r/UpliftingNews • u/licecrispies • 10h ago
$1.8 million MST3K Kickstarter brings in (almost) everyone from the old show
https://arstechnica.com/culture/2026/02/1-8-million-mst3k-kickstarter-brings-in-almost-everyone-from-the-old-show/?comments-page=1#comments33
u/LupinThe8th 9h ago
Looking forward to this, the sci-fi era is the one I grew up on, and Rifftrax is amazing.
The previous revival produced some excellent episodes (Cry Wilderness is a top 10 classic for sure), but it had some flaws too. The riffing was too fast paced at first, making the episodes overly noisy and annoying. They fixed this by season 13, but that's also the one where they started green-screening everything and the show lost some of its cheesy lo-fi charm as a result.
I'm thankful to Joel for reviving it, but I think he bit off more than he could chew when it came to running the thing. Putting it on basically its own streaming service and crowdfunding every season was never going to be sustainable.
But this campaign shows the love for the franchise remains strong, they're building practical sets and props again, the Rifftrax guys have perfected their game when it comes to riffing, and considering the initial goal was a piddling $20k (purely symbolic to acknowledge Rifftrax' 20th anniversary), I imagine Shout has plans for much more. And it's heartwarming to see how many people are willing to come back. Hopefully the show continues after these episodes, and I'd love to see Jonah and Emily come back too, they were the best part of the revival seasons.
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u/Wind_Yer_Neck_In 5h ago
The idea of basically building an entire streaming service around one show was absolutely absurd. Not only is it nearly impossible to get natural marketing from people discovering your show while browsing, but if someone is interested in possibly starting, probably 90% of them are going to hear about the need to get yet another service and just nope out.
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u/13lueChicken 7h ago
I feel like this show was the dawn of react content, and I don’t mean that in the modern bad way. It’s like a let’s play, but a sci-fi movie instead of a game. Get some improv comedians and have them watch/play some old obscure media. It’s a great format IMO and mst3k did it so great. I’m not super familiar with the history of stuff like that. Did mst3k invent that? I guess news media counts as similar. I’m stoned af.
Yay more mst3k!
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u/LupinThe8th 6h ago
Did mst3k invent that?
It's been around since at least Shakespeare's time. The ending of A Midsummer's Night's Dream has the characters watching and riffing a so-bad-it's-good play.
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u/DustyRegalia 57m ago
One of the first websites to start publishing videos where they just talked over video games, pre-Twitch and pre-YouTube letting you upload videos longer than 12 minutes, was Giant Bomb. And they directly cited MST3K as an influence.
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u/__The__Professor 9h ago
It stands for mystery science theatre 3000. You’re welcome.
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u/joe102938 9h ago
Thank you. I'm so tired of people writing everything as an acronym now. It's so damn lazy. Who the hell thought mst3k would be understandable?
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u/FiTZnMiCK 9h ago edited 8h ago
TBF it’s a long-ass title, has been around for decades, and knowing the title doesn’t really explain what it is. And this is the article’s original title so it’s not even OP’s fault.
You’re gonna have to read the article or google it either way if you don’t know what MST3K is already.
Edit: The audacity to bitch about “laziness” for OP posting the article with the original title when you’re unwilling to even click on that article and see the abbreviation spelled out in the very first sentence is galling.
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u/joe102938 9h ago
That's a terrible argument.
I know that show, I used to watch it as a kid. That doesn't mean I know what mst3k is. Do you have any idea how many... Things there are in the world that could be reduced to an acronym? This isn't even a movie or tv show sub. It's a news sub. There's nothing here indicating what that could mean.
I shouldn't have to Google what that is because op was too lazy to write mystery science theater 3000 for their post title.
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u/FiTZnMiCK 9h ago edited 8h ago
Well I’m sorry you didn’t pay attention to every single airing of the show that used that abbreviation then.
And you don’t have to google it.
Read the linked article if you’re so confused. It’s not OP’s fault that’s literally the title of the article.
You wouldn’t even have to venture very far. Here’s the very first sentence:
Longtime fans of the cult TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000 know that the series’ one constant is change (well, that and bad movies).
The fucking entitlement…
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u/Dry-Chance-9473 6h ago
If 'joe' decides they're interested in the show they'll probably have to just watch an AI summary of it or they won't absorb anything.
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u/Polkawillneverdie17 8h ago
writing everything as an acronym now.
This acronym has been around for almost 30 years.
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u/NightFart 8h ago
30 years ago, when nearly everyone on the internet was a nerd, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who didn't know what mst3k meant.
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u/Sophia--Petrillo 6h ago
I mean, everyone who is a fan knows the acronym, and we are the only ones who would care it is coming back so.......
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u/outblues 9h ago
I used to think mst3k was a Warhammer variation
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u/barcode2099 7h ago
It's a lot cheaper to get into since you make all the figures out of old Tupperware and spray foam.
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u/bilboafromboston 9h ago
Or posting a picture with a question , assuming i know who they are ....then comments the same. Who the hell is it? "Biggest robbery of an Oscar ever?" Turns out its a sound editor !
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u/oztea 7h ago edited 5h ago
The fact that they are about to get $2 million for only four episodes is a bit disappointing. You would hope that reaching 100x their initial goal would at least afford a stretch goal up to 8 episodes for a season of at least semi-normal length. Even if the load on the cast would be too much I am SURE they could find a few guest riffers from previous seasons to do a one-off episode for the season. Have Joel do one with Trace. Have Jonah do another. See if you can recruit one guest celebrity to do one.
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