Futurama: The Beast With A Billion Backs *SPOILERS*

[GA!]

This thread is to discuss the new Futurama film, which I believe isn't even due out for another couple of weeks but my Dad managed to acquire it for me anyway. For the record I'm planning to buy the DVD when it comes out on June 30th in the UK as bigger DVD sales will hopefully equal more than just four Futurama films.

But anyway, here's my review... Again please note the spoilers.

The Beast With A Billion Backs continues on from the rip in time caused at the end of Bender's Big Score, but its set up in this film with a funny joke at the beginning so you're not lost if you haven't seen the first film. Its set a month after the first film, and the only difference is that Fry is now dating a girl called Colleen. Also pretty quickly you have Kif proposing to Amy in some weird wedding ceremony, like you get with professional wrestling, only this time it goes off without a hitch. As expected, both relationships turn sour in a pretty dark and somewhat surreal way - Kif is killed while Zap's ship tries to deal with the rip in time and Colleen turns out to be dating four other men who happen to live with her. Amy mourns while Fry, who is sadly written like a sensitive emo puppy like in all the Futurama fan fictions found on the internet (note a shit site called The Leela Zone / Futurama Madhouse), decides to go away for a while by heading into the rip in time.

Bender naturally has to have his own story, which twists and turns in several directions. He gets injured when he tries to pass the rip in time, he's then visited by Calculon in hospital, becomes Calculon's stalker, becomes a member of The Robot League run by Calculon, becomes leader of The Robot League and so on. It's quite a weak storyline that's only not filler thanks to the ending. Anyway Fry bumps into an alien that is the size of a planet called Yivo. Yivo uses its tentacles to possess everyone on Earth, and Fry is the Pope of Yivo. In relation to normal Futurama standards, this is extremely dark stuff. It gets even darker as after the possession ends and the relationship between every human on Earth and Yivo blossoms, everyone moves from Earth to live on Yivo's surface - which is acknowledged as Heaven. The only clause for living in Heaven is that they must not eat the apples from the apple tree two-time by contacting other universes. Fry, without thinking, sends Bender a letter, thus two-timing.

Due to a thing where robots cannot pass through the rip in time, Bender and the other robots cannot be on this Heaven. So they get a pirate ship and attack Yivo. The revelation about Fry's letter causes everyone to be banished back to Earth. It turns out Yivo has found one true love, which turns out to be Colleen, Fry's multiple-timing ex-girlfriend. And that's the end of the film. There are several more subplots as well I have failed to mention, there's so much going on in the hour and forty minute run-time that it would be hard to describe everything in order without watching it several times.

Overall I thought the film was dark and surreal, it was also extremely funny. The problem with it was that they had a natural ending half-way through, but they continued as they needed to get four episodes-worth of material out of it so they can air it on Comedy Central. The result, and this happened with Bender's Big Score too, is that it outstayed its welcome by introducing new plot elements. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it though. I'm beginning to prefer Futurama as a film series than a TV series. The writers just need to learn how to write for 100 minutes, not 4 x 25 minutes.

Rating: 7/10

[MalaCloudy Black]

Isn't Yivo voiced by David Cross?

[Future-Shock]

Yes Yivo is David Cross

[Evafreak]

Just my own thoughts on it used the tags so not to ruin it for anyone that hasn't seen it yet

Spoiler: Click here to view

I'd say the first film was alot better than this one no amount of Bender could make up for how wishy washy Fry was instead of his usual self though having the Professor and Wernstrom together again was pure gold.