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Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs
R1 - America - Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: James Teitelbaum (20th July 2008). |
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The Film
 "Futurama" (1999-2003), for the uninitiated, is a science fiction cartoon created by Matt Groening, the man responsible for "Life in Hell" and an obscure cartoon that you have never heard of called "The Simpsons" (1989-Present). The characters in "Futurama" all look rather Simpsons-ish, except that there are also robots, space cops, laser guns, and other sci-fi archetypes - all rendered a la Groening. "Futurama" lasted for seventy-two episodes over five seasons, before folding. In that shortish period, the show accumulated a dedicated fan base, and with good reason. In addition to being hilarious, it was chock full of homage to (and parody of) every conceivable bit science fiction lore from H. G. Wells and Georges Méliès to "Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones" (2002). From 1950's B-movie xenophobia to the "Star Trek" phenomena, Futurama keenly parodied it all. The basic premise is that a delivery boy named Fry (Billy West) gets caught in cryo-freeze on New Year's Eve 1999 and wakes up one thousand years later. He gets a job as a delivery boy, and has adventures with his co-workers (including a robot, a cute Asian girl, a Rastafarian, a lobster-man, a senile inventor, and a cyclops). The show was fast paced, brilliantly written, expertly voice-acted, and animated a notch or two better than "The Simpsons"...It was cancelled far too soon. The good news is that "Futurama" returned in 2007 with the first of four scheduled triple-length telefilms. The first was "Bender's Big Score" (2007), and now, the second film, "The Beast with A Billion Backs", has been unleashed satisfy the mad craving for more "Futurama". In "The Beast with A Billion Backs", Fry gets a girlfriend (guest voiced by Brittany Murphy) who turns out to be into polyamoury (having lots of boyfriends), just as a gigantic creature from another dimension decides that it wants to collectively date every creature in our universe, en masse. Fry has a real problem with sharing his girlfriend, but he is the first person to sign up for some loving the alien, eventually becoming high priest of love to the alien sex fiend. Meanwhile, Bender (the robot; John Di Maggio) joins the 'League of Robots', as Amy (the Asian girl; Lauren Tom) and Kif (a little green man; Maurice LaMarche) get married. In addition to Murphy, there are guest appearances by Dan Castellaneta (a.k.a. Homer Simpson, playing a robot here), David Cross, and Stephen Hawking, as himself (in the "Futurama" universe, 20th/21st century celebs have survived as disembodied heads in jars - this makes all manner of cameos possible!). It is great to have "Futurama" back, and getting an hour and a half of it all at once is very cool. The real challenge for the producers of these "Futurama" films is to sustain (for ninety minutes) the energy levels and frantic pacing of something originally conceived for 22-minute television episodes. For the most part they've made it work, but there are also a few subplots that just happen to wrap up at twenty minute intervals. No real complaints though - "The Beast with A Billion Backs" is a riot.
Video
Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen. It should be no surprise that the picture is pristine; the images were almost certainly ported directly from a digital video editing system to a DVD authoring system, and so things are very solidly presented. The clean lines and large areas of solid color make it easy to compress this sort of material, so things look perfect (especially as presented on a dual-layer disc). This "Futurama" film runs for 1:28:45 in length and is divided into 12 chapters.
Audio
"The Beast with A Billion Backs" is presented in English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround with subtitles in English, Spanish and French. There are plenty of cool and funny sound effects that make good use of the surrounds. The Deathball game scenes make particularly good use of the subs. Music is fairly sparse. The voice acting here is great, and it is amazing that the producers got the entire original television cast back on board for all four of the new telefilms.
Extras
Fox has released this film with a ton of extras that includes an audio commentary, a lost episode, animatics, three featurettes, bloopers, deleted scenes and a bonus trailer. Below is a closer look at these supplements. First is an audio commentary by creator Matt Groening, executive producer David X. Cohen, cast members Billy West, John Di Maggio, Maurice LaMarche, writer/co-executive producer Michael Rowe, producers Claudia Katz and Lee Supercinski and director Peter Avazino, and sit around and collectively talk about the making of the film. The track is not really directed or focused at all, and the participants all just sort of chime in at random with their thoughts. They seem to be having a pretty good time; there is a lot of laughing and joking. Worth a listen for serious fans and those looking for extra behind-the-scenes tidbits. "Futurama: The Lost Adventure" episode runs for 30 minutes 12 seconds, is basically a collection of "cut scenes" or video clips that played between levels of a "Futurama" video game. Viewed sequentially, they form a full "lost" episode. The feature also a little bit of footage of someone playing that game. There are lots of "Star Wars" influences in this one. The episode is available with optional audio commentary by creator Matt Groening, executive producer David X. Cohen, cast members Billy West, John Di Maggio, Maurice LaMarche, writer/co-executive producer Michael Rowe, producers Claudia Katz and Lee Supercinski and director Peter Avazino. One of the more interesting things they talk about is that the producers had no way to get to the cut scenes, the original animation files were not available. So they actually had to play the game on an XBox and then retrieve the footage from the game console's temporary memory. To get to the harder levels, they had to download cheat codes. It was also mentioned that the sound effects were punched up for this release, compared to the original game. "Beast with A Billion Backs, part one" storyboard animatic runs for 21 minutes 45 seconds, This feature contains the audio from the first act of the telefilm, but with static line drawings (storyboards) replacing the animation. "Meet Yivo" David Cross featurette runs for 2 minutes 02 seconds, and is an interview with David Cross, voice of Yivo, about his character. Cross is shown in the studio eating popcorn and talking about working on "Futurama". "Blooperama" runs for 2 minutes 12 seconds, basically bloopers of the cast shown in a recording session reading their lines, and usually messing them up. "3D Models with Animator Discussion" featurette runs for 4 minutes 11 seconds, features shots of the CG computer models of some of the hardware in the "Futurama" universe, there's an optional audio commentary with unknown animators (no names are provided!). "A Brief History of Deathball" featurette runs for 2 minutes 02 seconds, Peter Avazino, the director of the feature, gives commentary over images of the costumes and designs for the Deathball segment of the film. There are 6 deleted scenes, these are not actually scenes, they are fragments of unfinished animation, concepts for things that were cut early in the production process and include: - "Original Opening" in storyboard format which runs for 50 seconds. - "Fry and Colleen Meeting" color format which runs for 35 seconds. - "St. Asimov Parade" in storyboard format which runs for 20 seconds. - "Zapp and Scientists" in layout animatic format which runs for 45 seconds. - "Amy, Fry, and Leela" in storyboard format which runs for 25 seconds. - "Scruffy, the Janitor" in layout animatic format which runs for 28 seconds. There's also a bonus trailer for: - "Futurama: Bender's Game" which runs for 2 minutes 1 second, this previews the upcoming third "Futurama" movie.
Overall
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