Futurama: Bender's Big Score | |
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Directed by | Dwayne Carey-Hill |
Screenplay by | Ken Keeler |
Story by | Ken Keeler David X. Cohen |
Produced by | Lee Supercinski Claudia Katz |
Starring | Billy West Katey Sagal John DiMaggio Tress MacNeille Maurice LaMarche Phil LaMarr Lauren Tom David Herman Frank Welker Al Gore |
Edited by | Paul D. Calder |
Music by | Christopher Tyng |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment |
Release dates |
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Running time | 89 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Futurama: Bender's Big Score (or Bender's Big Score) is a 2007 American animated science fiction comedy film based on the animated series Futurama . It was released in the United States on November 27, 2007. It was the first Futurama production since the original series finale "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings". Bender's Big Score, along with the three follow-up films, comprise season five of Futurama, with each film being separated into four episodes of the broadcast season. Bender's Big Score made its broadcast premiere on Comedy Central on March 23, 2008. [1] The film was written by Ken Keeler, based on a story by Keeler and David X. Cohen, and directed by Dwayne Carey-Hill.
Special appearances include Coolio as Kwanzaa-bot, Al Gore as himself, Mark Hamill as Chanukah Zombie, Tom Kenny as Fry's older brother Yancy, and Sarah Silverman returning as Fry's ex-girlfriend Michelle (having previously voiced the role in "The Cryonic Woman").
Two years after Box Network executives canceled Planet Express's contract, the executives are fired and Planet Express is back "on the air." As the crew celebrates, Hermes is decapitated, causing his wife LaBarbara to leave him. His head is placed in a jar while his body is repaired. Lars, who performs the procedure, flirts with Leela, much to Fry's chagrin.
During a delivery to a nude beach planet, Leela discovers a tattoo of Bender on Fry's buttocks. Three alien scammers — Nudar, Fleb and Schlump — obtain the crew's personal information and infect Bender with an obedience virus, allowing them to seize control of Planet Express. The scammers discover that Fry's tattoo has a code that allows time travel into the past. Nibbler warns the scammers against using the code but is ignored.
The scammers have Bender use the code to steal valuable objects from Earth's past and a doomsday device from Professor Farnsworth, storing them in a cave beneath the Planet Express building. Hermes has Bender retrieve an earlier version of his body so he can win back his wife. Leela and Lars date, further depressing Fry.
Once the scammers have history's treasures, they decide to eliminate the time code by killing Fry. Fry uses the code to escape to January 1, 2000, just after he was frozen. The scammers send Bender after him. Bender arrives before Fry, creating a duplicate of himself when he has to use the bathroom. Another Bender from "way at the end" appears, opens Fry's cryogenic tube and puts the tattoo on his butt. When Fry arrives, the first Bender duplicate inadvertently initiates a self-destruct due to not going to the bathroom. Fry shoves that Bender into another tube, then escapes. The original Bender spends 12 years hunting Fry before seemingly killing him by blowing up his apartment.
Bender reports his success to the scammers, who erase the time code and the virus. The crew holds a memorial for Fry, but he suddenly appears. Fry says he created a duplicate of himself, which remained in the past while he accidentally fell into his cryo-tube alongside his original 2000 self. Awaking 1,000 years later, the present Fry froze himself until the current year. The Fry duplicate spent the years before Bender's attack working at Panucci's Pizzeria, then at an aquarium caring for Leelu, an orphaned narwhal. He also spent time with his family and tended to his beloved dog Seymour Asses. Nibbler removes the tattoo from Fry to prevent further abuse from the scammers. Leela and Lars decide to marry, but during the wedding, Hermes is again decapitated. Farnsworth says that Hermes' body would have died anyway; time paradox duplicates are doomed to die prematurely. Lars panics and leaves Leela.
The scammers trick Earth President Richard Nixon into giving Earth to them. Exiled to Neptune, the population assembles a fleet alongside their allies and enemies. Hermes has his brain wired into the ship's battle computer, allowing him to destroy the scammers' fleet and win back his wife. When the scammers threaten to destroy the Planet Express ship with the doomsday device unless the crew surrender; Bender reveals to the crew that he had stolen the device back from the scammers for his own use. Leela then fires the device, destroying the scammers' ship.
Fry arranges for Leela and Lars to reconcile at the cryogenic lab. Having survived the attack, Nudar ambushes them. Lars tricks Nudar into approaching the Bender duplicate on self-destruct and holds them down as the duplicate explodes, killing them. The explosion reveals the Bender tattoo on Lars, revealing him as the Fry duplicate who survived Bender's attack in 2012 and froze himself to return to the future and be with Leela; he ultimately canceled the wedding to spare Leela the pain of his death as a time paradox duplicate.
Bender removes Lars' tattoo and travels to 2000 to place it on Fry in the cryogenic tube so that the events that transpired "make any sense at all". Upon returning, Bender explains that he convinced all the duplicates of himself from his stealing sprees to stay with him, instead of leaving “when they were logically supposed to.” Nibbler urges everyone to evacuate the universe before swallowing himself. The Bender duplicates explode, causing a tear in the fabric of space.
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". [2] A preview of the film was shown at Comic-Con 2007. [3] It was also reported at Comic-Con that once the movie is "chopped up" it will be reconfigured into four episodes that will be broadcast on Comedy Central on March 23, 2008. The same will be done with the succeeding three movies, creating a sixteen-episode fifth season. [4] The voice recording finished on July 3, 2007. [5] An official trailer was released on October 10, 2007.
In addition to the background musical score, the movie contains two original "movie musical" style songs by Ken Keeler that the characters perform in context. The song "I May As Well Jump" (also referred to as "Street Song") exposited the dissatisfaction of most of the characters with the ways their lives were progressing at that point in the plotline, except for Lars and Leela, who were contrastingly delighted to announce their happiness and their upcoming marriage. The song "This Trinity's Goin' to War" (also referred to as "This Toyshop's Goin' to War") exposited the plans of Robot Santa, Chanukah Zombie, and Kwanzaa-bot to provide military support to assist in the liberation of Earth. The movie also contains a cover of Scott Walker's "30 Century Man" performed by The Jigsaw Seen.
Bender's Big Score made its broadcast premiere on Comedy Central on March 23, 2008. [1] The film was broken into four separate episodes which served as the first part of Futurama's fifth season, followed by The Beast with a Billion Backs , Bender's Game , and Into the Wild Green Yonder . The TV movie was screened in the United Kingdom on Sky1, which started airing Bender's Big Score on October 26, 2008. After being aired in four separate episodes, the next three movies were aired, with each of them being broken up into four episodes; creating a fifth season comprising 16 episodes overall. Bender's Big Score aired in Canada on October 12, 2008 on the Global Television Network.
In the broadcast premiere, the extended opening from the film is placed before the scene where Hermes is decapitated as opposed to after it. The first two scenes in the montage of Leela and Lars' dates were cut. The original opening subtitle "IT JUST WON'T STAY DEAD!" is kept as the opening subtitle of the first part. The three additional opening captions are: "Watch, Rinse, Repeat", "Apply directly to the foreclaw" (a reference to HeadOn), and "Last Known Transmission of the Hubble Telescope." The billboard scene in all four is identical to the single scene in the film, a snippet from "Space Pilot 3000" where Fry gets frozen.
Futurama: Bender's Big Score is the first carbon-neutral DVD to be released by 20th Century Fox. [6] [7] 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. There is also a 22-minute full length episode of "Everybody Loves Hypnotoad". [8] It was released in 16:9 widescreen format; the first 16:9 presentation of any Futurama media.
In its first week, the DVD sold 222,036 units, for a total of $3,994,428. [9] As of July 24, 2008, The Numbers reports DVD sales stand at 920,023, for a total of $16,662,212. [9]
The film holds a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 11 reviews, with an average rating of 7.40/10. [10] It won the 2007 Annie Award for Best Home Entertainment Production. [11] The movie received an "A" rating in a review at UGO, calling its two musical numbers "hilarious", and the overall quality on par with that of the show's original run. [12] 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 seven out of ten, praising the extras but lamenting the quality of the video transfer. [13]
Torgo's Executive Powder is an elaborate running gag throughout the film in retaliation against the Fox Network for its alleged mishandling and eventual cancellation of Futurama. [14] The product is said to have "a million and one uses" and 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, delousing, 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. When the film was aired on Comedy Central, a fake commercial was shown preceding the first break in which a woman dumps some of the powder in a toilet. It appears once in Bender's Game on Fry and Bender's kitchen counter, when Bender is washing a pot and is about to jump out of the window. [15]
Dr. John A. Zoidberg, often referred to mononymously as Zoidberg, is a fictional character from the animated series Futurama and is the series' comic relief. He is a Decapodian, a crustacean-like species of alien, who works as the staff doctor for Planet Express, despite his woeful understanding of human physiology and allusions to his questionable credentials. His character parodies the supposed wealth and automatic respect of modern doctors—for example, his incompetence at human medicine makes him extremely poor despite his profession, and he is implied to be frequently homeless when not at work. The Decapod are an extended parody on Jewish culture—the bigger joke being that shellfish are not kosher.
Futurama is an American animated science fiction sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company and later revived by Comedy Central, and then Hulu. The series follows Philip J. Fry, who is cryogenically preserved for 1,000 years and revived on December 31, 2999. Fry finds work at the interplanetary delivery company Planet Express, working alongside one-eyed mutant Leela and robot Bender. The series was envisioned by Groening in the mid-1990s while working on The Simpsons; he brought David X. Cohen aboard to develop storylines and characters to pitch the show to Fox.
Bender Bending Rodríguez is one of the main characters in the animated television series Futurama. He was conceived by the series' creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen, and is voiced by John DiMaggio. He fulfills a comic, antihero-type role in the show, and is described by fellow character Leela as an "alcoholic, whore-mongering, chain-smoking gambler".
Philip J. Fry, commonly known mononymously by his surname Fry, is a fictional character and the protagonist of the animated series Futurama. He is voiced by Billy West using a version of his own voice as he sounded when he was 25. He is a delivery boy from the 20th century who becomes cryogenically frozen and reawakens in the 30th century to become a delivery boy there with an intergalactic delivery company run by his 30th great-grandnephew, Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth. He is the best friend and roommate of Bender and the boyfriend and later fiancé of Leela.
Turanga Leela is a fictional character from the animated television series Futurama. Leela is spaceship captain, pilot, and head of all aviation services on board the Planet Express Ship. Throughout the series, she has an on-again, off-again relationship with and got engaged to Philip J. Fry, the central character in the series. The character, voiced by Katey Sagal, is named after the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Olivier Messiaen. She is one of the few characters in the cast to routinely display competence and the ability to command, and routinely saves the rest of the cast from disaster. However, she suffers extreme self-doubt because she has only one eye and grew up as a bullied orphan. She first believes herself an alien, but later finds out she is the least-mutated sewer mutant in the history of 31st-century Earth. Her family parodies aspects of pollution and undesirability associated with industrial New Jersey when compared with New York City.
The animated science fiction television program Futurama makes a number of satirical and humorous references to religion, including inventing several fictional religions which are explored in certain episodes of the series.
Futurama is a 3D platform video game based on the science fiction animated series of the same name. It was developed by Unique Development Studios for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, both of which use cel-shading technology. The cutscenes of the game are presented as an entire "lost episode" of Futurama on the DVD of The Beast with a Billion Backs.
"Space Pilot 3000" is the pilot episode of the American animated television series Futurama. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on March 28, 1999. The episode focuses on the cryogenic freezing of the series protagonist, Philip J. Fry, and the events when he awakens 1,000 years in the future and is the first episode to be set in the 30th century. Series regulars are introduced and the futuristic setting, inspired by a variety of classic science fiction series from The Jetsons to Star Trek, is revealed. It also sets the stage for many of the events to follow in the series, foreshadowing plot points from the third and fourth seasons.
"A Flight to Remember" is the tenth episode in the first season of the American animated television series Futurama. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on September 26, 1999. The title is a reference to Walter Lord's non-fiction book about the Titanic disaster A Night to Remember. This episode was written by Eric Horsted and directed by Peter Avanzino. Dawnn Lewis guest-stars in this episode as LaBarbara Conrad. The episode is a direct parody of the 1997 film Titanic.
"I Second That Emotion" is the first episode in the second season of the American animated television series Futurama, and the 14th episode of the series overall. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on November 21, 1999. The episode was written by Patric M. Verrone and directed by Mark Ervin. The episode introduces the recurring sewer mutants, a society of humans who have been mutated by years of exposure to pollution and radioactive waste poured into the sewers from New New York.
"Anthology of Interest II" is the eighteenth episode in the third season of the American animated television series Futurama, and the 50th episode of the series overall. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on January 6, 2002. This episode, as well as the earlier "Anthology of Interest I", serves to showcase three "imaginary" stories.
"Three Hundred Big Boys" is the sixteenth episode in the fourth season of the American animated television series Futurama, and the 70th episode of the series overall. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on June 15, 2003. Set in a retro-futuristic 31st century, the series follows the adventures of the employees of Planet Express, an interplanetary delivery company.
Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs is a 2008 American direct-to-video adult animated science-fiction comedy-adventure film based on the animated series Futurama, and the second of four straight-to-DVD films that make up the show's fifth season. The film was released in the United States and Canada on June 24, 2008, followed by a UK release on June 30, 2008 and an Australian release on August 6, 2008. The title refers to a euphemism for sexual intercourse—"the beast with two backs". Comedy Central aired the film as a "four-part epic" on October 19, 2008. The movie won an Annie Award for "Best Animated Home Entertainment Production".
Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder is a 2009 American direct-to-video adult animated science fiction comedy-adventure film based on the animated series Futurama, and the fourth and final of the direct-to-DVD films that make up the show's fifth season. The film was written by Ken Keeler, based on a story by Keeler and David X. Cohen, and directed by Peter Avanzino. Guest stars include Phil Hendrie, Penn Jillette, Snoop Dogg, and Seth MacFarlane, who sings the theme song. In the movie, Leela becomes an outlaw when she and a group of ecologically-minded feminists attempt to save an asteroid of primitive life forms and the Violet Dwarf star from being destroyed, while Fry joins a secret society and attempts to stop a mysterious species known as the "Dark Ones" from destroying all life in the universe. The title itself is a reference to the U.S. Air Force Song, the main chorus of which describes reaching "Into the wild blue yonder".
Futurama: Bender's Game is a 2008 American direct-to-video adult animated science fantasy comedy film and the third of the four Futurama films that make up the show's fifth season. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray on November 4, 2008.
"Rebirth" is the premiere and first episode in the sixth season of the American animated television series Futurama, the 89th episode of the series overall, and the revival of the series. It originally aired on Comedy Central in the United States on June 24, 2010. The episode was written by David X. Cohen and Matt Groening, and directed by Frank Marino.
"The Prisoner of Benda" is the tenth episode in the sixth season of the American animated television series Futurama, and the 98th episode of the series overall. It aired on Comedy Central on August 19, 2010. In the episode, Professor Farnsworth and Amy build a machine that allows them to switch minds so that they may each pursue their lifelong dreams. However, they learn that the machine cannot be used twice on the same pairing of bodies. To try to return to their rightful bodies, they involve the rest of the crew in the mind switches, leaving each member free to pursue their own personal endeavors in a different crew member's body. The episode is composed of multiple subplots, with the main subplot being Bender attempting to steal a crown, but ending up switching places with the Robo-Hungarian emperor.
"Love's Labours Lost in Space" is the fourth episode in the first season of the American animated television series Futurama. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on April 13, 1999. The episode was written by Brian Kelley and directed by Brian Sheesley. This episode introduces the recurring character Zapp Brannigan when he attempts to prevent the Planet Express crew from completing their mission. It also introduces the characters of Kif Kroker, Brannigan's aide, and Nibbler, whom Leela adopts as a pet.
"Fry and Leela's Big Fling" is the seventeenth episode in the seventh season of the American animated television series Futurama, and the 131st episode of the series overall. It originally aired on Comedy Central on June 19, 2013. The episode was written by Eric Rogers and directed by Edmund Fong. Fry and Leela attempt to have a romantic time together, but with everyone around they cannot get time alone.