futurama-thon

This week's rental DVD was... well, actually nothing.

Owing to how the rentals work, I occasionally have weekends where there is no DVD for me to watch. Which is not necessarily a bad thing as it lets me catch up on other stuff.

The odd thing this time, though, was the lining up with my 4 day weekend. This meant I ended up basically spending an entire day watching futurama. Or more specifically, the straight-to-DVD feature-length futurama DVDs.

Yes, all four of them (though admittedly I'm still sorta watching the last one during the evenings of this week). So I thought I'd do some mini-reviews:

Bender's Big Score

Yeah.

There's a particularly funny bit at the beginning of this film that addresses the cancellation of the show. After that things get... complicated. And dense.

A while back I reviewed the Simpson's movie. I'm not sure if I actually said it then, but one of the problems it seemed to have was trying to cram in all the series characters. A bit like spot-the-famous face.

The problem with this was it ended up being a case of shoe-horning every one in. And it was a mistake. I can see the temptation: give all the fans of comic-book guy his one minute in the limelight, to make them happy, for example.

The trouble is that it's not how story works. Sticking in gags, especially non-sequitor ones involving random characters, works in a half-hour TV show, but it doesn't work in a feature-length movie.

The reason? Well imagine someone telling you a story about something that happened to them. If the whole story lasts two minutes, you'll forgive them if they went off on a tangent for 30 seconds. If the story lasts half an hour, you'll be pissed off if ten of those minutes were off on tangents.

Or at least, it's a problem here because you know the tangent only really exists to get that character into the movie. It's not a random tangent, it's a planned tangent.

Also, the story, being time travel, gets quite complicated, so it didn't really need time being lost on random tangents.

The Beast with a Billion Backs

Interestingly, this actually follows on directly from the previous film.

Well, no, actually that's not true - it follows on, but it would seem six-months or so have elapsed since the first film. Certainly, Fry acquires a new girlfriend... even though in the last film he was jealous over Leela and also their relationship was sort of affirmed in a weird way.

Anyway, a few slight oddities like that aside, it's a much better episode. The gag-per-minute rate is much, much higher and, crucially, it doesn't try to do too much. The story is of a reasonably sensible complexity, so it gives a bit more room for gags.

Also, it does genuinely feel like a sensible single, feature length episode. The others end up feeling a bit like three regular episodes stuck together - like a 3 parter edited together.

Bender's Game

If I was ranking the four movie this one would come in third - Big Score is at the bottom for the problems I mentioned. This one is second from last for different reasons.

First off it feels the most like several individual episodes stuck together. Especially since half way through it flips into a kind of alternate reality.

But the biggest problem is the alternate reality itself. Futurama is generally in that sphere of affectionate parody. Normally it's focused on science fiction, but occasionally veers into fantasy - specifically Dungeons & Dragons.

Now I'm not the biggest fan of fantasy, especially of the D&D type with orks and dragons and stuff. I mean, it's okay at times and in small doses, but often I find it a bit limited and therefore sometimes dull.

So to me Futurama doing D&D should be crammed full of good gags - there's so much potential material it's almost silly. And yet there's very little in the way of gaggery.

I think the problem was that on the whole the writers like D&D (some of the special features indicate it was popular amongst some) so they didn't go for it like they should have. Instead, the D&D stuff is mainly all about plot. I mean even the stuff at the beginning with the kids playing actual D&D didn't have gags in it - no-one even called them nerds.

Into the Wild Green Yonder

Of the four movies this was probably the closest to feeling like a proper Futurama episode.

The non-sequitor gag was back in abundance and while there were environmental and feminist themes, it did the thing of making gags about both sides.

I'd have to say the end was a bit hockey, though. It felt too much like a "neat wrapping up" where it could have done with a little sting or gag in there to let you know it's still Futurama.

Overall the four movies have bucket load of extras. I'm not sure that watching them all in such an intense fashion like I did is such a good idea, though - a bit of fatigue sets in. I'd say watch them over a few days, rather than all in one day.