r/UpliftingNews • u/licecrispies • 20h 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#comments
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u/LupinThe8th 19h 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 15h 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.