This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Jtrost (talk | contribs) at 15:45, 5 January 2008 (→Trivia: non notable, bad grammar, speculation, no citations...). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 15:45, 5 January 2008 by Jtrost (talk | contribs) (→Trivia: non notable, bad grammar, speculation, no citations...)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) | This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (November 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
| Futurama: Bender's Big Score | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Dwayne Carey-Hill |
| Written by | Ken Keeler David X. Cohen (Story) Ken Keeler (Teleplay) |
| Produced by | Lee Supercinski |
| Starring | Billy West Katey Sagal John DiMaggio Tress MacNeille Maurice LaMarche |
| Edited by | Paul D. Calder |
| Music by | Christopher Tyng |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment |
| Release dates |  November 27, 2007 March 5, 2008 2008, 2008/2009 |
| Running time | 89 minutes |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
Futurama: Bender's Big Score is a straight-to-DVD film based on the animated series Futurama. It was released in the United States on November 27, 2007. The movie is written by Ken Keeler, based on a story by him and David X. Cohen, and directed by Dwayne Carey-Hill. The film features an extended version of the Futurama theme song, as well as introductions of all the main characters during the opening sequence.
The film features return appearances by many of the recurring and one-shot characters in the series. Several of the notable ones include: the Nibblonians, Fry's dog Seymour, Barbados Slim, Robot Santa, the God space entity, Hedonismbot, Al Gore (played by himself), and Coolio as Kwanzaa Bot. It also introduces Mark Hamill as the Chanukah Zombie, a character mentioned by Kwanzaa-bot in an earlier episode.
Bender's Big Score and the three follow-up films will be turned into season five of Futurama on Comedy Central, each film comprising four episodes of the broadcast season.
Plot
Two years ago the executives of the Box Network canceled Planet Express's contract. Now those executives have been fired and subsequently ground into a fine, pink powder, and Planet Express is back "on the air." They throw a party to celebrate, during which Hermes is decapitated and his body crushed. His head is placed in a jar while his body is repaired. The man that performs the procedure, Lars Fillmore, takes an immediate liking to Leela, much to Fry's chagrin.
During a delivery to a nude beach planet, Leela points out a Bender tattoo on Fry's ass, of which Fry was unaware. While on the beach, a trio of scammer aliens use flimsy excuses to get the entire Planet Express crew to sign petitions and provide their e-mail addresses.
Upon returning to Earth, the entire crew receives hundreds of spam messages. The crew responds to the offers and Bender is infected with a virus. The scammers fool Professor Farnsworth into signing over his business to them, and they show up to take over. Bender's virus compels him to obey the scammers without question. The scammers are drawn to the tattoo on Fry's buttocks, which is revealed to contain the binary code for paradox-correcting time travel. Nibbler explains that using the code could destroy the universe, but they ignore him.
The scammers have Bender use the code to steal every valuable object in human history. Meanwhile, Hermes asks Bender to travel back in time and kill an earlier version of himself for a replacement body, since repairs to his current body were delayed when the head museum was scammed. The Professor analyzes the time-travel code and discovers that all time-travel duplicates, including Hermes' new body, are doomed.
Once Bender has stolen everything of value from history, the scammers decide to destroy the time-travel code by killing Fry and blanking Bender's memory. Fry uses the time code to escape to January 1, 2000, the day he was frozen, and Bender is sent back to kill him. While waiting for Fry, Bender creates a duplicate of himself when he needs to use the bathroom. The duplicate Bender catches Fry as he appears in the past and attempts to kill him, only to have his feelings for Fry cause an overload. Fry shoves him in a cryo-tube before he can explode. Fry leaves by the time the original Bender walks out of the bathroom, and Bender spends the next twelve years hunting Fry, eventually blowing up Panucci's Pizza when Fry walks inside.
Once Bender returns to report his apparent success, the scammers wipe his memory (including 50 terabytes of pornography) and the virus. When the crew holds a funeral, Fry is revealed to be alive and well, having created a time-travel duplicate of himself which remained in the twentieth century while he hid in another cryo-tube and came back to the future. Nibbler destroys the time travel tattoo to keep the scammers from abusing it further.
Leela and Lars, having had several dates, decide to get married. At the wedding, Hermes's body is crushed by a chandelier. The Professor explains that he expected that, since all duplicates are doomed. Lars becomes agitated by Hermes' accident and calls off the wedding.
The scammers eventually trick Earth President Richard Nixon into selling Earth itself, forcing everyone to evacuate to other planets. On Neptune, Leela assembles an attack fleet with the help of Nixon and Robot Santa. Zapp Brannigan is appointed commander of the forces; of course, his suicidal battle plan falls apart quickly. Despite the scammers having built a fleet of solid gold Death Stars around Earth, the attack is victorious thanks to Hermes' bureaucratic mind, wired directly into the battle computer. The scammers threaten the crew with a doomsday device Bender had stolen for them, but fail to realize that Bender stole it back after being released from their control. The crew fires the device at the scammers' ship, completely destroying it.
Fry sees that Leela is still unhappy that Lars left her at the altar, and tries to get her back together with Lars. The reunion is cut short by Nudar, the lead scammer, who survived the doomsday device thanks to his doom-proof vest. Nudar claims that the time-travel code still exists, and is on Lars. Lars tricks him into approaching the cryo-tube with the Bender on overload, and once that Bender is released the explosion kills them both. The explosion singes off some of Lars' clothing, revealing the time-travel tattoo. A flashback explains that Lars is actually Fry's duplicate, having survived Bender's attack in 2012, which burned off his hair and injured his larynx, changing his voice. Upon realizing that he was Lars, the duplicate froze himself (in Michelle's tube) to return to the future and be with Leela.
During the funeral, Bender removes the tattoo from Lars and travels into the past to place it on the Fry frozen in cryo-sleep. Upon returning from the cavern below the Planet Express building, Bender tells all of his copies to come up with him instead of emerging when they were logically supposed to. The sheer number of time-paradox Benders causes a giant tear in the universe. The film ends with Bender saying: "Well, we're boned."
Cast
- Billy West as Philip J. Fry, Doctor John Zoidberg, Professor Hubert Farnsworth, Zapp Brannigan, Lars Fillmore, and Additional Voices
- Katey Sagal as Turanga Leela
- John DiMaggio as Bender Bending Rodriguez, Robot Santa, Mr. Panucci, Barbados Slim, Elzar, and Additional Voices
- Phil LaMarr as Hermes Conrad, Ethan "Bubble Gum" Tate and Additional Voices
- Lauren Tom as Amy Wong and Additional Voices
- Maurice LaMarche as Kif Kroker, Narrator and Additional Voices
- Frank Welker as Nibbler and Additional Voices
- Al Gore as Himself
- Coolio as Kwanzabot
- Dawnn Lewis as LaBarbara Conrad
- Mark Hamill as Chanukah Zombie
- Sarah Silverman as Michelle
- David Herman as Nudar, Scruffy, and Additional Voices
- Tress MacNeille as Linda and Additional Voices
- Tom Kenny as Yancy Fry
Production
In February 2007, Futurama co-creator Matt Groening addressed speculation as to whether Futurama had been revived in episodic or feature-film form, explaining that the crew is "writing them as movies and then we're going to chop them up, reconfigure them, write new material and try to make them work as separate episodes." A preview of the film was shown at Comic-Con 2007. It was also reported at Comic-Con that once the movie is "chopped up" it will be reconfigured in to four episodes that will be broadcast on Comedy Central beginning in 2008. The same will be done with the succeeding three movies, creating a sixteen-episode fifth season. The voice recording finished on July 3 2007. An official trailer was released on October 10 2007.
Futurama: Bender's Big Score is the first carbon neutral DVD to be released by 20th Century Fox. The studio worked to reduce the carbon impact of DVD manufacture and distribution. It also features "A Terrifying Message From Al Gore", an animated short produced to promote guest star Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth, a discussion on the use of mathematics in Futurama, full length audio commentary by cast and crew members as well as a full length episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad.
Torgo's Powder
Torgo's Executive Powder is an elaborate running gag throughout the film in retaliation against the Fox Network for its mishandling and eventual cancellation of Futurama. The product consists of ground-up executives, including those of the film's thinly veiled Fox Network parody (the Box Network), and makes repeated appearances due to its miraculous utility in such diverse tasks as seasoning, surgery, feeding heads in jars, cosmetics, bomb disposal, artillery, and the care of head transplant patients. In the Everybody Loves Hypnotoad episode released with the film, Torgo's Powder is advertised as a parody of HeadOn, stating "Torgo's Powder: apply directly to the buttocks" three times in the same fashion.
Reception
The movie received an "A" rating from a review at UGO noting that its two musical numbers are "hilarious" and that the quality has not decreased from the show's original run. Dan Iverson of IGN gave the movie an 8 out of 10, stating that "it is easy to recommend Bender's Big Score to fans of the series and those new to the show alike." They also gave the DVD a 7 out of 10, praising the extras but lamenting the quality of the video transfer. It has been given a 9/10 by Movie Power magazine.
The Washington Post gave the movie a "B".
 | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. |
Contunity Changes
- The movie signifigantly alters the meaning of the ending to the episode "Jurrasic Bark". Fry does return to his dog, so Seymore's "long wait" for Fry at the end of the episdoe is not a contiuious twelve years, nor does it end with his death. The very old Seymore seen at the end of the episode is simply going to sleep at some point in 2012 not finaly dieing from old age, since he is quite alive when he is Fast Fossilized.
- Parts of the episdoe "Luck of the Fryish" are also made errinious by the film as Philliph Fry Jr. now does get to know his Uncle and is not named for him as a memorial. Also since Fry is shown in the film with his 7 Leaf Clover it can be assumed he gave it to Yancy to give to Jr. rather than Yancy stumbleing across it.
References
- Staff Writer (February 26 2007). "Rhymes with Raining". Crave Online. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - "Good News Everyone! 'Futurama' Film Footage". tvblogger. Retrieved 2007-07-29.
- "TV Blogger: Comic-Con: The 'Futurama' is Clear". tvblogger.org. Retrieved 2007-07-29.
- Goldman, Eric. "Exclusive: Futurama Actress Gives Update". IGN. Retrieved 2007-11-28.
- http://www.newscorp.com/energy/futurama.html
- Celaschi, Molly (November 14 2007). ""Futurama" Feature Length Movie DVD Specs". Retrieved 2007-11-16.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - Keller, Joel (2007-11-26). "David X. Cohen of Futurama: The TV Squad Interview". tvsquad.com. Retrieved 2007-11-26.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - Tarnoff, Brooke. "Futurama : Bender's Big Score Review". Retrieved 2007-11-16.
- Iverson, Dan (November 19, 2007). "Futurama: Bender's Big Score Review". IGN. Retrieved 2007-11-20.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help)