Futurama's Back!

[D'kian]

I'm usually better informed about such things. Therefore I was surprised to see three Futurama direct-to-DVD features already in the market.

The plots of all three movies are quite ridiculous, which is par for the course in this show. Briefly:

1) Bender's Big Score: three aliens scam the whole of Earth with internet scams and take over the world (not even a nod to Pinky and The Brain), Leela finds true love, Fry is jealous, Hermes looses his head (or body), the Aliens gain access to a time traveling energy bubble. There's more, but that's enough. The funniest parts deal with the various people who manage to travel in time, the paradoxes they make, how they undo them, and the paradox at the end to end all other paradoxes (time travel's like that).

2) The Beast With A Billion Backs: an alien living in another universe invades our universe. It inserts a tentacle into everyone's necks, except for robots, and makes them love it. Fry find true love, and looses it. The Proffessor reunites with his former student, Wormstrom(sp?), eventually they split apart again. Leela exposes the monster's nefarious plot, which isn't so nefarious after all. Bender tries to take over the Earth (again, no nods), and he does; he also joins The Robot League.

3) Bender's Game (we see here that Bender is a good title character): I forget why, but the Proffessor tries to render dark amtter useless as an energy source. Bender tries to develop his imagination and succeeds, with terrible results. The entire gang, plus Mom and her sons, wind up in a parallel universe parody of part D&D and part Lord of the Rings (I think, as fantasy is good only for making fun of fantasy). Particle theory gets redesigned again (but better than in any Trek series)

A half hour ep of Futurama, or the Simpsons, tends to meander. An almost feature-lenght ep meanders more than the Mississippi river, literally it winds up all over the place. Much of it is hilarious, a lot is satire of science fiction plot devices (like time travel, strange forms of matter, robots, etc), and it shows always an optimistic future. It's great fun.

There are tons of extra features, including "deleted" scenes (most of them yet to be animated), an ep of the Hypnotoad show, audio comentaries, a PSA with Bender about not stealing movies (hilarious, since Bender is always stealing something), a math lecture for the Futurama staff (lots of math references in futurama), and a lot more.

Also they managed to revive almost all the secondary and background characters in all three movies: Scruffy the janitor, Santa, Kwanza-bot, the Robot Devil, Nixon's head, Agnew's body, Mom (naturally), the Robot Mafia (lots of robot characters, hmm), the mayor of New New York, the Globetrotters, Morbo the newsmonster, Elizaar the Neptunian chef, Zap Brannigan, Kif Kroker, Amy's parents, Harold Zoid, Hedonism-bot, etc, etc.

[TheEgoist]

Yeah, these have been around for like two years now? I donno. They air em on Comedy Central every once in awhile. They're great, as well.

[The Wrath]

I think I'm the only person I know that doesn't like that show.

[IchorFigure]

I also enjoyed the general end message of the "Beast With A Billion Backs" movie, which in a vague sense is that love is selfish.

[D'kian]

I also enjoyed the general end message of the "Beast With A Billion Backs" movie, which in a vague sense is that love is selfish.

Very vague, but it was there. I'd say Yivo was selfish, too, even if it could take billions of lovers.

But Futurama is not a place where you look for serious subjects treated in a serious manner. To be fair, they can sometimes do heartfelt stories. Overall it's satire and often quite brutally honest (see "I Dated a Robot.")