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Post by Diet Kolos on May 8, 2022 15:44:29 GMT -5
I've already given my heartfelt, logical reasoning for my distaste for cutting the movies down to a uniform length in other threads, and as direct feedback to the people in charge of the show, I'm not going to waste my time defending it here again. ...Other than to say that the "it's hard" and "quality over quantity" excuses are both disingenuous and lame.
I feel like that one Simpsons meme with the bus driver tapping the sign, with the sign saying "But they did it perfectly fine on the original show when they only had 6 or 7 writers..."
"But they can't make it like they used to..." I can hear you typing.
Why? That's what people said when they were filming the silhouettes and recording the riffs separately. And they went back to the old way of doing it.
Cutting the movies down is a matter of uniformity and convenience. Period. It has nothing to do with being hard or being "too long" or wearing out their welcome.
70 minutes for everything makes it easier to assembly-line the episodes when you write all the episodes at once. It probably also helps keep the episode lengths down when the end credits take up 5-7 minutes and you want to keep the whole episode at 90ish minutes for a DVD or syndication release.
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Post by kracker on May 8, 2022 16:16:20 GMT -5
yes Rifftrax can pull it off every so often but its a low success rate. It can be done but the point is not all the time. Having a cringe fest with little padding like WW1984 certainly helps. They've definitely shown that they can put out something fantastic when they have the time and money to put into it. If we're going to play the excuse card then we can say its Rifftrax with the excuses not to bat 1.000 when they are just making recordings and don't have the overhead, sketches to do, and a whole production to put on. It's just purely writing riffs.
not being worth the effort is the consequence of it being hard. Like I said, they have finite resources. It being hard means they have to put more hours into it and more money to try and make it work when you got the rest of the show to do, is it worth it when you have a full episode already that's solid? Those are the tough decisions you have to make and i trust if they cut something out now, its for a good reason, maybe they couldn't come up with anything great, maybe whatever they came up just didn't work for the show, maybe i don't know they feel the exact same way you do and thus aren't going to cut something unless there's an actual good reason. Reasons ≠ excuses. Making a solid episode comes first over everything.
I don't how you guys feel about the movies so far or if there have been any missed opportunities so far. If there is something actually funny being cut out that's one thing, you could question and trust it was a labored decision but if the movie is just shooting the rodeo, yes please, jettison that padding. I am a little bothered, though, by how the episode lengths are the same but now you have 5 minutes of extra credits digging into the show so technically, they're shorter.
And yeah, Joel's comment was referring why they don't make the show 2-3 hours long now but it shows you how he makes some editing decisions as an experienced veteran of comedy.
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Post by kracker on May 8, 2022 16:23:57 GMT -5
I feel like that one Simpsons meme with the bus driver tapping the sign, with the sign saying "But they did it perfectly fine on the original show when they only had 6 or 7 writers..." "But they can't make it like they used to..." I can hear you typing. Err they are making it like they used to, and it was perfectly fine on the original show. Thanks for the sign, I'll be sure to use it. The riff recording is obviously a separate issue we're not diverting to.
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Post by demoniclambertobava on May 8, 2022 20:42:49 GMT -5
I've already given my heartfelt, logical reasoning for my distaste for cutting the movies down to a uniform length in other threads, and as direct feedback to the people in charge of the show, I'm not going to waste my time defending it here again. ...Other than to say that the "it's hard" and "quality over quantity" excuses are both disingenuous and lame. An honest disagreement is actually neither disingenuous nor lame, I simply and earnestly don't agree with you. They've cut movies down in every season for over 30 years for content or for fitting them into their own predetermined runtime. The revival is no different. So I don't see why this is suddenly unacceptable since the show was revived, and I've seen zero coherent explanations from anyone as to why that is. I'm all ears. And if people just want to say "because it's not Mike and enough of the original gang doing the cuts," sorry, that's not a reason.
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Post by majorjoe23 on May 8, 2022 21:24:51 GMT -5
Yeah, Chris Gersbeck has said he edits The Mads movies down to about an hour. Rifftrax edits most of its movies to 75-80 minutes. What the revived MST3K is doing isn’t new or unique to movie riffing.
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Post by dudehitscar on May 8, 2022 21:27:15 GMT -5
I want them to stop editing out the 'soft rated r' parts of films.. it's a big advantage of rifftrax that I appreciate. It's how we got that glorious riff of Samurai Cop for example. We don't need something super disturbing but I would love some MST3K AFTER DARK episodes with soft rated R content. One of the reasons I don't like the zombie nightmare episode from season 6 much is they cut out all the kills. I don't want to riff a slasher movie where all the kills are edited out. I feel that in the case of that episode the content editing fell into the 'they cut too much of the plot' side of things.
But I know it won't happen. So I'm not gonna make a big fuss about it.
So I'll just restate my usual 'culling the dull is a great thing' opinion while acknowledging that cutting too much of the plot to the point of being nonsensical isn't good and cutting out very riffable segments isn't good either(mcdonalds scene in Mac and me is the best example).
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Post by majorjoe23 on May 8, 2022 22:05:07 GMT -5
Yeah, the McDonald’s scene should have been that episode’s crowning moment. Similarly, cutting the time loop ending of The Time Travelers made no sense.
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Post by BoB3K on May 9, 2022 1:12:53 GMT -5
They're lazy. It's that simple. Cookie cutter output from an assembly line to make money. Why should they bother with anything else, when the bulk of fans back anything they do.
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Post by majorjoe23 on May 9, 2022 5:44:42 GMT -5
Shockedpikachu.jpeg
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Post by BoB3K on May 9, 2022 10:58:27 GMT -5
[urmom.png]
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Post by kracker on May 9, 2022 11:40:13 GMT -5
They're lazy. It's that simple. Cookie cutter output from an assembly line to make money. Why should they bother with anything else, when the bulk of fans back anything they do. That makes way more sense if you were talking about Rifftrax
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Post by intonyeon on May 9, 2022 12:10:05 GMT -5
They're lazy. It's that simple. Cookie cutter output from an assembly line to make money. Why should they bother with anything else, when the bulk of fans back anything they do. That makes way more sense if you were talking about Rifftrax What a ZINGER. Of course, I personally do consider Rifftrax lazy, a lot of the riffs on there just plain suck and sound like they are truly phoning it in. I appreciate a lot of what they did, but overall ain’t a fan. BUT, also, one thing I give rifftrax.. they’ll watch damn near anything, any sort of crap, and I find that amusing enough to just put on sometimes. Of course, maybe I’d prefer it without the commentary sometimes… Joel is still trying to make a tv show, while the rifftrax gang provide commentaries only, basically. I overall prefer MST, but there’s clear issues with Joel still trying to make it… “watchable”. I’ll be honest, as someone who is a fan of bad movies, I don’t mind watching a whole lot of pure garbage even if it doesn’t have jokes. I *like* the act of watching bad movies by itself. Do movies have to be “palatable” for a casual audience when Comedy Central nor sci-fi actually are involved anymore?
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Post by crowschmo on May 9, 2022 12:29:03 GMT -5
What's even lazier is Mike, Kevin and Bill don't even write all their own stuff anymore. They have other writers, too. (And it's not helping). It's seems they've all lost their edge. I saw Trace and Frank a few years ago live as The Mads and I thought they were funny, but I can't watch anything on YouTube that they've put out as I just don't find even them funny anymore. I bought and downloaded their version of Manos, but I've yet to sit through the whole thing.
I've seen trailers for Mary Jo's and Bridget's Rifftrax efforts along with Mike's Kevin's and Bill's stuff and nothing they're doing is making me laugh anymore.
They're all just TALKING OVER A MOVIE. Incessantly. And as said above, sounds like they're phoning it in. They're talking just to talk, ya know?
So my question is: Is getting Season 13 of MST3K even worth it? (Asking those who have seen some eps already). Or is the gild off the lily on this iteration as well?
I'd hate to give up completely because the early years of this show is some of my favorite stuff to watch ever.
Also: I know this is antiquated, but, are there going to be DVD's available or is it all just for downloading? (I guess I could download it and burn it).
(Edit: I haven't read all the comments on this thread, so I'm just asking for a quick opinion on if I should still watch).
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Post by intonyeon on May 9, 2022 12:57:58 GMT -5
It definitely has one thing going for it, and that’s fresh voices. I do admit that I am still giddy to see Joel again and wished that Bill could have been his crow (or that Mary Jo Pehl be given something to do.) but at this point for rifftrax and other things, it’s just old people yelling about movies and making references they probably don’t understand. They ain’t “hip” anymore, yo!
(I also think it was a bad idea to do blockbuster movie riffs but that’s an opinioooooon)
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Post by comedyc on May 9, 2022 13:03:21 GMT -5
"That's not riffing, that's talking" peaked during the Gauntlet, season 12. They've pulled back considerably. My advice, step away for a few months, recharge, then revisit.
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