Futurama: Into The Wild Green Yonder

As ever with the Futurama DVDs there is the enjoyable group commentary with the creators Matt Groening and David X Cohen, among others. As ever, fun as they are, it can be a little hard going listening to so many people, but still there are some great impersonations and talk about the future of Futurama and Seth Macfarlane’s contribution to the film.

Featurettes Docuramarama is a fun and silly fake making of the show, while “Louder, Louder!” features Penn Jillette talking about his voice acting. The best of the mini featurettes, though, is Matt Groening and David X Cohen In Space, playing like a family video of their experience on a Zero G flight; somehow the sight of lots of grown men floating around a plane is very funny, who knew?

For aspiring animators there is a treasure trove of material. The 10-minute mini doc How To Draw Futurama In 10 Very Difficult Steps shows the animators drawing several of the characters and illustrates (ha, I couldn’t resist) just how talented these behind the scenes people are. Similarly, the 3D models with commentary by Scott Vanzo and director Peter Avanzino show the level of detail necessary in creating some of the effects. Also included is an animatic of the first part of Into The Wild Green Yonder, which may be insightful for professionals but won’t please everybody – still, it is good addition for those interested in the process.

Elsewhere on the DVD is a selection of deleted scenes in varying states of animation, a couple of fun but pointless mini animations, mostly made up of recycled clips from other Futurama episodes (Bender’s Movie Theatre Etiquette and Zapp Brannigan’s Guide To Making At A Woman) and a quite charming easter egg. Overall, this is a fun DVD but, interestingly, not as good as the other Futurama movie DVDs, lacking anything to match the quality of the extras Everyone Loves Hypnotoad and the Lost Episode.