Futurama the Movie: Bender's Big Score

Let’s talk about Futurama the Movie: Bender’s Big Score. It’s been a few weeks since I saw the movie, but I remember a few parts of it. Chunks, even. Like, I remember that it was OK. Not great, not mind-blowing, not even up to the standards of a good Futurama episode, but OK.

The art quality is consistently high, and voice acting likewise. It’s a fine, polished product. Visually, I had no complaints. However, the writing was creaky and a little bent out of shape. The jokes didn’t land quite right. The characters seemed like simulacra of themselves (that is, if a cartoon character can have simulacra), rather than the genuine article.

Fan-service, man. It kills. Fan-service is like Katie; it takes original funny jokes, repeats them verbatim, then pauses to look you in the eye and prompt you to laugh, not at the joke, but at the memory of the joke. Fan-service, like Katie, tries to trick you into believing the recollection of an old shared experience is better than a new one. It eroticizes, corrupts, and wallows in nostalgia. It’s a special kind of corruption; a mold that stymies new growth and a rot that eats away at the memory of the original. What’s amazing about it is that this corruption works openly, proudly, brazenly, and you don’t realize what has been done until you find yourself staring at something you used to like, and realize you kinda despise it.

There’s a lot of fan-service in this movie. Gone are jokes about “Strong Force Glue” (it’s about physics, I think), in their place is vindictiveness against Fox. That which was clever or quirky about the TV series has been bludgeoned into a rough approximation of humor. It’s what you’d expect from a direct-to-DVD flick; it’s something made primarily for fan consumption. There’s no need to try new things—just to cater to the base. Still, it is disappointing.

Futurama, both as a television series and as a movie, has to balance between the yuks-yuks and a legit sci-fi story. It’s greatest strength was that many episodes were seriously good sci-fi stories, with at least one good concept to play with per episode. The movie though, dabbles in time-travel. Time travel is a river you can only step in once, and Futurama has gone back to that well a few too many times (to misuse and screw up metaphors). There are multiple Fry’s, and multiple Benders. Cute. However, I think that the threads of multiple characters got twisted up in a knot. A thing more frustrating that time-travel plots is arguing about time-travel plots, so to keep it short, I’m pretty sure that there were characters either out of place or acting out of character.

I am a fan of the show, and have been for a long time. This movie was made for me, and while I appreciate the impulse behind its creation, I’d have been just as happy having not seen Futurama the Movie: Bender’s Big Score.