|
Post by kracker on Jan 14, 2022 11:48:30 GMT -5
I find it odd that you keep bringing up Riffrax. No one is discussing Rifftrax. Its an odd deflection. But let's see if I can unpack this. So classic MST can keep boring scenes in because they're the good kind of boring and the writers didn't use the same gimmicks to get through them every episode, so they wrote new material that made each episode tolerable and funny to the best of their ability. Yeah im bringing up Rifftrax because what you are asking for IS Rifftrax. It's not a deflection to bring up an example of the very thing you are describing. Not to mention to show what you want actually implemented and therefore, a result of the practice. Its not a deflection, its a recommendation lol And once again, classic MST3K was edited too :b they didnt keep in boring scenes they couldnt come up with material for in order to be purists. if it was really that boring they wouldn't do the movie altogether because it wouldn't survive the selection process, rather than forcing themselves, "finding a way", to riff it. and inb4 Manos, they cant endure a Manos every week or even every season. Manos was their lightning in a bottle, quite frankly.
|
|
|
Post by Diet Kolos on Jan 14, 2022 12:04:13 GMT -5
So in response to my assertion that Classic MST didn't edit their movies down to 65 minute movie stubs and that the new shows shouldn't either... You're saying Rifftrax doesn't edit their movies down to tiny niblets, and its a bad thing. Boy, you got me there.
|
|
|
Post by kracker on Jan 14, 2022 12:08:00 GMT -5
For someone who cries deflections and ad hominems, you sure love your strawmen.
|
|
|
Post by wedestroymyths on Jan 14, 2022 12:33:58 GMT -5
The cutting of the McDonald's scene was straight up baffling. Part of me wonders if there was some other reason/motivation for that. I mean, that might be the most riffable four minutes in the entire film.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2022 12:50:24 GMT -5
Why not use "Lost Continent" as an example? Because it not's a great episode at all. Why? 'Rock climbing' Lost Continent is a great episode.
|
|
|
Post by Megalon on Jan 14, 2022 12:50:51 GMT -5
The cutting of the McDonald's scene was straight up baffling. Part of me wonders if there was some other reason/motivation for that. Heh. Personally, I'd be more than a little uncomfortable about including a 4-minute advertisement for McDonald's in my product. There's enough obesity and diabetes in the world without my inadvertently promoting more.
|
|
|
Post by Diet Kolos on Jan 14, 2022 13:00:00 GMT -5
Why not use "Lost Continent" as an example? Because it not's a great episode at all. Why? 'Rock climbing' Lost Continent is a great episode. Also agree. Rock Climbing is made fun and tolerable (AND MEMORABLE) by the riffing.
|
|
|
Post by kracker on Jan 14, 2022 13:26:35 GMT -5
The cutting of the McDonald's scene was straight up baffling. Part of me wonders if there was some other reason/motivation for that. I mean, that might be the most riffable four minutes in the entire film. Guys, they only cut out two minutes of kids dancing out of that whole scene (which as you point out amounts to a straight McDonalds TV commercial), the scene essentially is still there with Mac dancing on the counter and everything. and its not exactly baffling when they have a 100 minute movie that they have to cut an entire THIRD out of for the bad idea that was the Gauntlet. Which they aren't going to do again, but we'll go ahead and lose our collective poopie over the idea that they will, just for fun
|
|
|
Post by BoB3K on Jan 14, 2022 14:12:58 GMT -5
In my opinion, if you're riffing a movie, you should riff the movie. You (and your audience) should view it like any poor sap did when it came out. You should view it like you would when you flipped over to the UHF channel on a Saturday night or went in to some crappy matinee to get out of the heat of some lazy summer day. MST3K is not a hot-take youtube video, it is not a clip show. It is a show where some funny fictional characters watch a cheesy movie with you and make it fun. I would argue that the settings, characters and mood of MST3K is a very large part of why it has lasted through the years while other (and now that there's youtube, many many) movie mocking things come and go.
Another way of putting it-- when I'm done with an MST3K I should have watched the riffed movie. Not parts of it. I should be able to discuss it with someone who has watched it unriffed. The only difference was I laughed with my buddies while I watched it. (Maybe they did too.)
|
|
|
Post by kracker on Jan 14, 2022 14:25:38 GMT -5
They've never done that though. They always cut stuff out. Because MST3K has always been part movie-riffing and part cowtown puppet show.
Hate it to have to bring it up again, but you are wanting Rifftrax, since their tracks have to be formatted for the full un-riffed un-edited movie that you have to provide at home. If you are just all about the bad movie and wanting pure unadulterated movie-riffing, that's where you turn to.
|
|
|
Post by majorjoe23 on Jan 14, 2022 14:56:31 GMT -5
I’m not sure exactly where I fall on this, but I want to say that Rifftrax definitely edits down its VOD releases, and not just to trim out nudity and excessive violence.
Today’s release of Fugitive Rage is 78 minutes, the original is 90.
Dancin’ It’s on is 77 minutes riffed, unriffed: 89
I’m finding runtimes of 84 minutes for Father Frost, while the Rifftrax version is 80, so not much cut there.
Atomic Eden is 75 minutes riffed, 85 unriffed.
Dangerous Men is 74 minutes riffed, 80 unriffed.
The Mads’ producer Chris Gersbeck has also talked about cutting boring stuff from some of their films. But it seems that between MST3K and Rifftrax, the riffing Gods have settled on 75-85 minutes as the ideal length for an episode.
|
|
|
Post by Megalon on Jan 14, 2022 14:59:33 GMT -5
The question no one is asking:
Why would Dr. Forrester, Pearl, or Kinga edit out the worst/most boring parts of the movie?
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2022 15:35:36 GMT -5
They've never done that though. They always cut stuff out. Because MST3K has always been part movie-riffing and part cowtown puppet show. Not literally always, though. "The Starfighters," one of the most boring-on-its-own movies they ever did, was riffed uncut (or at least less than a minute of footage excised). Although I have never compared frame-to-frame movies they riffed versus the original versions, I think there were a number of other episodes where the movies were only very slightly cut. "Gamera" is another that comes to mind, "Godzilla vs. Megalon," and "The Amazing Colossal Man," too. Generally speaking, if the original film (or the version they acquired) was around 75-80 minutes long and they didn't attach a short to it, it was riffed practically uncut. Additionally, the only reason they included shorts in the first place was to bring episodes with too-short movies up to the full length necessary for broadcast. I think the vast majority of episodes with shorts feature movies they riffed uncut, although again, I haven't done 1:1 comparisons to confirm that.
|
|
|
Post by jadenh on Jan 14, 2022 18:29:02 GMT -5
Manos isn't the only boring movie they made funny. That's just the first and most obvious example. What about films like The Killer Shrews, Indestructible Man, The Atomic Brain, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, The Screaming Skull, Blood Waters of Dr. Z, and Boggy Creek II? These are pretty boring films, but all of them (in my opinion) made for great episodes! All of them have funny riffs and made these boring films extremely entertaining. Manos wasn't a one time thing at all.
And yes, I think we're all well aware that films were edited back then on the show too. However, the lengths of the movies were much more variable back then. There wasn't some weird standard of 65 or 75 minutes that had to be met. In fact, around a third to a half of all the episodes had movies short enough to fit shorts into them (something that seasons 11 and 12 could have really benefitted from). When every film is cut down to nearly the exact same length, then that tells me that not much thought was really put into the editing of them. It makes it feel like an assembly line cutting down these movies just so they can fit them into this comfortable standard time and people won't get bored for more than a second.
|
|
|
Post by kracker on Jan 15, 2022 2:26:13 GMT -5
Granted though, the reason why the kids dancing was cut is because they had to cut a third out of the movie to fit Netflix's Gauntlet, not because they felt it was genuinely unriffable. They can't cut any story scenes out because then things would become incomprehensible and a McDonalds commercial in the middle of the movie is as non-essential and expendable as it gets. Granted, a normal episode they would riff the whole scene to fill time. When every film is cut down to nearly the exact same length, then that tells me that not much thought was really put into the editing of them. It makes it feel like an assembly line cutting down these movies just so they can fit them into this comfortable standard time and people won't get bored for more than a second. You realize that's all network TV shows. All TV shows had to conform to a time slot and would make cuts to scripts to do so, many of those cuts being rough decisions to make, unless you were a big show like Walking Dead where they would conform the time slot around you. Obviously even with the advent of streaming, its still in practice, since Netflix was also giving them a standard running time to hit.
|
|