MST3K's Back! But...
Knowing that Satellite News puts another episode summary up every Thursday (they've run through the Mystery Science Theater 3000 canon several times by now), I decided to take a look at the site before that. There was a surprise there I should have expected. Starting back around the twenty-fifth anniversary of the show, reports have been cropping up of Joel Hodgson working on something new, and just in the past week news of rearrangements among the rights-holders provoked a bit of discussion. When I saw that Joel had begun a project on Kickstarter to raise money for new Mystery Science Theater episodes, though, it still very much got my attention.
When I looked at the responses of others to this news, though, a certain number of them taking jaundiced views just happened to invoke standard disparagement of the Star Wars prequels. That grated on me. It also reminded me of how I never got around to taking in any of either of the "official post-MST3K projects," Rifftrax or Cinematic Titanic, after hearing they were also using those movies as targets for contemptuous references. Rifftrax seems to have moved away from "savage commentary tracks on big Hollywood movies" and turned up a doozy or two of grade-Z filmmaking in the process, but even there I'm still not willing to be brave.
I suppose it's possible that by the time the new episodes start taping, we'll be in an "era of good feelings," people having convinced themselves the assembly line of new product is good stuff just because George Lucas isn't allowed to contribute, but even that potential positivity might just amount to a springboard for the ground-in negativity. It's a terrible thing to be reluctant to take in something just because of suspicions it might say something bad about something else in nothing more than passing, and I'd at least like to hold good thoughts about Joel Hodgson. Still, given all the other things I haven't quite got into for that specific reason, I fear I might also get over sticking with the Mystery Science Theater episodes taped before 1999.
This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/246387.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please.
When I looked at the responses of others to this news, though, a certain number of them taking jaundiced views just happened to invoke standard disparagement of the Star Wars prequels. That grated on me. It also reminded me of how I never got around to taking in any of either of the "official post-MST3K projects," Rifftrax or Cinematic Titanic, after hearing they were also using those movies as targets for contemptuous references. Rifftrax seems to have moved away from "savage commentary tracks on big Hollywood movies" and turned up a doozy or two of grade-Z filmmaking in the process, but even there I'm still not willing to be brave.
I suppose it's possible that by the time the new episodes start taping, we'll be in an "era of good feelings," people having convinced themselves the assembly line of new product is good stuff just because George Lucas isn't allowed to contribute, but even that potential positivity might just amount to a springboard for the ground-in negativity. It's a terrible thing to be reluctant to take in something just because of suspicions it might say something bad about something else in nothing more than passing, and I'd at least like to hold good thoughts about Joel Hodgson. Still, given all the other things I haven't quite got into for that specific reason, I fear I might also get over sticking with the Mystery Science Theater episodes taped before 1999.
This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/246387.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please.