether this is an indicator that these Nu seasons will just fade away... except that Joel just raised another 6 million to make even more eps in the 'new' style. It does make me wonder though that even if the new cast ends up being better than the 11/12 cast, will it matter, or will it just be another factor in why seasons 13+ will also be one and done fade away for a lot of people.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Dec 18, 2021 21:49:46 GMT -5
So while I was thinking about it, I decided to go back and time the "in-theater" time to get some precise measurements on how much of the movies were getting cut out...
I've only done the first 5 episodes of Season 11 so far, but I've found something...interesting...
Episode-Total Length-Theater Length 1101-90:23-70:03 1102-89:10-70:00 1103-87:33-70:08 1104-92:06-70:12 1105-86:33-70:00
Gee, I think I'm noticing a pattern. I've always thought Season 11 felt very assembly line, cut/paste and boy was I right. No matter how long the movie was, it got cut to a uniform 70 minutes. Even if the episodes themselves were shorter than 90 minutes.
Just...cold, callous, uniform cutting of the movies. How lazy.
I always wondered why the best part of Time Travelers, the ending, was cut off. Now I know why. Now I'm annoyed all over again.
I'm going to skip to 1113 & 1114 to see if its the same all through the season, but I suspect it is.
Edit: Yup! 70:12 & 70:00, respectively.
If I had to estimate, I'd say the standard theater time is 65 minutes in Season 12, but we'll see.
Edit 2: Yes sir! 65 minutes for both 1201 & 1202 so far.
Jiminy Christmas. This basically proves that at this point the show isn't about the movie if every single movie gets cut down to a standard time regardless of the content.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Dec 18, 2021 23:25:08 GMT -5
It makes me wonder about Season 13 and if they're going to use a uniform movie length again. We know they have to use all 84 minutes of Gamera vs Jiger, I'd guess the whole episode would be about 97 mins long. It would be strange if the rest of the movies are still a 65/70 min length and the Gamera movie is randomly ~15+ minutes longer. But it wouldn't surprise me if they stuck to uniform movie lengths, unfortunately. Let's just hope its closer to 70+ minutes.
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Post by monkeypretzel on Dec 18, 2021 23:29:58 GMT -5
Considering how much complaining there was about having to write for the whole! 83! minutes! of Gamera vs. Jiger, I don't think I'm going out on a limb when I say we can expect the Season 13 movies to be no longer than 70 minutes (with the above exception), and my money is on the 65 minute average of Season 12 being revisited.
There's a lot of comments in various MST spaces on the internet about how many of the things people didn't like about the Netflix seasons are due to Netflix interference, and how much they are looking forward to Joel finally getting to make the show the way he wants. My Very Unpopular Opinion is that we HAVE seen Joel getting to make the show the way he wants, and that a lot of what people aren't happy with comes from him and not any outside interference. If the Season 13 movies are again edited down to a certain length, whether that results in their being coherent to the audience or not, and despite there being absolutely zero constraints on running time* then I'll have some pretty good evidence for my theory.
*The only possible constraint I can see is possibly trying to market these to a television channel like IFC in the future, and if the old 90+ minute shows (~97 minutes for Season 1, ~92 minutes for Season 10) can be made to work, then a show coming in at 90 minutes or less will.
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Post by Megalon on Dec 19, 2021 0:10:39 GMT -5
Gee, I think I'm noticing a pattern. I've always thought Season 11 felt very assembly line, cut/paste and boy was I right. No matter how long the movie was, it got cut to a uniform 70 minutes. Even if the episodes themselves were shorter than 90 minutes. How different is this from the original show, though? I don't have a good memory for run-times, but weren't they generally editing movies down to a uniform length?
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Post by Diet Kolos on Dec 19, 2021 0:58:05 GMT -5
Gee, I think I'm noticing a pattern. I've always thought Season 11 felt very assembly line, cut/paste and boy was I right. No matter how long the movie was, it got cut to a uniform 70 minutes. Even if the episodes themselves were shorter than 90 minutes. How different is this from the original show, though? I don't have a good memory for run-times, but weren't they generally editing movies down to a uniform length? Edit down, yes. Uniform length? No. See here.A fan did a count of all the riffs and time in-theater in the classic series awhile back. For example, theater time in Season 10 ran between 73 and 77 minutes. Season 6 between 73 and 80 minutes. Season 3, 74 to 85 minutes. Etc. They clearly put together episodes to suit the movie. They had 97/92 minutes per episode, chose the best ~75ish minutes of movie first (but clearly didn't mind going longer if need-be or shorter if they had to), then timed out the sketches to fill out the rest of the episode. But editing every single movie to be within 10-15 seconds of a set cut-off minute? No, they didn't do that.
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Post by crowschmo on Dec 19, 2021 7:35:27 GMT -5
There's a group who have a YouTube channel - BranzantFiLMS - who have done a couple of fan-made Gamera MST3K eps. Gamera vs. Viras, and the aforementioned Gamera vs. Jiger. The timeline of this is somewhere between Seasons 7 and 8, when it wasn't known if the real show would be back and it seemed as if the last ep of S7 would've been it. You know when Trace leaves and everyone goes off to the ends of the universe as balls of energy.
The premise is that some guy named Helmut Caruso was the experiment for this timeline when Crow returned to the SOL early. I think they got the idea because Bill's Crow actually mentions some guy named Helmut in the actual first ep of S8 (or one of the S8 eps). They actually use Trace's voice and Kevin's voice in the beginning, using sound clips from the actual show, then have it that their voices change so then they use the guys doing Crow's and Servo's voices from that point on. Neat idea.
So, if anyone doesn't want to wait around for S13 to watch a fairly decent ep of Gamera vs. Jiger, you should check it out. It's not hold-your-stomach-split-your-sides hilarious, but both eps got quite a few chuckles from me and it most definitely is in the spirit of the older eps. They are currently working on a third Gamera ep, though with the pandemic it's taking them longer than they originally planned.
Pretty cute, I recommend fans of the show to watch.
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Post by dudehitscar on Dec 19, 2021 10:11:50 GMT -5
So while I was thinking about it, I decided to go back and time the "in-theater" time to get some precise measurements on how much of the movies were getting cut out... I've only done the first 5 episodes of Season 11 so far, but I've found something...interesting... Episode-Total Length-Theater Length 1101-90:23-70:03 1102-89:10-70:00 1103-87:33-70:08 1104-92:06-70:12 1105-86:33-70:00 Gee, I think I'm noticing a pattern. I've always thought Season 11 felt very assembly line, cut/paste and boy was I right. No matter how long the movie was, it got cut to a uniform 70 minutes. Even if the episodes themselves were shorter than 90 minutes. Just...cold, callous, uniform cutting of the movies. How lazy. I always wondered why the best part of Time Travelers, the ending, was cut off. Now I know why. Now I'm annoyed all over again. I'm going to skip to 1113 & 1114 to see if its the same all through the season, but I suspect it is. Edit: Yup! 70:12 & 70:00, respectively. If I had to estimate, I'd say the standard theater time is 65 minutes in Season 12, but we'll see. Edit 2: Yes sir! 65 minutes for both 1201 & 1202 so far. Jiminy Christmas. This basically proves that at this point the show isn't about the movie if every single movie gets cut down to a standard time regardless of the content. Time travelers ending was a snoozer. Glad they cut it. Wish they had cut more out of that film.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Dec 19, 2021 12:01:02 GMT -5
There's a group who have a YouTube channel - BranzantFiLMS - who have done a couple of fan-made Gamera MST3K eps. Gamera vs. Viras, and the aforementioned Gamera vs. Jiger. The timeline of this is somewhere between Seasons 7 and 8, when it wasn't known if the real show would be back and it seemed as if the last ep of S7 would've been it. You know when Trace leaves and everyone goes off to the ends of the universe as balls of energy. The premise is that some guy named Helmut Caruso was the experiment for this timeline when Crow returned to the SOL early. I think they got the idea because Bill's Crow actually mentions some guy named Helmut in the actual first ep of S8 (or one of the S8 eps). They actually use Trace's voice and Kevin's voice in the beginning, using sound clips from the actual show, then have it that their voices change so then they use the guys doing Crow's and Servo's voices from that point on. Neat idea. So, if anyone doesn't want to wait around for S13 to watch a fairly decent ep of Gamera vs. Jiger, you should check it out. It's not hold-your-stomach-split-your-sides hilarious, but both eps got quite a few chuckles from me and it most definitely is in the spirit of the older eps. They are currently working on a third Gamera ep, though with the pandemic it's taking them longer than they originally planned. Pretty cute, I recommend fans of the show to watch. Co-sign. Theirs riffs are great.
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