DVD Review: Futurama: The Beast With A Billion Backs
Published June 24, 2008
This DVD is loaded with extras:
Commentary: feature-length audio commentary by creator Matt Groening, executive producer David X. Cohen, voice actors Billy West, John DiMaggio, Maurice LaMarche, co-writer Michael Rowe, and producers Claudia Katz, Peter Avanzino, and Lee Supercinski. This was a fun track packed with trivia, reflective annotations, and general silliness. The commentary is as entertaining as the movie if not slightly more so."Futurama: The Lost Adventure" — this was an animated "episode" pieced together from the 2003 Xbox game. And there’s even a commentary option for the episode as well with Groening, Cohen, West, DiMaggio, LaMarche, Rowe, Supercinski, and writer J. Stewart Burns. Just like the movie the commentary has it trivia, fun and downright silliness.
We next have "Storyboard Animatic: The Beast With A Billion Backs, Part One" where we get to see the first quarter of the film in a sketch format, and you see and hear alternate takes and scenes.
There are six very short (under four minutes) deleted scenes, some of which can be seen in the storyboard animatics section. Unfortunately there’s no commentary which might have provided insight as to why the scenes were cut.
Rounding out the features are five short production features including:
- "Meet Yivo!" This was a featurette with David Cross who discusses his character.
- "Blooperama: The Futurama Cast At 'Work'" shows the members of the cast stumbling over their lines while at the microphones recording their dialogue.
- "3-D Model Gallery" show the progress of several object and background design
- "A Brief History Of Deathball" — this also shows the progress of how the game was developed for the movie.
- The best of these short featurettes is a preview for Bender's Game, which is the third Futurama direct-to-DVD movie which comes out this holiday season and I must say, based on the two minute preview, this looks better than the first two direct-to-DVD movies.
All in all, Futurama: The Beast With A Billion Backs gives us the canceled-too-soon show back in a new movie and isn’t that what Futurama fans want?
- DVD Review: Futurama: The Beast With A Billion Backs
- Published: June 24, 2008
- Type: Review
- Section: Video
- Filed Under: Video: SF, Video: Comedy, Video: Animation, Video: Television
- Writer: Blake Matthews
- Blake Matthews's BC Writer page
- Blake Matthews's personal site
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I love Futurama. It's way better than most other cartoon comedy, including the awesome Family Guy.