WE'VE GOT MOVIE SIGN!Cult cinema companion series Mystery Science Theater 3000 returns to all our lives in a huge way on Netflix this Friday, April 14th, as a Kickstarter campaign made it possible for the series to come back strong in reboot-quel form - with original creator Joel Hodgson (working behind-the-scenes) and new host/test subject Jonah Ray leading us into the darkened theater.

While some things will never change -- namely mad scientists, quipping robots, and mostly unheard of movies -- other things will, as the aforementioned Ray takes over Satellite of Love hosting duties, Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo get new voices [comedians Hampton Yount and Baron Vaughn], and Felicia Day and Patton Oswalt step into the mad scientist roles.I spoke to creator/original host Joel Hodgson and new star Jonah Ray about MST3K: The Return, how the original show influenced online snark, the faster pace of the riffs, choosing the new movies, and more.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 Revival Photos 26 IMAGES

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I think the biggest change for the new series is that we really collaborate with the movie more, in that we don't really talk over the movie. We're really careful about letting the movie deliver its dialogue. I think we were just a little sloppier before. Personally, I feel like the audience now listens faster and absorbs more so we really wanted the movie to show through and we used the negative space to collaborate with it. 50,000 of our backers, or a big percentage of them -- maybe thirty or forty thousand of them -- got a version of our first [new] episode, and a very high percentage of the response to it... I answered about 600 or so questions from them on Facebook this week, and about 10 or 20 of them were saying, "Oh, it's faster. I'm not sure I like that." To me though, that was a deliberate thing. Because we're trying to update the show a little bit, but also it's a function of us collaborating more with the movie and using the space that's available and not talking over the words.Like Joel has said before, it's the "Now Sound" of MST3K. [laughs]You gotta dig the new breed.: I don't think so. I don't feel that way. Movie riffing works with any movie. We just want to be able to license movies so we can do what we want with them. I don't feel like they're bad movies, I just feel like they're forgotten movies. It has to do a lot with IMDB ratings. Usually if it dips below a six we'd think about it. Anything above a six we'd leave it alone. Six and above are movies that people usually consider to be good and we don't really want to disrupt that. We just want to use movies that aren't really on people's radar. It's an ongoing conversation because executives are always saying "Yes! Do Mystery Science Theater with the most famous movie we can! That's the answer!" So that's an ongoing thing that we'll always struggle with, is an executive saying "Gotta do it with Star Wars. You know it's gonna be great with Star Wars." I like the movies to be like a haunted house that you've never been to.Yeah, the more you've seen a movie or the more you know a movie, the more likely you're going to project what you think should be in there. The types of jokes and riffs. And that's never really been the cause for Mystery Science Theater. It's always been, you know, someone presenting something to you while simultaneously commenting on it.Well, I mean having grown up watching it there's no way that the show didn't already influence my comedic style, even before me becoming the new host. I always have felt that there's a Mystery Science Theater style, a Joel or a Mike, inside my delivery of jokes, hust having been raised by it. Coming into it I don't think I really had time to overthink things too much. We just tried to fill our days here with a lot. We were really slammed with how much we had to get done and I think just being prepared, from having done comedy for so long, just anchored me and allowed me to just do it without having the time to overthink any decision.I always feel like people misunderstand what we do because we're like companions with people while they watch the movie. And if we're really hard on it or if we're really snarky - I feel like snark is really disparaging and behaving like something is not worthy. And that's not what we do. I think we love the movies and we're just using them as a springboard to do a variety show. Or do do jokes and skits and impressions. I know people online, and some of these new products where they riff, or use pre-made material like Mystery Science Theater did - they don't have as much responsibility because they churn their audience really fast. So they can basically be a**holes and people will like it enough for a certain amount of time. They'll just churn through more people. Personally though, I don't think it's sustainable. That's why we've kept these longtime fans for almost 30 years. We're companions. And you don't want to hang out with people who are jerks or who are too snarky.Yeah, I was actually really worried about that when I started it. I was concerned with things like "Can they sue us for this?" I didn't understand the law. Nothing like this had ever been done before as a formatted TV show so I started with the premise that these are public domain movies and we could be free to do what ever we wanted in order to make derivative work. That was the original premise. It's been surprisingly low, the people who've complained about it, because I think they understand what we do. When we riff on a movie, it's just an alternative version. It's not like we're ruining the print of the film for all time. It's not like you can't get a version of the movie without us riffing on it. I've noticed the negative reactions more with people who are critics, or film critics, because we kind of do what they do. We find all the jokes and analogies that they do and they like to be the ones to do that. I think they're the ones who might not like it as much.Wow, I mean there's Pod People. I Accuse My Parents. This Island Earth, which was the movie. Mitchell was great. Laserblast. There are the ones you go back to over and over. The ones you connect with. I think that's also the thing about Mystery Science Theater. Like Joel said, it is a collaboration with the movie so if you don't really like the movie you can still enjoy the episode, but there's something that you have to take away from the movie itself in order to really feel good about the whole process.Actually, it was a bit different, in the sense that information is gathered so differently now. Back in the day we all really had to be in the same room together to write it, but now you can split it up. We basically have rooms of people all over the place. Jonah had a room with Elliott [Kalan, The Daily Show] where he was in New York and Jonah was in LA. The writers could be anywhere. So we could do that and I would have a room too and so I'd have people physically in my room, in the office, but there would also be people there virtually. We did the same thing but we didn't have to be in the same room to watch a movie together and riff on it.When I started, I just thought that -- and again this is that "a**hole factor" -- if it was just three guys talking over a movie you'd go "If they don't like it, why don't they leave?" They're just smartasses who deliberately sit in front of a movie to show us how funny they are. They're just jerks. So my simple solution was to create a narrative about why someone would have to watch it. That's where the mad scientists came in. The robots came about too because of the silhouettes, so you could easily identify them in the theater, rather than just three doughy white guys. That was the thinking. The idea of the "Mads" emerged with Trace [Beaulieu] and Josh Weinstein being the first Mads. Then Josh left and Frank [Conniff] became a Mads for a while. Then Frank left and Mary Jo [Pehl] came in. Then Trace left and Mary Jo had Bobo and Brain Guy for a while. It was a way to set up the movie and reiterate the concept.Yeah, getting Felicia and Patton was just a really lucky and happy accident. I knew who all the characters were and I knew there was a character named Kinga and for some reason the first time I thought of the character I did this photo collage. It was a hybrid between the Dragon Queen in Super Inframan and Lucille Ball. And that was Kinga. I met Felicia at a Comic-Con and I was with Matt McGuinness, one of our producers, and I asked "Do you think she could be Kinga?" And he said, "Yeah, she can do crazy. Totally." We hung out and she was a fan of MST so I asked her and she seemed interested in it. Originally for the Kickstarter, we were going to include Trace and Frank and have Kinga there and also Pearl Forrester. And for some reason all the original people had to drop out of the Kickstarter so I was just really left with the new people. So we had to figure out who Kinga's sidekick would be and Patton Oswalt was just the perfect guy - as Max, son of TV's Frank. They're so talented and they work so well together.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 lands on Netflix this Friday, April 14th.Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association (TCA). Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler