Is it just me, or has watching MST3k affected you while watching other movies, including highly regraded ones. For example, I watched Poor Things the other day, and during a scene showing the ship they were sailing on, I kept thinking: Toy boat. Toy boat. Toy boat.
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Well Iāll damn sure never see another rock climbing scene without having thoughts.
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Absolutely. My wife and I riff everything now. Weāre not relentless about it, but yeah, itās all open season for jokes during any given thing we might be watching.
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In addition to ātoy boatā type things, MST has helped me understand why the movie is bad.
Also, it taught me that, correctly approached, even a bad movie can be good.
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I go to very few movies in theaters anymore, but a long time ago my friend and I saw āThe Emperorās Clubā in a theater. This was an Oscar-bait āMr. Chipsā-wannabe with Kevin Kline. It had the most obvious and predictable plot beats, and having seen movies dissected on MST3K helped me realize that.
Kline does some narration at the beginning and end of the movie, and at the end he says āThis is a story without surprises.ā My friend and I just yelled out right in the theater, āNow you tell us!ā We could have saved 2 hours.
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It has definitely changed the way I watch movies, at least when watching them with friends. No matter the movie we are watching for movie night, good or bad, we always riff them. Of course, it is hard to say how much of that is from watching MST3k, and how much of it is just what friends do when they get together to drink and watch movies. We also tend to go into deep discussions of the other movies the actors, directors, and producers have been involved in, and how they stack up to the current film. Often having to pause or rewind the movie as a result.
My movie night friends are all MST3k aware, but their degree of fanhood varies. I am the one usually tossing out the MST3k callbacks, and sometimes the others catch them. Regardless, we are there to have a good time, and riffing has always been a part of that equation.
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Iām always mumbling riffs when Iām watching a movie or show now.
Itās a good thing MR_Potroast is such a patient person.
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I was always the type to mumble to myself in theaters when seeing films, but I will admit that being an MST3K fan has increased my capacity to actually RIFF on the film as opposed to just responding to something that happened on screen. I try not to do it with my family because it annoys them, but my friends are used to me occasionally calling out pithy statements when weāre watching movies together.
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Like the others before me, I respond with a resounding āyou betchaā. Obvious riffs might occur to me the first time I watch something, but rewatches are fair game for riffing at my house.
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The show has improved my critical capabilities. Sure, thereās snarky jokes to make when a film is bad, but a fair amount of MST3K actually lends itself as an educational tool. The riffs have made me notice pacing, set design, compositionā¦ both in the main shots and second unit (also identifying second unit as a separate entity). Someone once thought I had a film degree, but it turns out I just paid attention to a bunch of smart puppets.
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My tolerance for bad movies has certainly grown, as long as they are the right kind of ābadā (i.e. they were really trying to make something but fell short)
Something like Samurai Cop 
so bad itās good
Samurai Cop 2 
mugging to the audience on purpose? Boo!!
Likewise just seeking out old, weird movies has become a passion. Sometimes you find a diamond in the rough like Creation of the Humanoids and just wonder why something this surprisingly good is less well known. Of course you also find stuff like The Atomic Submarine which is somewhat of a guilty pleasure but is just weird and bad at the same time (but hey, short running time!)
Anyway I can safely say that MST3K has changed how I view cinema. For good or ill
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Yep. All of this.
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I stumbled upon that a few years back, and while thereās a lot I like about it visually, at some point I recognized that itās a handful of long sequence. Thereās only like five different sets in the whole thing, and only one or two are revisited. Spend ten minutes in the hallway set, ten minutes in the lab set, ten minutes in the home set, etc. It feels very mathematical and deliberate, which could be an artistic statement, or maybe they were working under the impression that each reel of completed film had to be in a single location.
In either case, itās fascinating in that I do find the film very boring and oddly paced, but I still really like it. It is a good story after all, and the (admittedly limited) visuals are well done. So I also recommend it.
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Thanks for adding a couple of movies to my must watch list, and I see that they are both on Tubiā¦
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Same here for the above reasons. And itās not just movies. I often find myself riffing stuff like commercials or interstate billboards. Thatās how much itās ingrained in me!
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DITTO! Movies, entertainment, real life. My head turns to reference or inference often. MST made me a complete person. And a happier one.
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It goes beyond movie watching, I was cooking up some Chinese food the other night and spotted some weird looking speckled veggie - what is that, I wondered? Then, āoh, well, itās probably edibleā - and immediately thought, āGolden Corals new sloganā
Sure, thatās Rifftrax, but still, riffing has infected my entire life.
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When I see a bad movie I say to myself, āI wonder if Leonard Maltin gave it two and a half stars?ā
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I have a tendency to riff anything. Commercials, dramas, whatever! Some are callbacks that hubs doesnāt get (heās new-ish to MST3K) but others are just funny things I come up with on the spot. And I am no where near as versed in the catalog of MST movies are a lot of you areā¦so you may do callbacks that I have no idea about.
I still havenāt watched ALL of the Joel episodes. I came into MST3K very close to the end of the Joel era. 1994. I have seen everything SINCE then, but I need to sit down this winter and start with KTMA and just roll through the whole catalog through season 13!
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I would agree with this, although my specific rock-related riff comes from the fan-made MST3k episode of Star Trek 5.
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