Futurama – Bender’s Game

Futurama Bender’s Game
Fry, Leela, Bender, Professor Farnsworth
Created by Matt Groening
Fox Home Entertainment 2008
90 minutes plus extras

Futurama DVD is Bender’s Game, has Bender playing a game of Dungeons & Dragons. What this has to do with anything else in the movie takes a while to connect as the plot elements are presented bit by bit.

Eventually, everything connects into a decent story and a warning about playing too much D&D that comes too late for Bender. This is when the dark matter shortage part of this Futurama movie starts to develop with its allusions to the oil crisis. This sends the characters on a search for a magic crystal that will do something about the crisis and connect to the D&D plotline. They also invade Mom’s dark crystal mine and set up a couple of repeated killbot gags.

Futurama Bender’s Game includes the obligatory pop culture references such as Ender’s Game -though only the title. It opens with a nod to the Yellow Submarine movie, has Sulu tell Scott Bakula “Way to kill the franchise.”, and the usual too numerous to mention sight gags such as Unsafeco Field.

The biggest reference in this Futurama DVD aside from D&D is Lord of the Rings. Personally, I enjoyed the reference to Mork from Ork and to Slither.

Look for a guest appearance by The Jetson’s Rosie the Maid.

Special features on the Futurama Bender’s Game DVD are: Commentary track with Matt Groening, director Dwayne Carey-Hill, some of the voices, and other related people; a twenty-something minute storyboard of the beginning of this movie with some alternate dialogue; a rather lame Futurama Genetics Lab where you can collage characters together in a genetic experiment of sorts; a deleted scene; a minute or so blooper reel, and other minor stuff.

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