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Weekend Discussion Thread: Season 11 MoviesWell, the spoiler commands have been lifted, but before we begin discussing each of the episodes, I’m going to you another week to get some of these watched.
So, in the meantime, here is the official list of the movies that will be riffed in season 11: Thoughts? 180 Replies to “Weekend Discussion Thread: Season 11 Movies”Commenting at Satellite News
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Are/were there any other backers pouring over the credits to find out which episode is “yours”.
I’m through the first few episodes and it’s nice to see that things are picking up. Felicia and Patton and settling in well and I’m really glad that Jonah and the Bots have switched to decaf in the theater; the jokes are solid and they don’t need to oversell them. If I had to nitpick, the songs they’ve had so far drag on a bit long (Brevity is the soul of wit, guys), the commercial bumpers are still totally unnecessary, and I’m still not sold on the shadow play in the theater.
For the most part, though, so far, so good. Avalanche is already a freaking classic; 70’s cheese doesn’t get much more ’70s or cheesy than this. I’ll keep watching…
Since the idea of Jn&tB actually riffing “The Super Infra-Man” would be heretical (Commander USA did it back in the day, though), can we at least put that bit of info up in the FAQ’s, before more new fans ask?
I mean, it’s sort of a drudge to keep YouTube-linking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj6RzqNloBs in every other thread every time some new kid asks, and like they say, the Right People Are Getting It.
(And I make a five-paragraph post detailing how much I’m LIKING the show based on half of Reptilicus, and it gets “Marked as spam” and pulled by the Mods??
What the heck do you want from me, people?) :)
Wow. Seems like a popular choice. I wasn’t part of the group back then, but Mystery Fandom Theater has done Starcrash as well. (https://archive.org/details/MFT3K_Ep_F03)
I’m loving it! The high speed riffing goes well with a nice Sativa.
Ease up on the parentheses and patronizing know-it-all smugness and maybe we’ll meet your demands!
Until then, Suck Iiiiiiiiiiit[/Spruced Bruce]
After mainlining the shows up through Episode 8 I can say that my primary disappointment — and it is a major one — is that the riffing is TOO. DARN. FAST. To the point where it affirmatively detracts from the quality of the show, and makes it very unpleasant to sit through at times. The riffing on HOLLOW MOUNTAIN, for instance, got so jarringly rat-a-tat (and obviously dubbed in later, which made its relentless nonstop pace even more frustrating) that I had to turn it off. It’s almost as if Joel forgot what made his era of MST3K the definitive one: the relaxed, wry, comfortable, lived-in feeling that gave you the sense that J&TB were actually watching this along with you for the first time.
Then I read an article in Nerdist which confirmed my worst fears, namely that this is the style he’d wanted initially, but was talked out of by the other (younger) writers. It harms the overall quality of the Season irreparably, and is a massive blot on what should have been a triumph. I never thought MST3K (which I love all eras of, whether Joel or Mike, CC or Sci-Fi) would actually be tough to take on a sheer aural level, but it is with the woodpecker-level “cram 50 pounds of jokes into a 30 pound bag” approach. The humor doesn’t have time to land, people are stepping on each other’s punchlines, and it ends up feeling like it was assembled by a machine. Which, given how the tracks were recorded by the three guys in separate rooms/times/places, is pretty much the truth. This patchwork approach also kills any hope of rapport between the theater riffers — because they’re not all sitting together there doing it at once (but rather dubbing retake after retake, trying to speed overwritten jokes out), there’s no sense of a relationship btw Jonah and the Bots. Sad.
As grumbly as the above sounds, I’m still thrilled to have all-new MST3K. This isn’t an entire failure. I definitely got a few laughs. But it doesn’t have the feel of the original MST and I just hope Joel & the gang get the right feedback if they go forward with a Season 12: FEWER RIFFS = BETTER ARTISTIC/COMEDIC/FAN EXPERIENCE.
Still working my way through the episodes (skipping out of order to StarCrash because I always wanted the Brains to do THAT one). So a few disconnected thoughts.
Just curious. Did they explain what it is that Gypsy brings into the theater and then takes out at the end (allowing her two riffs)?
Patton Oswald keeps stealing his scenes. :-)
Cry Wilderness is so far my favorite. Dang, that was one crazy film. And the schoolmaster sure became a believer awfully fast!
Reptilicus was a really stupid looking monster. And the boys missed “Miss Hathaway” in the reporter gaggle.
Carnival Magic: I always said the Brains should have done more Al Adamson movies. Let’s push for Dracula vs Frankenstein for Season 12. Everyone with me?
When I first heard dinosaur-western, I was SO looking forward to Gwangi. Ah well, Hollow Mountain was a more than perfect substitute….
Watching The Loves of Hercules right now. More later.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought the riffing (which is basically the entire show) was way off in terms of timing. It feels like a compromise – no talking over dialogue, then constant talking during pauses.
Hoping it gets better, I’m wondering if this would bug me if 1101 were the first MST3K I had ever seen? Maybe a new audience won’t care. I know in the original series they would redo audio in post but it was never quite this jarring.
I do believe Yongary is the first South Korean film featured on MST3K. That’s pretty cool, I had no idea Korea had its own Godzilla-like. Though I guess Reptilicus establishes that every country does, indeed, have a monster.
While I DID think it was in the spirit of the old CC show–ie. that Hampton’s Crow was more in the mischievous-fourth-grader spirit of Trace’s Crow than the intentionally blackboard-annoying Bill’s Crow, and they’re starting to have fun again, unlike the dismissive “C’mon movie, do something!” grumbles of S6-10–that’s a good point:
Think Producer Joel was just coming off of the troubles of wrangling the CT guys together for live tours, and thought the riffing would be technically easier if he could let the comics do their bits by remote. It’s understandable from his position, but y’know, that’s just his opinion, man. I haven’t seen the riffing suffer for it yet, but as someone pointed out, we don’t get those particular organic moments where the characters play off of each other or try to break up the atmosphere.
If there is a S12 (and we find out where the money on a Netflix hit actually comes from), that may be one change that they might hit upon making to boost the riffs a bit, like they hit upon relaxing the speed a little–S2 decided that maybe written riffs were better than ad-libbed ones, and that midstream change didn’t hurt the series’ riff quality.
Every country does indeed have its monster. If you want to see a good monster film from South Korea, I highly recommend Gwoemul (The Host). It’s less a comedy than some of its trailers make it appear.
Good Lord……….it’s “Carnival Magic” (1112) !!!
If, for some strange reason, you catch only one episode, for the love of all that is holy and good, do the right thing and make SURE to watch “Carnival Magic“.
You just have to see it to believe it…….in fact, of all the movies on this list, this is probably the only one they could just decide to take the night off, and not bother riffing at all, and it would still be VERY funny (Odd, but funny).
To anyone who’s never seen it before, just wait, and you’ll see EXACTLY what I’m raving (ranting?) about here…….
I agree with some of the others here that not having the interaction between the riffers hurts things a lot (and completely eliminates any spontaneous breakups that did happen from time to time) this old man is a bit puzzled by all the “too FAST!” remarks. If anything I thought there weren’t nearly enough riffs, at least in episode 1 (tomorrow we watch the next one as we are doing this one per Sunday).
So I’m pretty amazed — if anything, in recent years I’ve found myself riffing over dead spots where I thought either RT or (heavens!) even the original MST3K should have. The first episode was full of these spots where I was really surprised about a lack of riffs. To hear people say then that they are coming too fast is just really, really bizarre to me.
But perhaps some quantification would be in order — perhaps one of the more compulsive among you (or maybe it’s even on the interweb somewhere) could count the number of riffs in a “typical” MST3K episode and compare it to 1101. I’d bet a dollar it isn’t appreciably less (so my own gut tells me most of you are just SO familiar with those episodes the jokes don’t seem to be all that fast, whereas with these you are having to try and memorize all of them).
To use an auto industry analogy, if someone expected Season 11 to be like the “revived” version of the Ford Mustang or the Dodge Charger they would certainly be surprised at this debut. After watching half of the new season I am pleasantly pleased with the new blended with just the right amount of the old. Kudos to Joel and The New Brains!
When I saw Yongary on the episode list, I mistakenly thought that they were riffing Pulgasari, and almost fell out of my chair. Here’s hoping for season 12.
Very happy so far with season 11, though I think the critique about the pace of the riffs is warranted. It’s not so much that there are too many riffs, I think, but that the riffs tend to be longish and delivered too quickly to maintain the pace. Less would definitely be more, but it should not overshadow what an outstanding job the new group has done capturing the feel of the original. Really amazing work.
I was wondering why the guys weren’t really reacting to the more active movements of the bots (Gypsy coming down for her riffs, Servo flying around the theater, etc.). A shame if that’s how they filmed everything – especially considering that I would have thought they would be filming all the episodes in a single window for a same-day release. A little unfortunate. I was hoping that with Joel as producer again, the series would return to the flow of the earlier episodes rather than the joke-joke-joke approach of the later years. We’re not exactly getting the former, but at least the guys aren’t really doing the latter. And they don’t appear to be on the all-out attack that the Skiffy (sorry, SyFy) episodes often seemed to follow.
I do miss the “oh, we’re seeing the film for the first time” vibe that the early episodes had, but that’s difficult to do if the actors are essentially doing their bits when they have time to do them.
Still playing catchup, so it will be interesting if the characters pull together by episode 14. We shall see.
Did anyone else notice that they did a literal “State Park Joke” in 1102. Yes, the scenery is very state park-ish.
Spacing them out like some people but I will say 1102 Cry Wilderness can hold its own with some of the worst plots they have ever done.
There’s a plot to that one?!
All seriousness, there’s no question whether there was drug use on the shoot. There was. Just look at the expressions on the kid and his teacher at the end.
And: “BANG!”
I’d seen two of these movies earlier unriffed – Starcrash and The Land that Time Forgot. I’ve been wanting to see Yongary just cuz I like watching bad movies (obviously – ha!). I really liked the Starcrash episode and was so happy when I saw that one on the list and I’m about halfway through The Land that Time Forgot. From what I’ve watched so far (halfway through ep 7), I think they’ve picked great films for riffing. Time Travelers was a pretty decent movie but still very riffable and Carnival Magic just sounds like it’s going to be a crazy experience.
So far everyone swears on Cry Wilderness as the standout of the season, and I agree it stands up easily with the best of previous seasons, but I’m waiting for everyone to reach Carnival Magic, because that film feels as dirty as The Incredibly Strange Creatures That Stopped Living And Became Mixed Up Zombies. Something about films set primarily in carnivals that instantly make them dirty to me (visually and content wise), and combine that with such a terrible group of people and I’ve a feeling Carnival Magic will stand with Cry Wilderness as the worst film of the season.
Just popping in for the first time to say that having seen the first two episodes, this entire endeavor will be worth it simply for Crow’s Solaris reference in Cry Wilderness.
One question I’ve yet to see answered though, and it’s very important: Does the new, seemingly more intelligent Gypsy still love Richard Basehart?
I wanted to like it– but I gave 3 different episodes a shot and could barely make it to first host segment. The show LOOKS great, but the writing and laughs aren’t there for the riffing. Also it doesn’t seem like the bots have distinct personalities any more. I don’t know, maybe if they get some better writers they can right the ship.
According to the Q&A from last Sunday, it’s the Payload. However, they didn’t go into detail as to what that actually was.
“One question I’ve yet to see answered though, and it’s very important: Does the new, seemingly more intelligent Gypsy still love Richard Basehart?” – good point! shoot, i knew -something- was missing there, but couldn’t put my finger on it…
“According to the Q&A from last Sunday, it’s the Payload. However, they didn’t go into detail as to what that actually was.” – maybe the bot’s “loadpans” they fill up in the theater, because they didn’t – you know – before the movie started? ;0 seemed to me loadpans always did have a “litterbox” connotation to them.
What did Gypsy bring down into the theater?
I could have sworn I heard Gypsy say something about “Hot Pockets”.
The obviously dubbed “wise Indian” in CRY WILDERNESS sounds like Cornjob!
Spoiler Alert! –
Yongary:
There is a missile launch in Korea that doesn’t blow up in Kim Jong Un’s face. I know. Hard to believe, eh?
I’m starting to wonder about that too…The first Gypsy was the Thing That Loved Richard Basehart, until the M&tB era, when she suddenly developed a snarky Southern accent and turned into the “mom” of the group, who ran the ship functions.
Apart from the ship functions, I’m not sure exactly what role Smart Gypsy fills on the show, until they explain what she’s dropping off and picking up–Like the early “grapes” bit every time Joel hit the commercial-sign button, either explain it or drop it.
I told you. Hot Pockets. You should pay more attention. Why don’t you devote some time to researching the Richard Basehart – Hot Pockets connection?
TWO Doug McClure monster movies!
That is a big plus.
I hope the writers can get more Japanese Sci-Fi,
Like THE BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE and MESSAGE FROM SPACE.
Also GORATH and (please, please, please) ZERAM.
I am not saying this because I am one of the kickstarter backers, but in my honest opinion, I LIKED IT! I feel they have been getting a good flow with the riffing and they look like they are having fun with each other.
Okay, here’s the last nit that hasn’t been picked yet: :)
The little bits we get before the opening theme are supposed to be in the spirit of those first mini-segs we used to get right after the theme song and before the first commercial–Which they’d come back to later in the official first Mads seg, after things had gotten even worse. (Eg. Farmer Joel and his animal-Bots, or Crow doing his Jay Leno.)
Good enough for a one-minute gag, but that had the commercial suddenly breaking things off before things got out of hand, which was a funnier punchline–Jonah just being pulled out to “restage” the theme song is just an interruption in mid-bit, and makes us wonder “What the heck did we just watch??”
Minor whine, and probably there to get around the lack of ad breaks, but still on the fixer-upper list.
Huh. Not terribly helpful. I wondered if it was like when they put the thing in the tube at the end of the episode on Cinematic Titanic.
I think I agree with EricJ (!) – they should explain it, even if it’s just one line, or maybe not do it.
Not everything has to be explained right away, you young whippersnappers (who should, by the way, get off my lawn with yer fancy hula hoops). Whatever happened to mystery? The unknown? Non-instant gratification? I’m currently reading a book mystery series in which some things don’t get explained for YEARS. And I’m OK with that.
Awful.
I’m up to THE BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN & I have one question: When is Kinga going to remove TV’s Son of TV’s Frank’s head with a bandsaw? I mean come on people, get with the program.
I liked every episode except the Xmas one. I also thought Earth’s Core was a bit of a drag at times. My faves were Wilderness, Hercules and both Wizards, but I am sure everyone will differ as usual. Mark Hamill was superlative in his role, as was Joel’s Party Traveler character.
There are things I could pick at, but I am not going to. It was a blast and I am just going to be positive this week. Maybe I will go into more detail when this site does their episode specific posts. I hope we get a chance to see if the show can grow and improve to an even higher level, but I won’t be sad to scroll up most of these cinemas with my Flav-o’Fives in the future.
I’m now through Episode 1111 and I’m thrilled with the season.
We’re clearly watching Joel’s vision play out. I think what I love most is the original details:
-liquid technology
-Jonah recreating the open everytime
-“movie in the hole!”
-the amazing new doors sequence
It’s so clear this was a labor of love for Joel and I’m ready to do my part as loyal MSTie to help secure Season 12: streaming the show as often as possible, tweeting about it, giving positive feedback to Netflix, etc. If this first season back is this strong, imagine what the new crew can do with the benefit of more time and episodes under their belts.
In short: huzzah!
I’m on the third episode, it’s acceptable but my laughs are few and far between, and the dancing band guys are terrible. The jokes come off to me as too nerdy and positive, by the way the movie is supposed to be the enemy. I enjoy Mike, Kevin and Bill’s cruel, sardonic riffing style the most.
High there. I just finished the new season last night, and I have to say that overall I like the new bots, mads, test subject, and crummy movies. I only have two quibbles to squabble over. (because quibbles squabble but they don’t fall down)
My first issue is with the all the moving around in the theater segments. The riffs are solid for the most part and a few of them even managed to coerced an audible laugh from me, but the bot’s sight gags in the theater are way too frequent and numerous. That sort of thing is an “a-dab’l-do-ya” sort of thing in my eyes.
Second I had convinced my self that the new theater itself was too large which made it easy to ignore the tiny silhouettes, when Servo wasn’t flying all over the screen, and overall made the experience feel impersonal or artificial. But as I have read in this thread, the performers weren’t even actually in the theater together. This completely runs contrary to what made the classic MST3K great. You had a cleaver group of “dopey mid-Westerners” turning cinematic refuse into cutting edge comedy in one building together as a group, not separately fitting in recording sessions where they could.
But overall, as I said, I like the show. I just hope that, if the show continues, in the future they manage to make the theater segments feel more organic.
CT did explain what was put into the tube: the “nanotated” movie. Upon completion of their “essential task,” Joel records the movie with their riffs into the Time Tube.
Still not sure why it’s necessary to recreate the opening each episode. Hasn’t Kinga ever heard of pre-recording? :-)
(Besides, more prosaicly, hard to get a clean ringtone when the dialogue from Episode 1101 gets repeated each time.)
That was a riff – not what’s she’s brought into the theater. During Starcrash, she sees the “microwave oven” thingie when those guys were leaving the elevator, and made her comment.
Kali: That was a riff – not what’s she’s brought into the theater.During Starcrash, she sees the “microwave oven” thingie when those guys were leaving the elevator, and made her comment.
Well, thank goodness for that! I don’t even like Hot Pockets and it would grieve me if they turned into the new Hamdingers.
There are surely many things I am missing since I am streaming on my iPad, but I did notice that Evil Wizard #1 on Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II looked a lot like the love child of Count Floyd and Pee-Wee Herman.
I know you’re just joking, but I’d like to point out I’m 38 and have been a fan since the mid-1990s.
I’m not asking for, like, detailed explanation. It’s just weird that they haven’t even made reference to it on-screen (unless I missed that?), like, “Oh, thanks for bringing in the ____, Gypsy” or something.
Right, that’s what I mean: that I wondered if what they’re doing here is supposed to be something like that.
Except they did record the audio tracks for the riffing together in a sound studio, not separately as you assert. From a Nerdist article dated March 30 2017: The way it was explained to me [the writer of the article], following the initial writing sessions for each movie, Ray, Vaughn, and Yount had a blistering week-long period in a sound studio in which they recorded just the audio of the riffs. You’re going to have to come up with another theory.
Grant Baciocco (Crow’s primary puppeteer) explained that by recording the riffing audio first, then playing the audio track while Baron, Hampton, and Jonah read it and reacted to it recording the theater scenes, not only were the noises of the extra puppeteers in the theater not heard, but the puppets were able to react more quickly and organically to the jokes and the movie. Baron and Hampton had handheld remote controllers to move Tom and Crow’s mouths, witch may be why sometimes it’s hard to see that they’re talking during the delivery of their riffs.
Kinda wish they had movies from the ’90s, but maybe those are harder to clear nowadays.
Hang on, so you mean that when they recorded the theater silhouette, they weren’t actually speaking the lines at the time, but in fact effectively lip-synching to a playback of themselves?
That’s… weird. I mean, with extra puppeteers involved I can see how it might have become a technical necessity, but whatever the exact setup, the overall effect is a lot less organic.
(It seemed to me like sometimes Baron and Hampton were failing to move the mouths at the right time or at all, but I know puppeteering is difficult and that’s something they probably improved on over time.)