Futurama: Bender’s Game – Blu-ray Disc Review

November 1, 2008 – 2:46 PM --- by: Justin Sluss

Tags: Billy West, Bonus View, David X. Cohen, FOX, John Di Maggio, Katey Sagal, Matt Groening

has an average rating of 7.5 on IMDb
1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a 50gb disc
DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio
include Video Commentary via Bonus View
–
– 2008
– 87 minutes
– FOX
–
This uses 22.1GB for the movie out of 30GB total.

Overall Verdict – Recommended

Buy it for $27.95 @ Amazon.com

— Review written by: Justin Sluss —

Trailer:

The Movie Itself is the third direct-to-video motion picture release for the hit FOX animated series “Futurama” created by Matt Groening — best known for “The Simpsons“. The first two films were “Futurama: Bender’s Big Score” (2007) and “Futurama: The Beast with A Billion Backs” (2008). This makes two “Futurama” films coming out in the same year, with this coming out at year end almost. Plus, according to the sneak peek trailer included in the bonus materials and an IMDb listing, FOX plans to release yet another “Futurama” direct-to-video release in 2009. That film will be called “Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder” and will be discussed a tad bit more below in the bonus materials section. Now that I’ve got all the previous and even upcoming films in the series out of the way I can actually start to tell you a bit about this, the third installment.

“Futurama: Bender’s Game” has two real agendas here. First off it’s making a statement about the dependency we have on corporate oil companies. Most importantly though it’s just an all-out spoof on films like “Lord of the Rings” and the whole “Dungeons & Dragons” scene of comic book nerds and such. Which by no way is to be dealt as insult from me or the writers of said film. It’s just funny to see a parody of these sort of things mixed in with a political agenda / message of sorts that is in good nature as well as downright hilarious.

Overall, I certainly have to say Matt Groening and David X. Cohen have continued to keep the show and especially their direct-to-video films fresh over the years and never lose their footing in today’s society. Fans of the show and previous home video releases are going to be extremely pleased with this film. At the time of writing this the IMDb rating is at 9.7 with only a few handfuls of votes so far. It looks like the fans are liking it and I speak as one myself. Last I’d like to mention some of the folks who worked a great deal on this. The Director and Voice Actors. First off, great job on behalf of Dwayne Carey-Hill who Directed the film. Next, great jobs as always for the voice cast which includes Katey Sagal, Lauren Tom, Billy West, Phil LaMarr, John Di Maggio, Frank Welker and Tress MacNeille to just name off some regulars.

Video Quality on this release is in full 1080p using the AVC MPEG-4 codec on a BD-50 (50 gigabyte Blu-ray Disc) and presented in the 1.78:1 aspect ratio. First off, this runs at an average bitrate of 35Mbps in the AVC codec. With that being said, I’m sure most of you would expect this to hold no compression problems — especially when you take the BD-50 configuration and 87 minute runtime into consideration. Animated material like this and FOX’s previous Blu-ray Disc release of “The Simpsons Movie” simply makes me smile. It’s flawless and holds excellent black level that is vital to the outlines of the characters, objects and so forth. A perfectly bright color palette is present that delivers some beautiful visuals throughout. The contrast and brightness, speaking of which seem to be perfect as well and deliver the presentation as the creators intended. Plus you have the blend of 3-D computer generated animation with traditional animation which always is a treat to see in Hi-Def. Obviously no signs of digital noise filters like DNR or Edge Enhancement because there’s no need for them. The creators can handle that stuff when making the film itself, obviously more-so than traditional live-action film. “Futurama: Bender’s Game” earns a perfect “5 Star Rating” for video quality. Fans will be more than pleased with this release, for that reason especially.

Audio Quality on this release is presented in DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio. First off and most important to mention is that dialogue which is vital to “Futurama” is delivered very distinctly here in the lossless DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio mix. Primarily making use of the front center as well as left and right channels but sometimes having some slight pan throughout the 5.1 soundscape. The real use of the rear channel and bass presence in the 5.1 soundscape is made up of Christopher Tyng’s original musical Score and the excellent sound effects. Not really a whole lot you’d expect to hear here to compete with a Hollywood Blockbuster motion picture so it should come as no surprise this doesn’t come close to “blowing you away” in terms of sound. It does however earn a very decent “3.5 Star Rating” for overall audio quality. I have no complaints here but no overflowing amount of praise either.

Bonus Materials are presented in both 480i/p Standard Definition and 1080i/p High Definition video. The Standard Def (SD) is using MPEG-2 codec and the Hi-Def (HD) is using the AVC MPEG-4 codec for video. Sound typically is in the Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo @224kbps codec but some featurettes are in Dolby Digital 5.1 @448kbps. Since the variety of video as well as audio quality, I’ll be noting what each feature or featurette is in beside the runtime or in the description below.

• 4 Collectible Postcards featuring some artwork from the film and hand drawn by Matt Groening. These can be purchased online in full size for a pretty expensive price in the $200-500 range. Still cool to see any type of included physical bonus material included.
• Audio Commentary by Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Billy West, John DiMaggio, Tress MacNeille, Michael Rowe, Claudia Katz and Dwayne Carey-Hill

• Video Commentary using Bonus View with Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Billy West, John DiMaggio, Tress MacNeille, Michael Rowe, Claudia Katz and Dwayne Carey-Hill. This proves to be really informative and full of spontaneity throughout. The guys and girls even mention that this is their first Video Commentary for Blu-ray Disc and seem to know what the format is. Fans will definitely want to give this a watch if they’re on a “Profile 1.1” capable Blu-ray Disc Player that can do Bonus View.
• “Storyboard Animatic” (22 minutes – SD) gives you an early look at what the storyboard to the opening of the film looked like in the planning stages.
• “Futurama Genetics Lab” (HD) allows you to crossbreed your favorite characters. This feature appears to be using BD-J (Java) and is presented in full 1080i/p Hi-Def video quality. While it may prove fun for a few minutes, I’ll go as far as to say that even die-hard fans of “Futurama” will likely spend at the most 5 minutes here. I mean honestly. It only has so many possibilities of characters to merge together. You have a total of six characters to “merge”. You eventually could start thinking up the parody name and appearances you get as a result about halfway through.
• “D & D & F (Dungeons & Dragons & Futurama)” (7 minutes – HD) has D&D writers discussing their influences on Futurama. Probably something the average viewer will want to honestly skip. This also for some reason gets Dolby Digital 5.1 audio treatment which I felt that was worth noting — as well as questioning the choice to do so.
• “How to Draw Futurama in 83 Easy Steps” (8 minutes – HD) has some of the artists that worked on the film, like the Assistant Director who starts off by teaching us how to draw “Zoidberg“.
• “3-D Models with Animator Discussion” (5 minutes – HD) is pretty self-explanatory with it’s title. You’ll hear the animators that 3-D computer generated (CG) models discuss lots of wire frames here of the 3-D models, for instance of the spaceship our main characters travel in and the others in the “mash-up derby” competition in the film. Fans will enjoy this.
• “Geysers of Gynex” (1 minute – SD) is a hidden “EASTER EGG” I found on the 2nd page of the Bonus Materials (“Features“) menu. Hit “Next” on the first page, then hit the right directional button on your Blu-ray Disc Player’s remote control to discover the hidden featurette. This gives you some behind-the-scenes footage of voice actors’ recording booth sessions. Some bloopers and screw ups can be found here. Worth a watch for a short laugh. No clue why they decided to make it a hidden feature and I know I probably misspelled the title of it.
• “Deleted Scene” is included called “Cup or Nozzle?” (1 minute – HD). This is in excellent video quality even if it is only one scene and not fully rendered with color and a full frame rate. The joke added here isn’t really all that funny so it’s easy to see why it was left on the “cutting room floor”.
• “Blooperama 2: Outtakes from Bender’s Game” (2 minutes – HD) are pretty funny and worth the watch — even if they are short in length. The voice actors themselves are quite animated in the recording booth.
• “Bender’s Anti-Piracy Warning” (1 minute – HD) receives full Dolby Digital 5.1 treatment which it makes good use of — WRONG! This actually proves to be worth a laugh though.
• “Into the Wild Green Yonder Sneak Peek” (1 minute – HD) gives you a glimpse the next film (fourth) in the “Futurama” direct-to-video series. This gets full Dolby Digital 5.1 sound treatment which is nice and actually justified.
• “7 – Elven” (1 minute – HD) is a hidden “EASTER EGG” I found on the 3rd page of the Bonus Materials (“Features“) menu. Hit “Next” on the first and second page, then hit the right directional button on your Blu-ray Disc Player’s remote control to discover the hidden featurette. Once it starts you get the title “Futurama Top Secret Feature: David X. Cohen’s Dodecahedron Collection!“. For those of you who actually went outside when they were young and didn’t play “Dungeons & Dragons“, a dodecahedron is a twelve-sided dice used to play the game. Co-Creator and Writer for the “Futurama” TV series and films, David X. Cohen certainly played his fair share of D&D growing up and has since put together a massive collection of dice. Pretty cool easter egg for the real die-hard dorks out there.

Overall the the bonus materials here are pretty nice, especially the addition of the Video Commentary in Bonus View featuring the cast and crew members. All I will say I felt was lacking was a Digital Copy of the film to put on my iPod Touch when I go on trips. Aside from that one rant this proves to be a nice bonus material package and will please fans. Keep in mind you will need “Profile 1.1” capable Blu-ray Disc Player to see the Bonus View enabled Video Commentary. Hats off to FOX for having the guts to do this, I hope the next film gets the same treatment.

Blu-ray Disc packaging:

Screenshots:

NOTE: The full-sized 1920×1080 files are in a .PNG file format and uncompressed. Bare with the slow loading times, keep in mind these files are at least 1MB (1 megabyte) in size each.

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