Futurama - The Collected Epics [DVD]

'Futurama: The Specials' contains all 4 of the 'epics' that have been released since 'those assanine morons at B(f)ox' cancelled the show. The box set includes 'Benders Big Score', 'The Beast with a Billion Backs', 'Benders Game' and 'Into the Wild Green Yonder'. Each dvd comes with a huge amount of extras, (as is expected with Futurama) including commentaries on each, plus the usual stuff such as deleted scenes etc. They have even compiled the 'Futurama: Video Game' cut-scenes into a 'Lost Episode', which is nice. (It even has it's own commentary)
I must say that the quality of the 'epics' is far from the quality of the first 4 seasons, yet they're still very enjoyable, and I highly recommend this item to all futurama fans, not only because it's enjoyable but because it's a great bargain, the price here on amazon is almost the same as buying just one of the movies separately, but you get all 4!! Now I'm really looking forward to the new season 5 which is currently in the works.

In the words of Bender 'We're Back Baby!!!!'

It was a bit annoying how the team at Futurama decided to release these feature length DVDs one by one over a year, but when you get them altogether in this collection it's like owning Season 5. The show is as whitty, snappy, satirical and hilarious as ever, full of intriguing plots, copious amounts of play-on-words and the usual array of awesome characters. Each 'film' is great in it's own way but I have given them each a rating and a short summary below:

1. "Bender's Big Score".
9/10. My favourite of all. I think that when I first watched it I found the overly complicated cross-time plot a little too much, but in actuality it is genius. Bender and the others get tricked into losing everything they own to a bunch of horrid nudist aliens hell-bent on scamming the entire world. Eventually they and some of the other inhabitants of earth have to defeat them . Of course, there is a hell of a lot more going on as each of the main chracters has their own hilarious part to play. Bender, Fry, The Professor and Zap Brannigan remain my favourite characters each with some fantastic moments.

2. "The Beast With a Billion Backs".
8/10. The first half is absolutely brilliant. Admittedly the second half is a bit weird even by Futurama's standards, but it still works overall. After failing to find happiness with his new girlfriend, Fry leaves the Universe via a tear in the space time continuum. Bender is also ready to abandon normal life as he joins a secret robot society and eventually declares war on all humans. However, Fry re-emerges, bringing with him a pretty creepy being whose tentacles end up penetrating every human on Earth in a bid to connect everyone. As I said, it's a really silly plot, but still very funny.

3. "Bender's Game".
7/10. Just about the worst one here, but still very good. I think the problem here is the plot. The Professor and the others set out to destroy Mom's dark matter business while Bender goes mental as he overdoses on playing Dungeons and Dragons with Hubert and the other children. At some point The crew all fall into a pit and end up in Bender's imagination, where a pretty decent parody of Lord of the Rings takes place. The two separate plots before and after they fall in the hole are both pretty entertaining, but as I said they are kind of stuck together in a pretty strange way. Still good though.

4. "Into The Wild Green Yonder".
9/10. A very close second. Leo Wong is about to destroy half od the universe in order to make an Uber-golf course. Bender has an affair with the Don Bot's wife, Fry is recruited by a sttarnge cult because his brain may be a key to defeating evil and Leela joins a mouthy group of activists to try and stop Wong. The storylines all come together with funny consequences. I loved this one. Really funny and very well written.

So to summarize, if you're a faan and you've not seen these yet then whaat the hell are you waiting for? As always, the episodes get better when you watch them more than once and they are great just to have on in the background when you're working or something like that. If you like other shows like Family Guy or The Simpsons then I'm sure you'll enjoy these. If you've never watched anything like that, but enjoy a good bit of Sci-Fi or Fantasy then you may still enjoy these.

Just give them a try, they're a bargain for £15.

When Futurama was cancelled back in 2003, I'm sure that I wasn't the only fan to get angry at Fox for doing what they always do, so when I heard that four feature-length episodes were being released over the course of a year or so around 2008, I got pretty excited. These four episodes - split into sixteen episodes for TV-viewing ease - all ran concurrently, beginning where the previous one ends, which gave Matt Groening the possibility to develop characters a lot more closely than they had otherwise been, and offering them up a chance to revive old feuds or relationships. What we were left with was a varying mish-mash of animation goodness (and not-so-goodness).

Due to the feature-length nature of these specials, I found that the humour that was usually crammed into one episode of Futurama had to be dispersed throughout a show four times as long, meaning that a fair few of the jokes just fell flat. There are moments of absolute hilarity, and my personal favourite special, Bender's Game, revolves around Bender becoming obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons so much so that he begins to play it in real life, which I found pretty original. Into The Wild Green Yonder is another decent feature, and Bender's Big Score has moments where it really shines. Although this is all just opinion, I personally found The Beast With A Billion Backs, the second out of the four features, to be a huge let-down, with only occasional pieces of anything original, and very little laughable content.

Overall, if you're a Futurama fan like myself, this is an essential piece of your collection, but for people who aren't avid viewers of the show or don't know it at all, this isn't the place to start. Season Five has just been released on DVD/Blu-Ray and I'd heartily recommend it over this; it packs a much more potent dose of comedy than this does, and it's split up into 22 minute episodes (the way it's supposed to be), not 90 minute movies that feel a bit too thin to stand on their own.