Futurama Returns!

Random BedHead Ed writes "Good news everyone! After a five year vanishing act the sci-fi spoof Futurama returned this week with a direct-to-DVD feature. Wired has an article about its return, including the story of the show's origins, a behind the scenes gallery, interviews with creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen, and some interesting trivia. For example, did you know the ship has an overbite like a Simpson's character? Or that the show's title is taken from an exhibition at the 1939 Worlds Fair?." We just talked about this a bit the other day, too, in reference to a great interview on TVSquad.

I downloaded it

[neoform]

I admit, I downloaded it, but I'm definitely buying it first chance I get simply because the sales of the movies are what could possibly bring back the series..

To watch and to buy

[adona1]

There is a review here [theage.com.au] of the new DVD. The general gist is that it's good - like an extended episode - but doesn't come across as a feature length movie. Needless to say, most of /. will probably download it and make their own minds up, but agreeing with posts above - if you like it, spend the handful of dollars and ensure that more gets made. It's worked before [wikipedia.org].

Re:Great show, decent movie

[nomadic]

One thing I've realized about Futurama is that, unlike most "adult cartoons," it actually has a lot of heart. The episodes about Fry's brother, his dog, Lela's parents, and of course the whole Lela and Fry subplot are quite sweet, and you it actually give a crap about the loserish characters.

In the end I think that's what makes Futurama past the Simpsons in terms of quality.

Re:Great show, decent movie

[Unoriginal Nick]

The episodes about Fry's brother, his dog,...

I have all the DVDs, and I still watch the repeats on Adult Swim once in a while, but I'll never watch "Jurassic Bark" again. Saddest. Ending. EVER.

Re:Forget the DVD!

[EvilMonkeySlayer]

To take a slightly more serious note on piracy/copyright infringement. As soon as I heard the Futurama dvd was coming out this November I asked for it to be bought as a christmas present, however a few days ago I discovered it was coming out in November in the USA. I'm in the UK here, and it actually comes out on dvd sometime in 2008.
It doesn't take many guesses for what I did and no, it wasn't flown over my magic carpet...

We'll see if in 2008 I still have the impetus to buy it when it comes out, considering the nature of the internet and how it's stupidly easy to get this kind of stuff nowadays I wish companies would wake up and start doing their releases simultaneous or near simultaneously worldwide. (especially when they're in the same damn language with the only difference of one being NTSC format and the other PAL)

Re:Forget the DVD!

[AbRASiON]

Couldn't agree more, with the way the internet works the world has changed, region coding is fucking stupid (especially for games consoles) and releasing TV shows and movies later (by a large degree) often just costs them sales.

1 week is fine but months or more? their loss.

I bought the dvd the day it came out

[kithrup]

I was rather disappointed with it. It had some funny moments, for sure, but for the most part, we were bored. Maybe we had too-high expectations (Godfellas is my favourite episode, and we'd just watched it on Cartoon Network), but it was just... enh. Not really bad, but not particularly good. Not something that would make me want to bring the series back from the dead.

Re:Forget the DVD!

[networkBoy]

Also, how much does the format matter anymore?
I can play PAL or NTSC (never tried NTSC-J, but it should work, and SECAM doesn't work) on my TV and it doesn't give a shit, just plays (PAL forms a border on the top and bottom). I'm in the US and I assume this isn't the norm here, but in the UK with SCART, doesn't NTSC work, albeit with a touch of overscan?
-nB

Re:Forget the DVD!

[Kazzahdrane]

As a massive Futurama fan who greatly looked forward to buying each season on DVD on release date, I empathise completely. Not having even a confirmation that there will EVER be a Region 2 release boggles the mind (AFAIK, perhaps a R2 release has been confirmed recently?). The funny thing is that all 4 DVD seasons came out here in Europe before North America, apparently because the show had such a big European fanbase so it was a good testing ground.

Like you, I resorted to other means to watch this first movie, something I (almost) never do on principle. I believe that good work should be paid for, but I wasn't willing to wait possibly over a year to then find out I'd just need to import anyway. I'll definitely be buying the DVD if it's ever released in R2 though, not because I thought the film was amazingly good, but because the Futurama DVD commentaries were always fantastic and very very funny.

Re:The Secret to Futurama's success

[matthewsmalley]

Subtle, or just aimed at a fairly niche audience?

Re:I downloaded it

[lucas teh geek]

thanks for the offer, but no thanks. I'm fully aware I could import it myself from umpteen different sites but it's an unnecessary hassle. companies who make their customers jump through hoops end up losing customers.

Re:Forget the DVD!

[Anonymous Coward]

If the only difference in releases was the encoding, I would be a hapy customer.

But when I (a region 4 person) find out that most of the DVDs I have bought over the years come without all the many extras on USA (and Japanese) releases... well, then I'm a pissed off customer.

I just can't work out why extras on DVDs differ so much by region. It isn't a case of music release rights, because most of these extras just don't have music like that in it - I'm talking about things like behind-the-scenes documentaries, minidocs, commentaries etc.

Compared to the minefield of trying to work out which DVD region offers the better purchase for a fan (even ignoring the multiple version release scam), a difference in release dates between countries seems minor :)

Re:Great show, decent movie

[zolaar]

Seconded.

That episode made me cry, and just thinking about it now made my eyes well up. No joke.

Re:Great show, decent movie

[pak9rabid]

I agree. I don't normally get emotional during a movie/show, but gd..everytime I see that I wanna start bawling.

Re:I bought the dvd the day it came out

[brogdon]

"I was rather disappointed with it. It had some funny moments, for sure, but for the most part, we were bored."

I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt that way. It seems like they were trying to hard with the writing, and adding too many subplots to a movie that already has some complicated time-travel stuff going on seemed like a mistake.

I would imagine the fact that they plan to cut each movie up into four discrete episodes [tvsquad.com] in order to air them on Comedy Central is responsible for some of these issues. I wish they had either chosen to do them as episodes alone or as just a movie. It's too much to ask of your writers, otherwise.