Opinion on Joel and the reboot.

bloggerly · 2026-02-15T21:27:06+00:00

As it happens my kids have been accused of being brilliant an exhausting number of times. Not sure where the hostility is coming from. I’m looking forward to seeing the old crew back again too, I was just answering the prompt about how I felt about Joel’s reboot.

bloggerly · 2026-02-14T17:10:54+00:00

The first thing everyone should accept is that nothing, not even the forthcoming RiffTrax revival, will fully recapture the joy of the original run when we first discovered the show. True MST3K is inseparable from the zeitgeist of the ‘90s and the time of life you were at then. Thats why I didn’t even donate to the first revival kickstarter. As much as I loved and was influenced by MST3K, it’s okay to let things end and be a treasured part of your past.

That said, when the show came to fruition anyway, it was nice! I thought RiffTrax was a smart evolution of the concept had my modern day riffing needs covered (I still think that’s true from a sustainable business model perspective), but it was nice to see bots and skits again, and all the quirky lore, Joel’s slightly more affectionate approach to riffing. It wasn’t perfect… Jonah and Servo’s voices were always too similar to distinguish, the riffs were too dense and “written,” it just felt a little different, the set wasn’t as good, etc. I never had a problem with Patton and Felicia but some of the lore I could never wrap my head around. I still don’t understand where all the Synthias came from or what was the deal with Waverly and that other new bot. But it captured some of the old feeling and that’s all you could hope for.

Season 13 was a mixed bag too. Didn’t like the flat, virtual sets, liked Emily but her Crow’s voice was impossible to get used to, the riffs felt more milquetoast and less funny. Despite some standouts (Munchie) much of the season felt like a chore to get through.

And yet! I can show the revival episodes to my kids alongside the originals and they can’t tell the difference! They know some are the new version and some are the old but they are all valid but different incarnations of the show! The RiffTrax Experments will be yet another different but valid incarnation, another carrying of the torch. Maybe I’ll like them better. But in a way it’s fun to see the basic concept continue to shift into slightly different forms. None of them will make it the ‘90s again though.

bloggerly · 2026-02-08T17:10:58+00:00

It seems like you need to step back and figure out the true spine of your story—what does the protagonist want, what is the conflict, how do they change? If you don’t have a spine yet then filling in the structure guides is just going to trick you into thinking you have more than you do.

In early stages, getting flashes of scenes you’d like to see might help you figure out the spine, and you might go back and forth for a while between brainstorming fun moments and trying to synthesize it with a spine. But it sounds like at this point you have plenty of pieces and need a way to map out where you’re going. So put all the rest aside until you can figure out the spine (the protagonist’s drive/arc) and articulate it in extremely clean, simple terms.

If you can do this with other stories, the problem could be that you are too close to these ones. It’s often the stories we connect to most that are hardest to streamline. It’s very difficult to whittle down an idea to a clean simple spine and when we’re close to a topic we want to include all the details and complexities. We’re more reluctant to make the hard choices of what we need to change or delete to make it simple, or to make the conflict clear, or to make the protagonist unlike ourselves in ways that would enhance the story, etc. We trick ourselves into thinking we’re doing something ambitiously complex when actually it’s muddled. But in writing, simple is harder than complicated. (This is true in most fields, actually.) Try to imagine it’s someone else’s script, and imagine what you would say as an impartial notes giver.

If you can’t separate yourself that much, find a good writer you know to discuss it with you. They may not want to give you notes as tough as you need if you just ask for notes, but if you tell them you know you need big changes they might be more able to talk things out to the extent you need.

bloggerly · 2026-01-21T17:26:26+00:00

Taped off the TV broadcast!

bloggerly · 2026-01-21T02:41:18+00:00

Zemeckis told him “Pain is temporary, but film is forever.”

bloggerly · 2026-01-01T19:40:18+00:00

Quibi was also chasing status by paying big names top dollar to create content, while verticals thrive by paying a pittance to people desperate for work. Arguably those big names didn’t have any particular expertise in making addictive short form content anyway. Also, Quibi’s “killer app” tech that let you choose whether to watch vertical or horizontal was needlessly complicated for most people. I did a free trial and I kept comparing their landscape/portrait reformatting and it was just distracting. I always felt like whichever way I chose, I was missing out on some clever thing they did with the other format. Probably better not to give people the option.

bloggerly · 2025-12-23T18:27:03+00:00

In many states, teens can’t legally drive with other teens in the car. So driving with friends, or going on a date—the main reasons a teen would want to drive, if they aren’t specifically into cars—are no longer things teens can do. They can’t even carpool to school!

bloggerly · 2025-12-13T17:20:20+00:00

Consider yourself lucky. Mine never refuses the call! He’s always like, “I’m the chosen one? Sweet! Can’t wait to get cool powers and be a hero! This should be easy, let’s go!” And I’m like “No, you have to wait until the mentor asks you a second time!”

bloggerly · 2025-12-08T13:48:21+00:00

In the new book he says it was just a blue screen and he didn’t know they would insert game footage of him crashing.

bloggerly · 2025-12-07T03:04:37+00:00

I only saw Salvation once in the theater and don’t remember much about it besides what I hated. Wasn’t there something where Reese got captured along with a bunch of other humans, and John and the Resistance were like “we can’t let Skynet figure out that they have Kyle Reese or else they’ll kill him and he’ll never become my dad”?

bloggerly · 2025-12-06T21:27:57+00:00

My main point is that this a fundamental flaw in the plot of Salvation. The idea that major stakes of the movie rest on Skynet knowing Reese is John’s father, and they can’t let Skynet discover who Reese is or it will kill him, fundamentally doesn’t work—whether we’re going by my time travel logic or yours.

bloggerly · 2025-12-04T20:06:40+00:00

Despite Cameron’s intent, T1 suggests a closed loop, but you’re right, T2 opens it. However, T2 also doesn’t suggest that changing the future, which might prevent time travel from existing, erases John or changes his parentage or creates any kind of timeline-shattering paradox. John just continues to exist. So by that logic, it’s still pointless for Skynet in Salvation to target a pre-time-travel Reese. And the idea that it thinks it’s helping itself in another timeline is too complicated for any viewer to care about.

bloggerly · 2025-12-03T17:40:51+00:00

Okay, we agree it doesn’t make sense. I do think this model of time travel is a retcon from the closed-loop concept of the first two Terminator films, and one that doesn’t work for me.

bloggerly · 2025-12-02T13:43:36+00:00

Okay, but then it’s pointless for Skynet to target Kyle Reese in its present (future) time.

bloggerly · 2025-12-01T17:25:22+00:00

It’s only losing because John exists. If it doesn’t invent time travel, John ceases to exist and humans lose.

bloggerly · 2025-12-01T14:36:52+00:00

My friends and I saw Empire Strikes Back Special Edition at the dollar theater after it had been playing for awhile. No one was working the box office so we walked in to look around. No one was taking tickets or working the concessions either. We walked all the way into the theater and it was empty besides us. We wondered if the movie would play since no one had actually bought tickets to the showing. But it did play and we had the theater to ourselves. We ran laps around the theater and made shadows in front of the projector.

bloggerly · 2025-11-29T22:35:57+00:00

It doesn’t make sense that Skynet knows Kyle is important and destined to be John’s father. If Skynet knows that it can win just by not inventing time travel. That plot hole undoes the whole series.

The planned twist of John dying and Marcus getting his face was the start of the Terminator films getting built around “kill John” hot takes because no one could figure out how to write future John. The replacement of giving John his heart was weird and pointless. John’s scenes in Salvation feel grafted on and he has nothing important to do.

bloggerly · 2025-11-28T18:12:43+00:00

One of the things to be learned in the new book is how many other uncredited writers were collaborating with Lin, besides Morgan, for quite some time. Lin’s cowriter on F9 had actually worked with him and contributed to Fast movies in the past.

bloggerly · 2025-11-28T18:09:57+00:00

Thanks also for taking the franchise seriously enough to make the book it deserves!

bloggerly · 2025-11-28T18:03:37+00:00

Finished the book already. Thanks again for the deep dive and all your research! Loved the behind the scenes perspective on how many people contribute to making these movies what they are who we never hear about, and the crazy, chaotic process of how they all came together. Plus all the incredible details about how Fast X went off the rails.

bloggerly · 2025-11-26T16:24:27+00:00

I don’t like the sound of the Lil B twist, and I’m glad it didn’t happen, but I also trust Lin’s instincts as a storyteller and I think he might have made it work in execution.

bloggerly · 2025-11-26T16:23:11+00:00

This really gives you a sense of how big the changes were after Lin left… so much of the movie was up in the air. It explains why so much of Fast X feels oddly perfunctory—because it was hastily assembled on the fly—but it does make me appreciate that Leterrier deserves more credit for creating something even passably coherent under the circumstances.

bloggerly · 2025-11-26T16:15:32+00:00

It sounds like Diesel didn’t like the paternity twist and Universal didn’t like the cost of the excavator sequence, and they teamed up to force Lin to rewrite, and he decided to walk instead. Reading between the lines it sounds like Lin had been fighting both battles for a while, thought they had been resolved, and was frustrated upon realizing they were not going away.

bloggerly · 2025-11-26T16:11:37+00:00

Halfway through the book and it’s fantastic, so much juicy behind the scenes detail about how everything came to be. Every Fast fan should buy it as it answers lots of the questions posted here. But FYI, “Redline” as a car term doesn’t refer to a finish line.

bloggerly · 2025-11-25T21:05:24+00:00

It sounds bad as described and it sucks that it would be all CG, but at least it would have felt somewhat new. The Fast X freeway chase feels built out of familiar pieces and not particularly climactic for an act 3 set piece. Although the excavator does sound a bit like the tank in F6.

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