So who exactly had “final cut” on the movie? The alternate ending included in the bonus features is better than the one they went with. Was that a studio decision?
1 Like
I really don’t get the choice of Leona Helmsley, either. Her notoriety had long since faded by the time the movie was made.
4 Likes
You can only have jokes that everyone gets.
2 Likes
I said that I didn’t get the choice of target. Different thing.
2 Likes
While I use the “normal view” riff whenever I hear that phrase, I giggle the most at “… and if your hands were metal, that would mean something.”
6 Likes
If you had to go with “unlikable old white lady” for the Metaluna Mutant riff, I would have gone with Anna Wintour.
I say “unlikable”, but I don’t know the lady personally. Not a fan of her magazine, though.
The executive suggested someone that was more contemporary with the reasoning that nobody knew who the person in the original riff was. Isn’t that what you were getting at? The original riff person is a joke that the right people would get. The executive wanted more people to get the joke. (Assuming that wasn’t a lie they told and just wanted their own joke in the movie.)
1 Like
Relevant side bar to this conversation - Bootsy Collins will be playing the opening ceremonies for the World Games tonight in Alabama.
6 Likes
I’d say the movie was an average outing. Part of the problem was - as mentioned previously - Dr. F. was kind of out of his element without a henchman. That problem persisted into episodes after the movie where Pearl was in Deep 13 with him. That whole dynamic just did NOT work and went over about as gracefully as a dead whale. Dr. F. needed a flunky to boss around. Dr. F. punching himself with frustration was just pathetic and made you feel more sorry for HIM than anything else.
4 Likes
When I was in college, my roommate liked to joke about me being from a small town because I’m from Iowa.
There was a girl from my city in our dorm, and he assumed we knew each other. I told him she went to a different high school and he looked all surprised and asked how many high schools my town had.
I replied “I don’t know, like a dozen.” And he seemed shocked that the capital of Iowa didn’t have a one room school house. I twisted the knife with “Why, you don’t have that many in Swampscott?”
Turns out Swampscott, MA only had one high school.
6 Likes
Number of high schools can also be a weird metric because different towns/cities do it differently. In the Columbus, OH area where I grew up, my school district (Gahanna-Jefferson) serves about 45,000 people and has one high school, while Dublin schools (another suburban district) serves about 49,000 people and has three high schools. They’re just smaller. And where I live now (Brighton, NY) is about 37,000 people had we have four schools total (one each K-2, 3-5, middle, and high) but they are all huge.
2 Likes
Heh. Oh the Movie.
I was a film critic when this came out. So I was, fortunately, able to see it in the theatres. I was already a passionate MST3K fan, so I was pumped. I saw it with some friends and they all loved it. We couldn’t stop saying “Breach hull, all die. Even had it underlined!” for years. And yes, Normal View still cracks me up.
But my job as a film critic made things weird. Criticism is not some sacred cow where I have to pretend to not care. I used my review to promote the show, not that there was one at the time if I remember. But how does one “review” a film like this?
What’s the plot. An evil scientist forces some characters to watch another movie. We then spend most of the film watching another film. One I had seen multiple times before. So now it is about big-headed aliens kidnapping scinetists. But the first narrative is talking over the other film. And then the first narrative breaks into the alien film to do some skits, then back to the other movie.
That makes it hard to write a review for. I saw my job as to inform people if the film was worth their time to go see. As A film buff, I believe all films are worth seeing. Even abortions like Origins: Wolverine. But how do I critique a film about watching another film without just describing what is going on?
But yeah, I love the film. I love that it got made and it has some of the best riffs I think they have ever done. Maybe we could get the current crew to riff the old crew riffing This Island Earth.
Meta
11 Likes
Schools for kids these days look more like shopping malls than learning institutions. Come to think of it, that’s how universities are headed, too.
With these zoom call events they’ve been doing, it certainly seems possible. More so than before when they poopooed DVD commentaries.
Hi, Meta. How’s Mark?
1 Like
Now imagine you have to write a review of 1301! A film about a guy trapped in space, forced to watch a movie … about a group of people watching a movie.
The recursion is enough to give anyone a headache!
10 Likes
Heh, reminds me of one of my favorite riffs from Terror from the Year 5000:
“So, now we get to watch people watching a movie? What’s THAT about?”
Which is to say what @Cleggster said: heck, let chaos reign and get someone to riff on (or do a commentary track for) MST3K: The Movie!
6 Likes
It’ll have to be the Germany release, I bet. That was the only one for a while. Who knows what the sitch is thesedeez.
3 Likes
Jonah Ray, Kevin and Trace did a commentary for MST3K The Movie on the Let Me Watch Your Movie with You Podcast. It’s up on Spotify.
6 Likes
My high school was built between 1930 and 1965 (it was 3 buildings; is being torn down to build one giant one soon) and the local HS here looks 60s vintage as well. Both look very mid-century institutional.
1 Like
I have such a soft spot and honest love for the movie. I had just started watching episodes of MST3k in high school on the weekends at my friend’s house who had cable (it was on the Sci-Fi channel at the time). For my 16th birthday my friends bought my the newly released VHS of the movie. I watched it over and over again and memorized it. My dad enjoyed watching it too and I have great memories of us laughing throughout the movie. I personally still put it on when I need an uplifting film to watch.
12 Likes