surely, most of you are aware of the podcast interview Jonah did with Kevin & Trace that you can watch with the movie is out there:
7 Likes
Mmnanoo.
4 Likes
My friends and I went into NYC to see it - about an hour and a half trip.
The main thing I remember is the excitement and shared laughs of seeing MST3K in a theater with a large crowd. It was very satisfying, in a way I later experienced with Cinematic Titanic and The Mads.
7 Likes
One of my favorite riff sequences where Cal reads off the exact number of parts to the Interociter (which are strewn about all over the place) and they have Joe step on them and lower the number, complete with crunching sounds. 
8 Likes
So much this.
At the time, I thought it was a fairly good representative example of the show.
Over time, Iāve found it to be eminently memorable.
INDUSTRY! SCIENCE! And TECHNOLOGY!
[Grand Canyon stock footage]
Oh, when are they gonna fill that thing in?
Are you in Europe? Do you need an adapter?
Are you boys cooking in there?
No.
Are you building an interocter?
NO!
10 Likes
āOh, who doesnāt have an Interociter?ā
Dr. Fās tone of voice is just perfect!
10 Likes
Iāve actually never seen the movie. I need to get on thatā¦
4 Likes
I love The Movie. I could probably quote it start to finish at this point, and often use its quotes when Iām watching other shows/movies/real life. I correct Tomās German every time, though. Ich will ein auto mieten. (conjugate the verbā¦)
5 Likes
I enjoyed it for what it was - although even at the time I would have traded it for a full Season 7.
And finding out that Jim Mallonās insistence on doing a film is what drove Joel away also dims its luster for me.
That said, it did give us the wonderful experience of enjoying MST3K in a theater with other MSTies, which is added value.
I guess Iām saying Iām a bit ambivalent about it.
6 Likes
I first saw the movie when it came to cable. I was at a graduation party, and the movie commanded my attention.
A few months later, my college roommate showed me The Sinister Urge, and Time Chasers (which was on SciFi in reruns). I was hooked.
My husband and my first unofficial date was going to buy my roommate an episode on DVD for her birthdayā¦
So I feel like I owe something to the movie.
8 Likes
The whole bit with the waffle experiment is riffing gold:
āOh yeahāTHIS is when science didnāt have to have any specific purpose.ā
āThe secret government Eggo Project.ā
āIncrease the Flash Gordon noise and put more science stuff around!ā
6 Likes
āI donāt ask you to condone what weāve doneā¦ !ā
āWE CONDONE IT.ā
4 Likes
They clearly didnāt take the advice of the founder of Aperture Science, Cave Johnson, and ensure they scienced hard enough!
5 Likes
I went to see the movie in theaters and, other than the Frank shaped hole, I always loved it. And I hated when reviewers said, āitās just a long episode of the show.ā I mean for one thing, I think it clicked in at 88 minutes so it was actually a short episode of the show.
6 Likes
I really like the movie, and have used it as an effective gateway rug to get people into MST3K, as itās just short enough and doesnāt flag to get people into the strange rhythm of the show.
3 Likes
I get a lot of laughs out of the movie, even with the studio interference they suffered, even without Frank (admittedly, a big loss) it still works, itās still darned funny, still has the references Iāve always enjoyed (āAll that ringing. Now we know what the world sounds like to Pete Townsend.ā), and the silliness (āUntil we find out what happened, all three of us are blind.ā - āIāll go poke Webbās eyes out.ā - Cal/Crow as Joe) and still locks onto the film nicely (āThen I ram my ovipositor down your throat and lay my eggs in your chest, but Iām not an alien!ā)
Itās one I like to revisit, and while it never came to my town on its original run, when I lived in Nashville, they had a showing at Vanderbilt. I had a good time, watching it on the big screen.
5 Likes
Itās complicated and Iām conflicted. Let me explain.
I knew nothing of the backstage history or the studio interference or anything like that when I first watched MST3K: The Movie. What I did was to take Best Brains at its word on a number of levels in the printed media, like how the newsletter and The Amazing Colossal Episode Guide made it all seem like a positive and happy deal all the way around.
And there was also how the Amazing Colossal Episode Guide made it sound like Joelās departure from MST3K was entirely on his own terms, that he wanted to engage with his own creative ecology and branch out elsewhere and all.
With that all being said, I LOVED THE MOVIE. I got the tape from the Info Club (along with my chunk of the Deep 13 wall) and played it every day one summer. It had a different look from the episodes, more polished and grand and everything, but the heart of it seemed right there, the jokes were as funny as they ever were (the āscience and technology!ā stuff killed me the first time around). And that credits sequence at the end was phenomenal!
It was such that I wish that the movie had come around to my neck of the woods. Since that wasnāt a possibility, I still had the next best thing, and I was very happy.
Then years later, I learned the REAL history about that movie, that it was the wedge that drove Joel away from MST3K and made everyone miserable by virtue of how unsatisfying and stifling all the executive meddling was. I meanā¦ they seriously insisted on the Bootsy Collins reference being changed to a Leona Helmsley reference because folks wouldnāt know who Bootsy Collins but WOULD know who Leona Helmsley was? The hell?
What really came across as uncomfortable were the host segments in The Incredible Melting Man (which I would discover much later) that were used to exorcise the pain and dissatisfaction of the filmmaking process.
Soā¦ yeah. Itās complicated, and Iām conflicted.
If I had to make a bottom line, I will say that itās still very funny and Iām glad to have it in as part of my MST3K experience. I just wish that it didnāt have so high a cost attached to it.
9 Likes
Lighter question about the movie: do you prefer the ending that was given, or the deleted scene ending where they use Scrotor on Dr. F?
2 Likes
Itās not as simple as āJim drove Joel away.ā There are newspaper articles and interviews from pre-1993 where Joel is VERY enthusiastic about doing a movie. The difference arose over WHO was going to produce and direct: Joel wanted to do the movie independently, including financing, and bring in a director from outside Best Brains, and Jim wanted to go with a studio because he felt they couldnāt afford to continue making the TV show (they were contractually obligated to produce 96 episodes for Comedy Central) while working on a movie without studio money, and he thought he should direct. Thereās an old Nerdist interview, the one from 2012 where Joel met Jonah for the first time, where Joel says that he thought the movie would fail and ā[he] didnāt want to be the face of a failure,ā with concerns for his future career. So Joel decided to walk away, which others (Kevin, Mike, and Trace) said came out of the blue to them.
6 Likes
Also, in the interests of lightening this all up:
JOE!
IāM IN ONE OF THESE BOXES!
FIND ME!!! 
7 Likes