DVD: Futurama: Bender's Game

I remember watching the first episode of Futurama when it aired way back in 1999, and wondering if it would ever escape the shadow of The Simpsons. The characters were drawn in the same style, and it had Matt Groening's name on it. It has taken years, but I would say that the show has indeed succeeded in making its own way in the television animated world.

Futurama has even gone so far as to have one of the great episodes of recent television (Jurassic Bark is one of the saddest TV episodes ever), and the recent Futurama movies, especially Bender's Big Score, but also somewhat with The Beast With a Billion Backs, have added to those surprisingly touching moments. Unfortunately, this third film is not as good as the first one, but it's a little better than the second one. Sure, it has some twists and turns and wraps up a few loose ends from the show's seasonal run as the other two have done, but it doesn't reach the level of Bender's Big Score.

Bender's Big Score was as funny as some of the funniest episodes of Futurama, but also as heartbreaking as one of the saddest. In Bender's Big Score, Futurama succeeded at what so few TV shows have, especially comedies: showing us that television comedy has the surprising power to move us emotionally and make powerful statements about life and love. Even idiotic characters, through well-wrought plot and characterization, can evoke great sympathy and lead us to places we never expect them to take us.

Is anyone crying yet? Anyway, onto Bender's Game.

I think I speak for many people when I say thank goodness for Comedy Central since these movies are really Comedy Central defibrillating this great show to keep it alive for a little while longer. I have not seen every episode, so I'm really just your casual viewer, but it still pleases me to see Futurama reanimated, even if I know exactly when it's going to end. It's sort of like knowing when you're going to die, only funnier.

Prof. Farnsworth wants to bring down Mom because she dumped him when he discovered how to turn dark matter into fuel. He created a crystal that turns all dark matter in the universe into fuel as well as another crystal that could destroy the first crystal. So Leela and Fry go with Farnsworth to take down Mom because cutting off the dark matter supply would force scientists to create new cheaper alternative fuels (sound familiar?). Meanwhile, Farnsworth's crystal was being used by Farnsworth's clone-son-thing as a die in his Dungeons & Dragons game, which, by the way, caused Bender to discover he has an imagination and proceed to go overboard using it and lose his mind thinking he was an actual D&D character, much the way many Fanime patrons feels for one weekend a year.

In the insane asylum (The HAL Institute for Criminally Insane Robots), Bender undergoes a procedure to have his nerdiness removed, but energy from dark matter that Bender stole launches him and all his friends into an alternate reality where he really is an actual D&D character, much the way Scientologists perceive the world. In this alternate world, our heroes are sent on a quest to destroy the Die of Power, just like Lord of the Rings meets D&D, only the Lord of the Rings plotline serves to further the mockery of D&D's lameness. It's fun to see this sort of self-deprication from David X. Cohen, the show's creator, because he was am avid D&D'er when he was a kid. Also, it helps me not feel as bad for judging D&D, or its most recent iteration, WOW.

With Futurama: Bender's Game, Futurama is back in it's next to last direct-to-video release, and I say with confidence that it's back in full force just like before. It's not like Family Guy, which disappeared for a few years and then returned in form, though not in spirit. Family Guy seems to be just a marionette of a corpse of its former self, but Futurama feels the same as before. It has the same sly Simpson's-style signage gags and mockery of its stupid characters, and it even ties in some plotlines from old episodes in. Of course it also has its artificially-retrospective political, social, and religious commentary that has elevated the show above simple comedy into the higher level of inteligent comedy.

The basic plotline is a clever commentary on the gas-price issue, although it would have been timelier just two weeks ago. There was one joke about Prof. Farnsworth developing makeup for dogs, and I can't help but think that there may have been a subtle reference to a certain bulldog with lipstick. If so, it's timely, if not, they have incredible luck with foresight. There was also a joke about The Three Stooges and how women don't find them funny, and that just further served to prove Futurama as insightful as it is hilarious.

There is even a Knife Show bit thrown in the movie! It's one of the longer gags in the film, but I cannot express in words how happy I was to see the Knife Show lampooned at all, let alone so brilliantly. It was like having my soul hugged by a kitten in a cashmere sweater on a Tempur-pedic bed. If you haven't seen Knife Show, it's a late night show that sells knives like QVC, and it is amazing. YouTube it, it is well-worth it. Plus it will help you get the joke, which is quite wonderful.

There are too many jokes and gags to even try to list any more, but I mentioned a few of my favorites because I want to express how great Futurama is and reinforce that I believe it has not lost anything from its original run. If anything, it has gained relevance because of all of the unforeseen advances in the internet in the past several years. A future-based show that is as malleable and clever as Futurama can only be stoked by the advancement of technology.

Now there is but one final release of new Futurama material that awaits us. One can only hope that it will reach the heights attained by the first movie, and because of the consistent brilliance of this show, even after a long slumber that can spell doom for a series, I think we can all have faith that 2009's Into the Wild Green Yonder will be a fitting final piece to this wonderful series. Futurama is certainly a Simpsons successor in both visual style and humor, but it has earned its own place in the pantheon of animation comedy and will be sorely sorely missed.

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Special Features:

• Audio Commentary by Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Billy West, John DiMaggio, Tress MacNeille, Michael Rowe, Claudia Katz, and Dwayne Carey-Hill
• Storyboard Animatic: Bender's Game, Part One
• Futurama Genetics Lab - Cross-breed your favorite characters!
• D&D&F (Dungeons & Dragons & Futurama) Featurette
• How to Draw Futurama in 83 Easy Steps
• 3D models with animator discussion
• Deleted Scene: "Cup or Nozzle?"
• Blooperama 2: Outtakes from Bender's Game
• Bender's Anti-Piracy Warning
• FUTURAMA: Into the Wild Green Yonder - A sneak peek at the next Futurama Epic!