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overthinking entertainment

Special Event: Rifftrax: KRULL

MST Club presents.... Krull was originally a Rifftrax Live riff, but presumably they didn't have the rights to release a download, so the best they could do is this Just the Jokes version from December 2018. I guess the rights holders still hold this cinematic catastrophe dear somehow. As for the movie, it is pretty crazy, a tonal trainwreck trying to ride on the cultural coattails of both Star Wars and D&D. James Horner stuck his thumb in Christmas pie and pulled out a plum of a soundtrack that revels in bigness. Krull just really wants teenage boys to like it, and it's full of weird images that don't end up meaning anything. Like, the princess is being held captive inside the evil Mr Beast's eyeball? The "Glaive" weapon isn't one, being more of a spinny ninja throwing star, but in a world with no obvious ninja in them. Maybe they're hiding? There's a comic relief wizard who's no good at magic, a sad cyclops person who knows when he's gonna croak, and a magic lady in a web who's also the former GF of the price's advisor "Ynyr." The more you think about Krull the more questions you'll have, so it's better if you just don't.
posted by JHarris on Dec 04, 2025 at 4:39 PM

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MST Club meets Thursday evenings to watch riffing! You can watch along too, at https://cytu.be/r/metafilter_mst3kclub! Main event starts at 9 PM Eastern time, 6 PM Pacific.
posted by JHarris at 4:42 PM

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Besides starring Kenneth Marshall, better known as Eddington from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and also being released close enough to Conan the Destroyer that I get members of their merry bands of adventurers mixed up between the two, probably the most distinctive thing about it (besides the "Glaive") is that they had one of the most misguided yet extravagant promotions for a movie ever: a bunch of couples were treated to a Krull-themed wedding that included an all-expenses-paid week-long honeymoon in San Francisco. Had I known about it, I might have tried to convince a college classmate to try for it just so that we'd get a free vacation, and we could have gotten a quickie divorce somewhere afterward. (Of course, that sounds like the set-up for our telling the grandkids about it over forty years later: "Sounds crazy, but we've got pictures.")
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:45 PM

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Turns out, it was a
Nice day for a
Krull wedding
posted by phooky at 5:31 AM

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This played at a cinema I worked at. We were all very excited, then we watched it and were all like "that's it?" Very disappointing. I did manage to get the big standee, but never really felt like displaying it.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 6:42 AM

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Krull just really wants teenage boys to like it


I was a teenage boy when it came out. I saw it and I didn't like it. My reaction was that it was a decent 30-minute TV show padded out to a feature-length movie.
posted by adamrice at 7:05 AM

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I saw the last 45 minutes of this movie at least four times as a kid but I'm not sure I've ever seen the beginning. I feel very old when I realize that today's children will never have that inexplicable experience.

I liked the aesthetics a lot - I always loved sword and sorcery - but man it is not a good movie.
posted by restless_nomad at 8:08 AM

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I was a teenage boy when it came out.

As was I. And I LOVED IT! But yes, not very good but I do have a deep fondness for it.
posted by Ashwagandha at 8:43 AM

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One of my favorite childhood movies, the world building was captivating to me at the time. It might not hold up as a well executed film, but it made an indelible mark on me for sure.
posted by grog at 2:29 PM

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An early script for Krull is online. The story in it is very different, although Ergo's introduction is much the same, with the only real difference being that the pie is venison in it.
posted by JHarris at 5:31 PM

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This film is incredible when you're 9 years old. Little scary though. I looked away or closed my eyes because I was scared of the Beast and my mom was pissed, she was like "You made me take you to this piece of shit and you're going to damn well watch it" She didn't really say that, she would never, but she was mad.
posted by rodlymight at 5:36 PM

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Bernard Bresslaw though. What's that about?
posted by biffa at 12:41 AM

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This was the first film I watched as a teen where I came out thinking "I could write a better script than that!"
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:26 AM

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I will say that they did a wonderful job building all the sets. I don't think there's more than a handful of scenes actually filmed outdoors. Don't mistake me, they are all clearly sets and not fooling anybody, but a lot of work and love must have gone into making them.
posted by Eddie Mars at 12:59 PM

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It turns out it's just the beginning of the online Krull script that's different, later on it converges more closely with what made it to screen.
posted by JHarris at 3:42 PM

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