Futurama: The Beast With A Billion Backs

After setting a high benchmark with the wonderful DVD for Benders Big Score, the Futurama team faced a challenge with The Beast With A Billion Backs and though they have tried admirably, this doesn’t have anything to match the full-length episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad on the last disc.

Perhaps the most interesting extra here is the inclusion of Futurama: The Lost Adventure, an episode made from cut scenes of the Futurama video game, written and voiced by the regular Futurama crew. With an animation style described as “3D, sort of”, it pushes all the right humour buttons and holds together quite respectably as an episode, though there is in-game footage to complete the narrative arc.

As with all the previous Futurama DVDs, The Beast With A Billion Backs gets the group commentary treatment (Matt Groening, David X Cohen, Billy West, et al) and is frequently hilarious. Among the amusing voices and jovial fun of the commentary there is information about the hidden jokes and references, the interesting fact that Matt Groening hates when cartoon characters cry, and some news about the third Futurama DVD movie (for those who can’t wait until the next Futurama film there is a two-minute sneak preview on this disc, but be warned, a lot of plot points are exposed).

As with other Futurama commentaries, sometimes voices get lost in the mix and it can be hard to focus when there are many people talking, but this commentary is never less than fun and Billy West’s impression of Paris Hilton in a jar is priceless. The Lost Adventure is also accompanied by a funny group commentary, which addresses the differences in writing for video games and the so-so critical response the game received.

There are five deleted/extended scenes, mostly in a storyboard or animatic state, all of which are very funny; it’s interesting to see a death of a character was cut from the movie. The 20-minute storyboard animatic covers the first part of the movie and though of most interest to animators or filmmakers, it illustrates the work needed to make an animation. The short (two to four-minute) featurettes are a mixture of fun and the informative. The David Cross featurette shows him eating popcorn and voicing his character. Blooperama shows the voice cast in action and is a bit surreal without the animation. The featurettes about the 3D Models and the Death Ball design are dry but educational.