I miss the full credits at the start of the movies!

You use to show ALL the credits at the Strat of films like LASERBLAST and SECRET AGENT SUPERDRAGON. Now you cut them down to almost nothing, which, for me, kind of ruins the experience of actually “watching” a film with the hosts. When you know a film has obviously been edited for length, it pulls you out of the experience. The decision to do this might have been a time limitation thing, but since we’re in the world of streaming now, I would imagine time is no longer a factor. I would respectfully request that full opening credits sequences be restored to future episodes in season 13. It’s a win-win, because we get episodes more like the way they were “back in the day” and YOU get more fun material to riff on. FOR EXAMPLE, in the truncated opening credits of ROBOT WARS, you don’t even show CHARLES BAND’s producing card. What, I ask respectfully, is the point of even SHOWING a film from Charlie Band, the master of cheese and producer of LASERBLAST, if you don’t get to point him out and give him a good natured ribbing? I was sort of okay with the massive re-editing job done on my favorite film STARCRASH—which seemed to be cut up far worse than most any other film I’d ever seen on MST3K, and for reasons I couldn’t quite fathom a lot of the time—but simply preserving the OPENING CREDITS seems like it should be a given in every movie.

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Until post-credits scenes started to be a thing, people wouldn’t sit through credits. For years. It’s unfortunate because a lot of people work hard on films and deserve to be seen. I agree with you- put the credits up first.

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Credits got incredibly long once the “studio system” shut down, and everyone on the cast/crew had to apply for a job for every new film they wanted to work on, instead of just being assigned the next film by the studio. Add in that nearly every film these days are produced by a specialized corporation/LLC that only exists to produce that one film and then disbands, and the only way for someone to confirm a cast/crew member’s previous work experience is via a credit in the film. So suddenly a huge number of additional people needed to be credited in the movie, hence the addition of closing credits, which reduced the need for opening credits. I don’t think most of the people credited realistically expect most movie goers to sit through the whole thing.

I found the un-riffed Robot Wars available on-demand for free on PlutoTV (link below). Comparing the two versions, MST3K cuts the segment from 1:40-3:33. Three and a half minutes of slow-moving opening credits is likely a bit of a challenge to keep lively with riffs. And they do stick through the entire closing credits, likely because those are mandatory to keep in.

Comparing the runtimes, the un-riffed movie is 1:25:44 long, while the preview version of the MST3K episode is 1:27:46. Note that’s for the ENTIRE episode, including host bits. I recall during the Netflix era Kickstarter that Joel mentioned in a newsletter that they still trim episodes so they can fit in a TV 2-hour block, since they may be able to sell the show to actual TV networks in some markets. There’s also still pacing and attention span to consider. Someone noted that for Santo in the Treasure of Dracula, they trimmed down the wrestling scene, likely for similar reasons

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I notice MST cut the opening credits where it can in the new era, compared to the old days. Rifftrax is doing that too. It cut the opening credits in the second look of Zombie Nightmare, probably because of music rights.

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Oh, that’s too bad considering it’s one of the few legitimately good songs in an MST3K episode- Ace of Spades by Mötorhead.

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I was stunned they did that. What changed that the MST version had a good chunk of Ace of Spades, but Rifftrax had to cut? At least with “Let’s Go” aka Jimbo’s Driving Anthem they just cut a verse and improved the movie’s flow.

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I think it’s a thing that most people never even notice. If you’re a cheesy film expert, then yeah, that may be annoying, but you gotta pick what is worth it and for the most part they prioritize visual things over credits because it’s just more fun to riff something that has both audiovisual elements.

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If there’s something worthy of riffing in the opening credits, I’m all for it. But leaving it in just to take additional potshots at people who made the movie seems pointless.

I’d rather have them cut out some of the credits to get more of the actual movie in.

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I’m with you on this and I think they have done a pretty good job finding a balance of riffing credits

Poking fun at goofy end credits music or names is good in limited quantities.

“Oh is the great Hollingsworth Morse directing?” Was hilarious in Manhunt in Space but even the Brains knew it was too much for a do over in Crash of Moons and kind of made fun of themselves the second time around. That worked for me

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Possibly rights issues with the song? I don’t know how much it would cost, but I know it cost The Magicians $50k to get “Shake It Off” for their first musical number and the description for the episode where the final one was (featuring The Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated”) remarked they couldn’t get Prince.

Doctor Who had to cut a Beatles video clip from “The Chase” from the DVD for rights reasons too.

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Which is, ironically, the only remaining footage of that Beatles concert.

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