io9: bender's game

Bender Fixes The Gas Crisis With His 20-Sided Die

Meredith Woerner — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 07:00:00 PST

The third Futurama straight-to-DVD movie is out, and it's throwing viewers right back into their parents' basements. Loaded with more references to Dungeons and Dragons than a Weezer song, Bender's Game follows the Planet Express crew as they deal with rising dark matter prices and old reliable villain Mom. After Bender goes mad from an overdose of D&D he sucks the rest of the cast into his fantasy world where Leela is a centaur, Bender is a Knight and Fry is Frydo. It's definitely the weakest of the movies so far, but there's still a lot to drink to. Spoilers ahead, gamers!If you're sick of epic fantasy, this isn't the Futurama DVD for you. After uncovering Mom's evil nibbler crap factory that is enslaving Nibblonians for their dark matter doo-doo to run the worlds space ships, the crew is stuck battling Mom's evil henchmen. Meanwhile Bender has become obsessed with his new sense of imagination, thanks to D&D, but it causes him to slip out of reality and live in his own fantasy land. Eventually he and the crew embark on a Lord Of the Rings quest. It's unfortunate that they decided to spoof LOTR as it's been out long enough that many of the jokes felt a little old hat. In fact many of the actual fantasy jokes fell pretty flat. That being said, all of the "side jokes" were worth the many Gollum quips. I was in stitches when Rosie from the Jetsons showed up in Bender's robot therapy for the mentally insane bots, and goes on a tangent about how she had to kill "the dog and the boy Elroy" because they were dirty. So while the dry wit of Futurama was present, I wished they had spent it having fun with a different fantasy subject matter. But I guess any excuse to get centaur Leela to make out with fish nymph Amy. The special features were standard fare but with one special note. The executive producers all gathered in writer Eric Kaplan's childhood basement to talk about why D&D was important to them and point out past D&D references from the Futurama series. This feature was actually quite endearing especially when they pointed out the rust monster from a past episode below and how one of their old dungeons had a rust monster in one room and a dog that would bite you in the other. Overall Bender's Game is not my favorite of the Futurama DVDs but the humor is still there. If you can make it though a lot of the overdone fantasy jokes and withstand the terrible Morks (actually funny Robin Williams poke) then you'll be getting some quality Futurama humor. Just put your fingers in your ears and hum when they start to mix in Star Wars. Aren't we done with the "I am your father" jokes yet?

Futurama May Live Again

Graeme McMillan — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:20:00 PDT

We're still a week out from the release of Bender's Game, the third (of four) direct-to-DVD Futurama movies, but that isn't stopping David X. Cohen, co-creator of the series, from looking at what the future holds for the futuristic sitcom beyond its release... and the answer includes more than just the fourth DVD.

Cohen told SciFi Wire that he's optimistic for life beyond the cartoon's final DVD:

Hope never dies on Futurama, or not anymore... It died once, but once you introduce the idea that you can come back from the dead, then the second time you have to have a little bit of hope that you might come back to life yet again. So we do retain hope of resurrection... The hard facts would seem to support us coming back again. From what we have heard, the DVDs have sold very well, and I have heard the phrase 'greatly exceeded' 20th Century Fox's expectations. So that's got to be a good sign, you would think. We haven't heard anything, yes or no, so it's familiar territory.

And in case he's wrong, well, there'll be a certain symmetry to Into the Wild Green Yonder, the final DVD; it's been written by Ken Keeler, who wrote the last episode of the Futurama TV series.

Bender's Game (and, yes, the Orson Scott Card pun is intentional) is released November 4th; Into The Wild Green Yonder is due next year.

A Future For Futurama? [SciFi Wire]

Will Futurama's Fry And Leela Finally Find Love?

Meredith Woerner — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:30:00 PDT

Bender is a king and Leela is a centaur in the highly anticipated third Futurama DVD, Bender's Game coming to Blu-Ray on November 4th. The Futurama Comic-Con panel assembled the voice talent from all your favorite characters, from Bender to Calculon. Click through for more details on Dr. Zoidberg's love life, what cartoon guests will be joining the Planet Express team, and a few panel pictures.

Creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen gathered Katey Sagal (Leela), Billy West (Fry, Professor Farnsworth, Dr. Zoidberg), John DiMaggio (Bender), and Maurice LaMarche (Kif, Calculon) together for a Futurama reunion. The whole gang hammed it up to the delight of the crowd, answering character questions with the characters' voices (if I sounded like Bender, I would only talk that way as well). The panel also played a few made special clips for the occasion, that poked fun at Fox for canceling the series.

Time Travel Question For Futurama/Hear Bender Sing:

The panel also revealed that in the upcoming DVD, Dr. Zoidberg falls in love with a sandwich. Magician Penn Jillette, Star Trek actor George Takei and sportscaster Howard Cosell will join the cast, there will be more members of the Waterfall family and Snoop Dogg will be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Will Futurama be returning as a series? "We'll see," Groening, said. "We certainly want to do more Futurama movies... anything we can do: stories, movies. We haven't done all the stories. We still have a few secrets left."

But most importantly Producer David Cohen hinted that our star crossed cartoon characters Leela and Fry may finally get yet another chance at love in a future DVD. Though thats all he would reveal Katey Sagal promised that there would be some kissing, before laying one on Billy West.

Roll A Double 20 To Meet Centaur Leela In Futurama DVD

Meredith Woerner — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 08:40:00 PDT

If you picked up the direct-to-DVD Futurama movie The Beast With A Billion Backs, like all sane sentients, you'll have noticed a trailer for the third DVD movie, Bender's Game. The Planet Express crew is diving straight into fantasy role-playing, with knights, kings, and Dungeons and Dragons (whose multi-sided dice are referenced through out the clips). Click to view the whole clip, including half naked centaur Leela.

Bender's Game should hit the shelves at the end of 2008 and the fourth and final Futurama DVD, Into the Wild Green Yonder doesn't have a set release date as of yet.