Joel Hodgson has been teasing a return to MST3K for a couple years now, and last month it appears he finally got the rights to the franchise back. He launched a brilliantly thought out Kickstarter (I write this as it crosses the 12-episode goal of $5.5 million) and got the superfans to come out of the woodwork to support bringing this show back from the dead.
But why bring back this long-cancelled TV relic when there are plenty of alternative movie-riffing projects going on? The closest “hit” for me would have to be Rifftrax, which features the MST3K season 8 crew talking over everything from ancient educational videos to present day blockbusters. They’re phenomenal and their Fathom shows are riotous, but I do miss the timeless feeling of the Satellite of Love.
This could very well just be nostalgia talking of course, but watching the old episodes reminded me how good they were at being creatively low-budget, goofball Minnesotans, and it’s not something easily duplicated or concisely conveyed to anyone who hasn’t studied the show. Rifftrax trades on-camera sketches and long-term original characters, for meme-esque throwbacks to other movies they’ve done. That’s fine for the most part, but I miss the off-beat sketches, the set comprised of spray-painted junk; essentially I miss the experimentation of each Experiment.
Which is why when Joel announced this, I was more than eager to pony up some moolah to make it happen. But when Joel kept announcing actors, writers, designers, and rewards, it drove me to donate that much more. I have absolute confidence they can pull this off and make the fans proud, however derisive said fans can be when anything on the show changes.
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