FUTURAMA DVD-O-RAMAS

[tapehead]

Mc Farlane was in the credits - 'twas a cool opener.

[Ribbons]

Here it is in all its lounge lizard glory for anyone who hasn't seen the film yet.

I will say this for you guys who preferred Bender's Game: that one had 100% more Scary Door!

[DerLanghaarige]

Last night I finally found the time to watch Futurama - The Beast With A Billion Backs.
I can see why it got so many negative responses, but I still don't understand it. The only thing that didn't work were the last 20 minutes, which feels so much more like a whole different episode, compared to the first 3/4. (Of course because it WAS a whole different episode.) The Bender subplot was also a pretty uneven, but since they didn't waste too much time on it, it's forgivable.
The things I loved about it were of course the humor (Even if you see a new one-liner coming from a mile away, you still laugh your ass off when it hits), the unusual horror-element of the story (The part where Leela, Amy and Zapp try to escape the tentacles was my favourite part. While it was still a hilarious comedy, it also created a kinda claustrophobic Body-Snactcher-esque sense of danger) and of course how the writers love to embrace the REAL Science Fiction. The bright and coulourful one. The one that fires up your imagination and takes you to whole different places. Not the trendy one, that's only a re-hash of things that you read about in the news, but is unfortunately highly popular right now with angry fanboys, who were always scared of people who think that SciFi is for kids, so they celebrate everything that features silly 9/11 references, because they think it makes them and the genre look mature without realizing how trashy their favourite show in reality is, even if some "serious" critics love it too, but only because they got no idea about Science Fiction and are surprised that a "kiddie show" references the war against terror, not knowing that the genre has always been a mirror of our society, even if it never used shaky cam before. *breath* Yes, fuck you BSG! In five years poeple will wonder what they ever liked about you and in 10 years you will be nothing more than just a footnote in TV History.
But back to Futurama: I once read that audiences are more willing to forgive a bad start than a bad ending and I think that's what happened here. After the intention of the Tentacle creature was revealed the story went into a whole different direction, which will be much better to digest when it's split up into four episodes. But in the movie it's distracting. Anyway, even I didn't hate it that much to forget everything that was great about the movie, so while I can see where you are coming from, I don't support your opinion. "The Beast With A Billion Backs" was slightly weaker than "Bender's Big Score" and had the worse ending, but I really enjoyed it.
7,569/10

[DerLanghaarige]

And last night I watched Bender's Game, which is seriously a huge mess. Of the first three movies it is not just the unfunniest (although it IS still pretty funny), it's also the one that makes the least sense. First it starts lots of interesting subplots (Bender loses his mind, Leela gets addicted to violence, the secret of Mom's youngest son...) and then AFTER 48 MINUTES they suddenly start something completely different and turn everything into a fantasy parody! This just doesn't work as movie and I'm sure it won't work as episode Cliffhanger. And what's even worse is that the fantasy part feels kinda Family Guy-ish, with its random popculture references (Okay, the "Morks" where damn funny). And then, when you expect everything to make sense in the end, nothing happens! The main story is solved, they tell one last joke and that's it.
Seriously, this was Futurama at its worst. (But the rule that even subpar Futurama is better than most comedies on TV still applies here. It didn't made sense and was way less funny than 'The Beast With A Billion Backs', but every few minutes I laughed out loud anyway.)