Bender's Game official review thread

Topic: Shadow Realm Note

Users: @Graham @SuzyQ Beb Chris gkscotty|CoH

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[Enhas]

I just watched it today and I agree with what has been said.  The movie was good (better than the prevoius two, in my opinion), but the whole third act was weak and served little purpose other than to have a reason to parody Lord of the Rings.

So far, none of the movies have been as good as the series.  I've also noticed that:

a) They're all focusing on Bender, almost too much
b) They like to revisit locations and characters from previous episodes

Here's hoping that Movie #4 is better than the last three.  Also, "Toadsworth" and "Toadberg" are easily the best things to make with the DNA Machine. 

[Stretch Dude]

I just finished watching it myself, and I loved it. I agree wholeheartedly with everyone on the pre-fantasy bits, but I actually disagree on the fantasy part itself. I liked it, and thought it was fairly funny. I haven't been exposed to too many LOTR spoofs, so that might've helped. I dunno.

[Wilde Grey Yonder]

What can I say? I enjoyed this more than the previous two films. I'd say ca 2/3 of it (up to ca

Spoiler (hover to show)

the revelation of Nibbler)

was show quality, and the last third let it down. I'd probably rank this the same as "Beast with a Billion Backs", only better because it had fewer morally objectionable elements and less rampant OOC-ness.

Some rambling and unstructured comments below.

Spoiler (hover to show)

I was a bit underwhelmed that they used the same "the ship flies into the screen and ends up in an animated world" gag as in the previous movie, but the "Yellow Submarine" was pretty and funny, so I warmed to it. Nice to see a lot of one-off characters. Oh, and the title is great, of course.

I mean what I say about the start being show quality. Sal, the demolition derby, Bender getting into D&D, all very nice moments. The asylum scenes were hilarious (and yay, Roberto! He's one of my favourite minor characters). I liked the psychiatrist (I can't remember if he was in "Insane in the Mainframe". If not, he's the first movies-only character I consider classic. EDIT: I'm informed that he was, and thus isn't.

I got my wish: more scenes focusing on the kids! I've never played D&D, but those scenes felt true to life.

There was also a marked lack of gross-out jokes compared to previous films: OK, there were quite a few, but at least this time they just *talked* about it, rather than, say, showing someone eating Fry's over-saccharine blood on a pancake. The only gross-out joke that felt actually gratuitous was Zoidberg cutting a hole into the Professor's abdomen. This isn't Season 11 Simpsons, people.  Even so, that wasn't too bad.

I've never really cared for Mom's sons, but they were *good* in this one. Their Three Stooges antics were laugh-out-loud funny. "I was an owl exterminator!" And the revelation about Igner (even though I saw it coming a bit) was the one thing in this film that actually touched me emotionally. Particularly their clever plot in the end. That's not a problem, really: while the previous two films had their dramatic sides, this one was very clearly a pure comedy/action frolic. And what's wrong with that?

Characterisation was good (barring the Cornwood sequence, which was fairly caricatural, as has been mentioned). Leela understandably spent a bit too much time being angry (irony!), but not overly so. I think Bender was the true star of this one. Liked the Professor, too. He was the other true star. Mom made a good villain (yeah yeah, you know what I mean).

And finally, we know why the Professor hates Wernstrom so much!

Just generally, plenty of funny stunts and one-off gags.

And now, the downsides.

WTF... Nibbler's just back? Without any fuss? OK, so they did have Fry make the "you forgot to wipe our memories" line, which mollified me a bit, but still, that bugged me. And while at the subject, Zoidberg's parents are dead, dammit! I know that was just a random joke, but if the writers don't bother to stick to *their own* canon, what's the point?

The Nibbler farm backstory bothered me, for some reason. It didn't have any continuity errors (that I noticed, at least!), and it was nice to get a bit of filling-in on what happened on Vergon-6, even though that was hardly news, but... I just had no idea that millions of Nibblonians were supposed to have gone missing. I just assumed they all lived on Eternium. It all felt so... random, I guess.

Some jokes just fell flat. No bad writing, just... not up to the sharpness I used to expect from Futurama.

Ah, the fantasy plot. As a LotR parody, it wasn't as awful as I feared, but nor was it particularly inspired. Nice character designs (love the three sons as demons!), some good jokes, and I was pleasantly surprised at the lack of bad fantasy webcomic elements (you know, the transgender centaur ones). The satire of the Noble Pacifists/"I'll never fight again" plot elements was nice, but went on a bit too long. I was half expecting them to do a Terry Goodkind parody and have Leela slaughter all the centaurs like the hippies they are. Heh.

I wasn't so bothered by Amy's sluttiness, because, let's face it, that wasn't "our" Amy. The Cornwood characters were all fairly flat, as has been mentioned.

Officer 1BDI neatly outlines all the problems I have with the Cornwood section, its reality/unreality and the way the characters perceived it, so I won't repeat it here. In general, I think it could have benefitted from some more intellectual writing, making it an overt mirror image of the real world (the way they seemed to be going with Mom making her speech about Igner in both worlds). Surely they could have cut some of the excrement jokes and dwarf-eating to make room for that.

Honestly, it wasn't awful, but when the highlight of a "Lord of the Rings"/D&D/generic fantasy parody is a spoof of the Most Parodied "Star Wars" Scene of All Time, that's a bit weak. (And yes, I mean it, the "Star Wars" parody was the highlight of this film for me. I don't know whether that reflects poorliest on me or on the film.)

The very very end was... words fail me. I'd be a bit interested to find out how they're going to deal with that problem in the next film, but I'm willing to bet real money that they'll be retconning it. Again.

All in all, I thought this was superior to the first two films. But it had a lot of missed opportunities.

And now we know Morbo's full name!

[Wilde Grey Yonder]

A few additional comments (well, one, to be precise): after the first two films being so closely linked, this one really seemed to take place in a vacuum. No pun intended.

Spoilers for "Beast with a Billion Backs" as well:

Spoiler (hover to show)

I didn't mind the *complete absence* of Fry/Leela romance (in fact, it was more than a bit of a relief), but it felt kind of odd to imagine that Fry would simply have dropped it. I guess the plot just didn't call for it, and kudos to the writers for not shoehorning it in. I was, however, a bit disappointed that there was no mention of the Amy/Kif breakup. I guess the plot simply didn't address it. (I'm still holding out hope that they'll get back together in the fourth film. Yes, I can be a shipper, too!) But the completely unfanfared return of Nibbler just made it feel like this was a completely new, I don't know, continuum. And I still don't see any way in hell that they won't retcon that ending.

EDIT: Forgot to say this, but I bet they'll never refer to Igner's parentage again, either.

[Shockwave]

Saw it a few days ago, but thought I'd let it settle for a while before making any comments.

I have to say, I enjoyed this one a lot. I thought BWaBB was better than BBS, and this in turn was better than both of them. This felt closer to the show both in terms of style and quality than the other two, as well as humour and characterisation. While I agree the Cornwood stuff wasn't as good as the stuff that came before it, I still found it fairly entertaining, even if some of the jokes were weak (I have to say I got a kick out of The Morcs, the knife commercial parody and reference to Ralph Bakshi's LotR). It kind of felt like an Anthology of Interest segment more than anything. Actually, this movie's main letdown I feel was the amount of jokes that felt like Jean-ara Simpsons humour (e.g. the dog makeup and Dixi Chicks gags), but there were enough good jokes to drown the bad ones.

I felt characterisation here was a lot better overall. While I can see what people mean when it comes to Leela in particular, but given the circumstances I didn't have much of a problem with it (she had a shock collar, of course she was going to become constantly angry when she kept getting shocked). I felt she began to get somewhat over-the-top when attacking Monster Zoidberg, but her feeling awful about it a minute afterwards placated me mostly. I basically consider everything with regards to Cornwood to be alternate representations of their characters, and thus I can understand the writers taking some liberties and twisting the characterisations in this case. I had no problems with the characters outside of the Cornwood stuff. Besides, when it comes to Leela, it's not as if the writers of the show, as well as The Simpsons or pretty much everything else, haven't written episodes before that focus on one major aspect of a character before.

This movie felt a little more natural too. Less to be confused and insulted about, an overall better pace and not as many moments and jokes that simply felt like callbacks and references for the sake of it. Things like Pazuzu's cameo in BWaBB just felt clumsy and forced, for example. There wasn't any of that here. Dr. Perceptron and Roberto's return felt far more natural, for instance.

Oh, and I have to give mention to one of my favourite moments: George Takei's comment in the demolition derby. Good to see Enterprise getting the ribbing it deserves. Rich Little's return was (aside from the lame Dixi Chicks gag) and nice callback too. I also loved Morbo's moments, seeing the LEGO ship take on a Mechano version of the Eagle from Space 1999, the "Scary Door" episode, and the many D&D references. That said, I wish there had been more of them and a few more subtle ones laid in the background. Mom's sons also shined here, as did the Professor.

I have to add, the science and explanation behind the existence of the crystals and the dark matter was rather similar to that of the crystals and the tough metal in my UoM fanfic. Just weirded me out is all. 

As for the ending, I have to say I felt it jarred and came across as a little rushed and lame. Kind of a let-down really, from what was for the most part a successful, funny and well-written film. I'm wondering if the next film will just ignore the end entirely and we'll just see the crew and everybody else flying around as normal, whether they'll come up with a quick explanation with regards to a new fuel/reverting to an old fuel, or whether Farnsworth or somebody else will simply just reanimate the properties of the dark matter again.

Overall, it's not as good as the series for the most part, but I definitely think that it's the closest yet. If the next film is as good as the first two thirds of this one, I'll be very pleased.

[Wilde Grey Yonder]

This movie felt a little more natural too. Less to be confused and insulted about, an overall better pace and not as many moments and jokes that simply felt like callbacks and references for the sake of it. Things like Pazuzu's cameo in BWaBB just felt clumsy and forced, for example. There wasn't any of that here. Dr. Perceptron and Roberto's return felt far more natural, for instance.

You're perfectly right! The fact that I didn't remark on that at all just shows how much this film did right.

OMG, a Space 1999 ref... I didn't get it, unfortunately (I've only seen one episode of that show, but I loved it in all its ultra-cheesy glory). That's great!

EDIT: Meccano Space 1999? What's next, Lego Star Wars?

[coralbella]

I totally agree, also have u tried the Bender's Game? This widget has a Genetics Lab Game that allows you to combine two Futurama characters together to create a new character.

 http://www.ilovebender.com/widget/

 

[gkscotty]

I totally agree, also have u tried the Bender's Game? This widget has a Genetics Lab Game that allows you to combine two Futurama characters together to create a new character.

 http://www.ilovebender.com/widget/

 

I'm not sure why you felt the need to spam this message in three threads, but please don't do it again.