I watched the new Futurama dvd tonight and I found myself suprisingly excited about it. So excited that I couldn't sleep. Since I'm up anyway, I thought I'd share some random observations about the movie's in-jokes as well as errors, ect....
First off, let me say that while a few jokes seem to try too hard, as a whole the film is quite funny. There are cameo's from virtually every re-occurring character in the show, so many, in fact that it's simpler to list which one's aren't in the film (which I'll get to later). Many of the jokes are so subtle that you won't fully appreciate them unless you've watched the entire series over and over on adult swim (which I'm sure almost everyone around these parts has) so I'll go over those bits as well. Seeing as these thoughts are completely random, I better just divide them into sections and post away!
Criticisms that were actually jokes other's didn't get:
At the beginning Hermees does a role call, making sure to state the name and function of every major character. Some have stated that this is annoying and was only put in to aid those who haven't seen the show before. This is false. While a nice side-effect might be that new viewers get a quick summary, this segment was obviously put in for laughs. The fact that Hermees states his own name should have made this pretty blatent. Part of this joke is also the fact that Amy has long hair at the beginning and immediately has it burned off, returning her to her original look. This is a rib at the fact that several modern shows often have a lot of time pass in their reality when they go on break for the season and the characters are supposedly radically altered (including a spiffy new hair style to boot) only to have everything "rebooted" back to normal within the first few episodes. The season breaks of Heroes and Battlestar Galactica come to mind as prime examples. The new "improved" intro that totally butchers the original visuals and theme is also purposefully bad. When a show is converted to a film generally the soundtrack is butchered and the opening is "enhanced." The cheesey "featuring" shots of the primary characters were a tip to this. Several tv series that were adapted to film had similar "upgrades" and this was a spoof of that. The re-intorduction of scruffy the janitor later in the film is actually a spoof of a spoof on the show. Scruffy was put in the series without warning halfway through without any explaination and with everyone at planet express acting like he was there all along but with dr. farnsworth making sure to state his name and occupation to the camera for no reason. This was originally a spoof of tv shows that have had similar plot holes in the past (like baby nicky on the fresh prince, or dawn from buffy the vampire slayer). The film appearance was a spoof of the spoof, again stating his name and occupation.
Characters that did NOT appear:
Some of the characters that didn't appear were for logic's sake. The Omicronian's didn't appear because they aren't from earth and hate earth anyway. Mom and her boys didn't appear because it would be hard to believe that she got swindled, much less that she'd give a big enough crap about earth to do anything anyway. The rest of the niblonian's and the brain creatures didn't appear for obvious reasons.
The robot don and flexo probably didn't make it due to time constraints. The one character notably absent was wornstrum, who would have fit in with the plot nicely. With the exception of the hyper-chicken lawyer and the incompetant human cop, literally everyone else not mentioned at least made a brief appearance, from the "welcome to the future!" guy to the robot devil and everyone in-between. If you missed them then look closer, some are only on the screen for an instant. One appearance that seemed really forced was santa, but my guess is he was included so they'd have an excuse to show quanzabot and the heard about but never seen haunakah zombie.
(Nerd's note: John Goodman originally voiced santa but didn't reprise his role this time. It shows too as the character is noticably less-funny.)
Uber subtle In-jokes:
The opening sequence usually has a random, old, out of circulation, cartoon playing on the view screen the ship crashes into. Since futurama itself has been off the air so long, teh tv series was shown on the screen this time.
Seemore (fry's dog from 2000) is flash-fossilized when bender tries to kill fry above the pizza shop. This explains to nit-picky fans of the show how he was not only flash fossilized, but still in front of the pizza shop in the episode where fry finds the remains of his dog.
The alternate fry's life montage shows him playing bball with his brother Yancey and making an impossible shot off a bird. Note the 7 leaf clover in his pants.
Phillip J Fry 2 (Yancey's son who goes on to be the first man on mars) makes a boyhood appearance.
When nibbler appears on the scene to stop the scammers, his is riding a hamster. In an earlier episode (sorry I forget which) nibbler is featured on a post-card riding a hampster in the same pose with a little cowboy outfit on.
(Nerd's Note: Nibbler is voiced by Frank Welker, who's done voices for literally every cool cartoon created in the past 35 years, with roles ranging from Megatron to Fred and Scooby Doo.)
Fry's calendar is a family guy calender..... one of the other shows to get screwed, cancelled and eventually renewed by fox.
At the end note some of the alternate benders. Pharoah bender (from the episode where they go to the egyptian planet, both the slave version and king version) pirate bender (from the alternate universe episode) and safe-cracking bender make an appearance. Put the clothes of the three benders towards the front together and you get the super-king costume.
The norwhale's name is leeloo. In the episode where fry saves earth from the brain monsters, leala becomes stupid and refers to herself as leeloo.
When fry first becomes jealous of Larz, he makes a note of the fact that larz is devilishly handsome. Quite honestly, if you didn't figure out who larz was by then, you are a tad slow.
In the future battle, Al Gore is shown as a disembodied head with a cape and mounted lasers. This is because in a previous guest appearance, he is introduced as creater of the internet and supreme emperor of the moon.
At the end, nibbler disappears EXACTLY like the brain sphere from a previous episode.
Not so subtle humor:
Al Gore makes several appearances in the film. Jokes about the bush "victory" in 2000 are fairly promenant. Also in 2012 they poke fun at the loss (and the fact that people STILL ignore his important message) by showing him as a cab driver, and then having him complain that with that 100 dollars he could have bought ONE gallon of gas. It should be noted that Gore did the voice himself and he has had a long history with the show, making several guest appearances and even used the global warming informational film, featured in the episode where the gang get a giant block of ice to cool down the planet, in his infamous slide show and his academy award winning film, An Inconvenient Truth. A quick rib at the slideshow is also in there. Mr. Gore was an awful good sport voicing for a character that makes fun of himself so much.
Various star wars references, including the golden death stars, haunkah zombies tie fighter and others.
The horribly out-dated internet scam plot.
The fox executive powder, which is used for some rather demeaning things throughout the film. It should be noted that fox is still notorious for keeping horrible shows on the air and cancelling shows that are either really good, have good ratings, or weren't on the air long enough to have had a chance. Notable recent examples are Stacked (Who in their right mind green-lit that POS?), and Drive, which was cancelled after 3, count em, 3 episodes.
The owl at the beginning....... a blatent harry potter rip-off and part of the "long break" gag I mentioned earlier.
Errors?
In the 2000 time confusion sequences, we should have seen yet another fry hiding under the desk and nibbler. This comes from yet another episode where fry saves the universe from the brain creatures and travels back in time, in which we discover that nibbler, and then himself are responsible for his freezing. This was probably cut out so that viewers heads wouldn't explode from thought, but still....
It is explained that the DOOM factor is caused by time travel and any being created by a time paradox is "doomed." First off, we know this to be false. In the episode where fry goes back to the roswell crash, he becomes his own grandpa, thus making his very existance a paradox, which created his mal-formed brain, which allows him to save the universe on a few occasions.
Fry is very quick to abandon Seemore in the past sequences. This seems very unlikely.
Phillip J Fry 2 is named after fry when he disappears in his memory. Since fry doesn't disappear (at least not until after Fry 2 is born) it seems odd he'd still be named after him.
A frozen bender unit would have drawn attention in previous episodes where they visited the cryo-center, particularly in that short stint where bender and fry worked there.
The time bubble is supposed to be paradox proof, yet the bender tattoo comes into existance by means of a paradox. Nobody makes, it... it is simply removed from the dead fry's butt. This means the knowldege came from nowhere. Knowing the writers though, this might have been an intentional rib at scifi time-travel episodes in general.
Mom is ignored in the film. Seeing as how she owns practically the whole planet this doesn't seem right. It'd be unlikely that she'd get swindled and if she did she would be the one leading the assault at the end seeing as how she's all spiteful and crap. The only explaination is that she sold her assetts to the swindlers, which also seems unlikely.
The mona lisa is featured as one of the stolen treasures. While it is definately worth something, it isn't worth much seeing as how fry buys it for skeet shooting in a previous episode where he gets rich. For that matter, if something is stolen early in history then how can it be worth anything? The paradox free gimmick is supposed to solve this, but we've already blasted holes in it.
When they are all kicked out why don't they go live with amy's parents on mars? They are loaded ya know.
At the beginning, there's a rib about them being fired two years ago, paralleling the cancellation of the show and leading to the "executive powder" jokes. The problem with that is that its been FOUR years since the show was cancelled. Why do they keep saying two?
Well that's it...... hope it was worth the look for you!
I'm sure I've missed a ton of jokes/bloopers/ect... so just add to it if you think of anything.
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