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New Futurama Movie Coming in June
walterbyrd writes "Bender's Big Score is just getting set to air on Comedy Central, but already Fox has announced that the next straight-to-DVD Futurama film/series is coming in June. The title? 'The Beast with a Billion Backs.' 'In what Fox is calling the most tentacle-packed Futurama epic, space itself rips open, revealing a gateway to another universe. What lies beyond is a mix of horror and love as the Planet Express crew encounters a repulsive, planet-sized monster with romantic intentions. The second feature-length Futurama film will be followed by at least two more movies from series creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen. The show's entire voice cast and most of its main writers have returned to help revive the series, which FOX cancelled in 2003.'"
Bender's Big Score had many awesome moments, but it made me realize Futurama is better in shorter installments, it begins to wear at the interest after awhile. BBS is best watched in pieces IMO. of course straight-to-dvd you're free to do that. But I'd take a series of tales over a single long one I think. I do hope for another episode of "Everyone loves Hypnotoad" on the extras though.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
we're boned.
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Tentacle romance comes to Western Animation! And on a planet-sized scale, too.
I have to agree.
Though, to me the major problem with "Bender's Big Score" is that they just threw everything but the kitchen sink into the plot. By the end of the movie, it's just a confusing mess of plots/subplots. The STRENGHT of "Futurama" has been that the plots are typically pretty tight. They ALWAYS had a good plot, and stuck with it.
My opinion is that they had to do some fan service for the first movie, and that these next ones should be able to get away from that.
They state this is exactly the case in the commentaries. The first one is for the long-time fans and the following three are less complex and lighter/easier to follow.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I've been poking my monitor for five minutes waiting for your UID to roll over.
Based on the tone of his comment, I wouldn't get too close to his monitor if I were you.
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
It was in the department line, sorry to burst your bubble.
And the winner of the best animated series to return to us via DVD is ...
...
... THE HYPNOTOAD. ... ALL HAIL ... THE HYPNOTOAD.
It does seem that they threw a lot into the plot but that is because it is four times as long. If you break the movie into four 22 minute segments you can see that each part stands on its own very well. I enjoyed that the plot was driving the story forward, if hadn't have had such an active plot the story would have just felt like was drawn out and moving too slowly. I think a lot of the anger at the plot is sparked when people try to wrap their head around the time travel and which instance of a charecter is which.
If you want to see what amateurs can do with greenscreen, take a look at Star Wreck. Amazing what you can do with attention to detail, home made costumes and greenscreens, and a render-farm of 3 PCs in your living room. Oh, and it helps to have a hot girlfriend and goofy actor friends to play parts!
FYI, Bender's Big Score will air this Sunday (3/23) at 8:00PM EDT on Comedy Central.
A number of people have commented about having lukewarm feelings for Bender's Big Score, but haven't given much of an explanation, so I'm going to take a crack at it. WARNING: Potential Spoilers! For starters, yes, there is some fan service, for about the first five minutes or so, and yes, it's only kinda funny, and annoying on repeat viewings. However, there are some really great parts to this movie, and some parts that suck really bad, and the fan service is neither. The number one problem (and IMHO only problem) with this movie is that its setup is completely, utterly moronic and very pretentious. Everything relating to SPAM should have been axed completely, or at least made very VERY minor, and a different framing device used. The visual appearance of the alien villains could have been kept, and they could even continue to be annoying, but the way that SPAM infects this plot is just LAME. And letting your framing device drag down an otherwise good movie is a massive screw-up.
That said, if you can get past your gag-reflex during the setup, the rest of the movie's pretty good. The core plot of time travel, Fry, Leela, Leelu, and Lars is a solid one. I think it would have been better if Lars hadn't lived Fry's old life, as that breaks continuity with the series, and was unnecessary for the Leelu plotline. The bits on Neptune and the Death Star sequences were great, with some amazing animation. The Hermes subplot is ok, but not great, and it displaced the far more important Amy/Kiff developments. I think that not even mentioning Amy and Kiff's relationship is a significant oversight, and I hope that is developed more in the forthcoming movies. Finally, I think having a plotline that revolves around time travel but doesn't even mention chronotons or Fry "doing the nasty in the pasty" is a big mistake. Fry being his own grandfather is one of the most important long-term plotlines from the series, and seeing as how the movie has Niblonians in it anyway, the omission is odd.
I think that Bender's Big Score was a poor choice to be the first movie to put out, given that the end of the series was so powerful, I feel that it needed to be addressed much more directly. But aside from the SPAM bits, none of my other complaints really matter that much, but since the SPAM bits kinda drag the movie down, it makes all the other flaws more noticeable.
But everybody should go out and get a copy (Today!) to ensure that we get more Futurama.