Richard's Online Journal
[30/06/08] The Beast With A Billion Plotlines
On the one hand, it’s great to have new Futurama. On the other, more angsty, ungrateful hand, I can’t help but think it would be even better to have new, old Futurama. These new movie/episode hybrids are… I don’t know. They look like Futurama, they sound like Futurama, but they don’t smell right. They don’t taste right. When you slide your tongue into their tight, moist, welcoming crevices, there’s a bitter aftertaste where once there was strawberries. You understand, right?
“People of Earth! Has anyone seen my pants?”
The main problem I have with both Bender’s Big Score and Beast With A Billion Backs is that regular Futurama was such beautifully written TV. It was one of those shows you watched to see how to write good comedy. The stories were strong, the ideas often brilliant, and it absolutely nailed the character beats that make it more than just a half hour of giggling and insanely obscure geek jokes about Quantum Leap. There was a tenderness to it, and a sense of heart that Simpsons lost well over a decade ago, and the likes of Seth McFarlane and Family Guy can’t even touch. I still well up at the ending of Luck of the Fryish, and I refuse to watch Jurassic Bark ever again.
By comparison, Beast is… Robot Chicken.
No, really. There’s so many plotlines in this thing, all snapping around with whiplash speed, that there’s no time for anything to breathe. The pacing is shot to hell by the need to be both a movie and a series of episodes, and some just plain insane twists. After about eight years of the show’s core romance being Fry and Leela, it’s insane to bring in a new girl, Coleen, just to give Fry someone to spend most of the plot moping about. After locking Bender out of the main storyline early on, his role for the next hour becomes little more than Operation: Give Bender Some Screen Time.
The whole thing manages to be manic at the same time as insanely drawn out. Instead of a plot, it’s a canvas for the writers to throw a million funny ideas at in the knowledge that some will stick. That’d be fine for some shows, but this is Futurama. Futurama should be a beautiful, many-tentacled thing. It should be wonderful...
Fry discovers the secret truth of love: There’s someone for everyone. Else.
It’s not that the movies are lazy, or even that they’re no good. They’ve got their moments. There’s some great visual gags, and some really nice touches, and I can’t hate anything that puts Fry, Bender and co back on my screen.They’re just not… not my Futurama. They’re something else. Diet Futurama, with extra sugar thrown in to try and compensate. Futurama: The Next Generation, written by Brannon Braga. Futur-
You’re right, I went too far there. I apologise.
Still, I can’t help but be slightly depressed. I wanted Futurama back, but the only chance of that happening is for these hybrids to do well. But if they do, the odds that we’ll see more of the originals instead of more of the hybrids are… Ah, crap.
Doo doo. Doo doo do doo doo. Boop-a-doop-doop doop do-doop doop doop bong...
There’s a suicide booth bit in both movies.
They’ve gotten slightly more adult in terms of references, but still in a very silly way - the… ahem… tentacles in this one, and the Nude Beach Planet in the first one. Clearly, both need at least 50% more naked Amy, but they’re trying. That said, the main mature content in both of them is that there’s no way in hell the average kid is going to get most of the jokes. Hell, most adults struggle to get a decent proportion of them. The guys who write it really love their obscure references.
(My favourite in Beast is definitely Ms. Marple Madness, as seen in the above screenshot. Terrible. Yet brilliant...)
Posted by Richard on Monday 30th June
Jurassic Bark was a cruel, cruel episode.
Posted by Nick on Tuesday 1st July
I agree with everything you said here, particularly the bit about Coleen. She (and to a lesser extent Lars) seem really incongruous after the ending of The Devil’s Hands Are Idle Playthings.
Posted by Wallsy on Tuesday 1st July
Couldn’t agree more that it’s basically Futurama Light, but some of the one-liners (none of which spring to mind, frustratingly) in Beast were excellent.
It does feel like they took a handful of stories they’d written before and padded out and mashed them together rather than coming up with a really, really good idea from scratch.
I’m looking at the movies, or at least these first two, like the Cowboy Bebop movie: they go between the existing episodes somewhere, rather than following on from the series’ ending.
Posted by Paul Cosgrove on Tuesday 1st July
“You may now eat the snake...”
(Kif and Amy reluctantly bite off the ends)
“...if you so choose.”
There are some great jokes. It’s just that Futurama had the great jokes and the great stories. I demand both! Both, I tell you, both! I blame all the problems on the hideous hybrid format. The pacing of a movie and a TV series is completely different, and trying to merge them is almost always a disaster.
Posted by Richard on Tuesday 1st July
Hey! Someone else who won’t watch Jurassic Bark.
Every once in a while I think, “Hey, how come I haven’t seen that episode where Leela and Amy are wrestling in those outfits OH GOD NO”
I cried at Planetfall, too. I named my HERO Jr. “Floyd”.
Posted by Giles on Tuesday 1st July
The ending of Jurassic Bark was completely riuned for me by BBS, though, and for that, I will loathe BBS for always. Even though the rest of it was still quite good.
Posted by Cradok on Tuesday 1st July
Yeah, it’s something of a shame that it’s impossible to watch Jurassic Bark again, because some of the earlier bits were quite funny, as I recall.
Posted by Wallsy on Wednesday 2nd July
Yes. But then… sniff… the poor doggie…
Posted by Richard on Wednesday 2nd July
I can NEVER go back to Jurassic Bark. Man, I miss Futurama so much. My favourite background joke was always those public safety announcement pictures - the ones with the slobby workmen demonstrating something behind the news presenters.
Posted by Juliet on Wednesday 2nd July
I loved you in Peep Show Richard.
Posted by Cunzy1 1 on Wednesday 2nd July
People keep saying that, and I’ve no idea why. I don’t look anything like Olivia Colman.
Posted by Richard on Wednesday 2nd July
Well, although I’ve watched every episode of Futurama, I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch the movies yet. I’ve just heard soooo many bad things that I can’t bring myself to do it.
The WORST episode of Futurama (since we’re discussing stand out episodes) was the one where they learn how file-sharing is bad (I Dated A Robot). I mean, it wasn’t even ironic. I seriously expected the writers to apologise in the commentary for the episode… but they didn’t even acknowledge the subject matter.
Bizarre episode!
Posted by Johnny W on Wednesday 2nd July
My least favourite was Bend Her, closely followed by A Leela Of Her Own. Crimes of the Hot is the one I’ve seen the least though.
Posted by Richard on Wednesday 2nd July
Why they decided to go for a format they’ve had no experience with is beyond me. Why didn’t they just go back to TV?! It took the Simpsons years and years of work to come up with a good feature long episode. Why do the guys at Futurama think they can just churn them out? *sob*
And why, after episode 2, where they were first introduced, haven’t Hermes, Amy or Zoidberg been given decent characters? Dr. Hubbard’s got more going for him than Hermes, Amy or Zoidberg, put together. *sob*
The first episode was pure Groening (have we seen a “Suicide Booth” since episode one?), but they never managed to fully get off the ground when they expanded it. If anything, I’d have hoped that the DVD releases could have been more “adult”. *wah*
Posted by Johnny W on Monday 30th June