New Season of MST3k Crowdfunding has failed.

[Torgo]

My main struggle with the new-gen MST3K is that I felt like I never got acclimated to the new voices.  I mean that in 2 ways:  The voices of the writers and the voices of the actors.  It was hard back when there was the switch from Joel to Mike or from Trace to Bill's Crow. It took time for them to really hit their stride AND for viewers to feel comfortable.  I personally think for the new seasons, they should've given the test subjects  new bots.  I'd have a much easier time hearing an unfamiliar voice on a new character.  I know they did/can have in-show reasons for keeping the same bots, but since the new versions of Tom and Crow don't really have the same personalities as the previous incarnations, just let the actors be new characters.

I have had people with no experience of the original run of MST3K say they think the new shows were hilarious.  I think that has more to do with the novelty of the format of the show (aka riffing a movie in progress) than it really does with the writing.  Just my opinion.  I do think it would be interesting to see how different things would be for the show if it was cut WAY down to an even lower budget format.  Fewer employees, smaller scale.  We've all seen what people on YouTube can do with their own DIY way of creating their shows on a shoestring budget.  I know people need to get PAID, but if you have a Kickstarter still, but reduce the roles/sets and just bring it back to basics, I think it would be feasible.  Especially since either way, Joels own it and gets to control who the audience is or has access to it.  Maybe, I dunno.  I'm just a goat-legged simpleton from the desert.

[SuperLake]

I think I said this before, go barebones, go scrapy, people show up for the best riffing not the production values. It's why Rifftrax and Jabboody are killing it. Focus on what the customer wants, not what makes you the business owner happy.

[KinoQueen13]

I think I said this before, go barebones, go scrapy, people show up for the best riffing not the production values. It's why Rifftrax and Jabboody are killing it. Focus on what the customer wants, not what makes you the business owner happy.

Exactly.

[I Want To Go Faster]

Not even 70% of the target. That's pretty telling.

A small, but significant part of it may be that anyone on a limited budget (i.e. most of us) purchasing from, or donating to, both RiffTrax *and* MST3K, may have had to choose ... and the vast majority are almost certainly putting MST3K second.

I enjoy the new MST3K more than most older fans, but I still think it's consistently inferior to current RiffTrax. 

I don't know who directed the host & Mads segments the last couple of seasons, but they were ... not good. The pacing was all over the place, and some of the takes they went with were sloppy.

I haven't seen any of the crowdfunding pitches, but ... were they also sloppy and lazy? 

New MST3K is also not "good value". I mean ... they had to write 13 film's worth of jokes (putting aside host segments), compared to ... however many combined hours RiffTrax does in a year.

Lastly, I've worked in TV and advertising, and $300k per episode ... even allowing for a couple of people being "well paid", and unique costs like the film rights ... that number is ... high ... for something shot mostly green screen with a single locked-off camera.

ps - and finally, anything that makes me question how much I love Patton Oswalt needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror.

[JetJaguar73]

You guys wondering why Joel doesn't just do a cheap production like in the old days are missing the entire point, which is that doing it that way wouldn't allow Joel to pocket half the crowd-sourced funds.

Call me cynical, but I imagine this is half the reason for doing things the way they're being done.  Joel's tired of NOT making bank off of his IP.  I do not blame the man and I hope he gets his. 

As for the crowdfunding, I just like Rifftrax and The Mads a lot more than this newtype MST.  There are a lot of reasons for that, but ultimately it's that simple for me, and I say that as a guy who backed the revival.

[blondtampico]

I don't question that paying cast, writers, production crew, and permanently buying film distribution rights for a full season of TV, especially when you've publicly committed to pay raises in line with two successful labor strikes, can cost a lot of money. I would have pegged it at somewhat more than they're asking for, frankly. Ordinary commercial television shows cost on the order of $2M per hour. The fact that the MST3K camera isn't moving for part of the show only saves you so much - the rest of the costs are the same.

The issue is more oversaturation and too much leaning into the "geek" audience. It's a comedy show. It had a meaner edge to it at one point, where the writers and the characters liked good movies and were genuinely offended at bad ones. People confuse MST3K's "not a lot of R-rated jokes or things that look racist 30 years later" humor philosophy with "being nice and loving bad movies for so-called camp value." They're not the same thing at all. Paying the nerd tax by having totally untalented people like Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day parade through to pander to the wrong audience is just one more emblem of them forgetting that they need to appeal to people who primarily, like comedy, and secondarily, know something about good and bad movies. People who genuinely like crap movies are not the audience and aren't going to pay for this.

There's also a big hill to overcome with so many back episodes of MST3K/Rifftrax products. Even if no one involved with MST3K ever produces a new episode of anything ever again - you could watch two full-length movie riff episodes from MST3K or Rifftrax, a Rifftrax short, and an additional file of behind-the-scenes material or another spinoff like Mads Are Back, every week for the next seven years, and not run out of material. Demand from new material from the people who are 50+ and watched the whole thing from the beginning can't sustain this on their own. You have to give the 20-something audience something better when you are competing with your own massive archive in that way.

[hitzjeff]

"As for the crowdfunding, I just like Rifftrax and The Mads a lot more than this newtype MST.  There are a lot of reasons for that, but ultimately it's that simple for me, and I say that as a guy who backed the revival."


  This X 1000!

[Handy]

Utterly unwatchable garbage.
I can't see anyone -ever watching that shit. certainly not paying to watch it.

Not even remotely funny...

[I Want To Go Faster]

I don't question that paying cast, writers, production crew, and permanently buying film distribution rights for a full season of TV, especially when you've publicly committed to pay raises in line with two successful labor strikes, can cost a lot of money. I would have pegged it at somewhat more than they're asking for, frankly. Ordinary commercial television shows cost on the order of $2M per hour. The fact that the MST3K camera isn't moving for part of the show only saves you so much - the rest of the costs are the same.

The issue is more oversaturation and too much leaning into the "geek" audience. It's a comedy show. It had a meaner edge to it at one point, where the writers and the characters liked good movies and were genuinely offended at bad ones. People confuse MST3K's "not a lot of R-rated jokes or things that look racist 30 years later" humor philosophy with "being nice and loving bad movies for so-called camp value." They're not the same thing at all. Paying the nerd tax by having totally untalented people like Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day parade through to pander to the wrong audience is just one more emblem of them forgetting that they need to appeal to people who primarily, like comedy, and secondarily, know something about good and bad movies. People who genuinely like crap movies are not the audience and aren't going to pay for this.

There's also a big hill to overcome with so many back episodes of MST3K/Rifftrax products. Even if no one involved with MST3K ever produces a new episode of anything ever again - you could watch two full-length movie riff episodes from MST3K or Rifftrax, a Rifftrax short, and an additional file of behind-the-scenes material or another spinoff like Mads Are Back, every week for the next seven years, and not run out of material.  Demand from new material from the people who are 50+ and watched the whole thing from the beginning can't sustain this on their own. You have to give the 20-something audience something better when you are competing with your own massive archive in that way.

Just to clear something up, I meant to say " ... $670k per episode ... seems ... high ... " because their minimum was 6 episodes for $4 million. I don't know why I typed 300k, which actually *would* be a bargain, imho.

But anyway, while we're not going to agree on the costs, I value our discourse. : )

[billythefist]

I think they were on the right track with season 13 really pushing things forward with the writing. I'm really dying to get some new riffer blood in the mix so i have really appreciated Joel pushing forward the kids and giving them room to grow. I do agree with some of the sentiments of budgets being nuts, but i would imagine that Joel wants to secure these films permanently instead of perpetually fighting licensing issues and I think some of the movies had their first appearance in HD through MST so they might even be funding their own transfers as well. And i'm not sure the Gizmoplex was a great idea tbh

Regardless, this is sad to see because again i really want to see some new blood come to the forefront