The LAST Futurama News Thread... Forever? (Caution: Spoilers)

[Reply #80 on:]

That was probably the funniest preview clip so far. Looking forward to that episode now.

totpd

[Reply #81 on:]

Well that explains the "Tones" part of the title.

[Reply #82 on:]

Bender and his answering machine bit was pretty damn funny!

[Reply #83 on:]

Interview with Lauren Tom.

[Reply #84 on:]

At least everyone making Futurama seem to be hoping it coming back... (duh?)

Leela and the Genestalk: Leela discovers a secret genetic engineering facility after a rare condition causes her to grow tentacles.
Game of Tones: The crew seeks the meaning of a strange alien melody by taking a journey into Fry's dreams.

Game of Tones sounds very interesting. It's one of the episodes I'm anticipating most.

[Reply #85 on:]

New episode in 20 minutes. Hopefully Josh Weinstein can write this as good as he did for his 2 episodes last year.

[Reply #86 on:]

New episode in 20 minutes. Hopefully Josh Weinstein can write this as good as he did for his 2 episodes last year.

Honestly, I think "A Farewell to Arms" has some of the worst writing in the show's history.

The writing for TTT turned out fine though, at least in my opinion.

[Reply #87 on:]

I really liked last season. The only eps I didn't really like was Naturama. Butterjunk was meh, not real bad. The rest of the episodes were fine though. Nothing memorable, but pretty much just good episodes. And that's what I liked about last season. Hopefully this season will have some memorable eps. I'm hoping what David said about the season getting better particularly around the end is true. That'd be awesome.

After rewatching 2D Blacktop and Big Fling some more, I really got bored with them. No, I didn't watch them nonstop or anything. I'm talking about the reruns that aired after the ep, when I downloaded it off of iTunes, and when I saw it before T:TT. It feels like something was missing, something that usually keeps me watching. I don't know what though! Hope they fix that with upcoming episodes.

[Reply #88 on:]

Honestly, I think "A Farewell to Arms" has some of the worst writing in the show's history.

Really? I'd grant that it perhaps has some of the worst plotting in the show's history--though, admittedly, I was never all that bothered by the arm-ripping thing; I find it much more annoying that "Viva Mars Vegas" refuses to acknowledge at all how Mars got back to its rightful place in the solar system--but in terms of gags and characterization, I'd say it's one of the best episodes of the new run. My status as a shipper is probably biasing me horribly here, but I'd take "A Farewell to Arms" over about 75% of episodes from seasons six and seven any day.

[Reply #89 on:]

They uploaded that clip from "Forty Percent Leadbelly" to YouTube.

Futurama: Make-O-Matic

[Reply #90 on:]

Honestly, I think "A Farewell to Arms" has some of the worst writing in the show's history.

Really? I'd grant that it perhaps has some of the worst plotting in the show's history--though, admittedly, I was never all that bothered by the arm-ripping thing; I find it much more annoying that "Viva Mars Vegas" refuses to acknowledge at all how Mars got back to its rightful place in the solar system--but in terms of gags and characterization, I'd say it's one of the best episodes of the new run. My status as a shipper is probably biasing me horribly here, but I'd take "A Farewell to Arms" over about 75% of episodes from seasons six and seven any day.

As far as jokes go, its mostly okay. In fact, I'd go as far as saying the first three quarters are great. But the entire resolution was ridiculous beyond belief. The jumping back to Earth was horribly absurd and it pretty much ruined the episode for me. And the arm-ripping business was also dumb, but for different reasons.

Most of Josh Weinstein's episodes haven't really impressed me, with the exception of "Law and Oracle" and (ironicly) "Viva Mars Vegas".

[Reply #91 on:]

I'm glad it's the end.. each season seems less fun.

[Reply #92 on:]

Most of Josh Weinstein's episodes haven't really impressed me, with the exception of "Law and Oracle" and (ironicly) "Viva Mars Vegas".

Hehe...upon first viewing, I accidently read "Most of Josh Weinstein's episodes HAVE really impressed me, with the exception of "Law and Oracle", and thought "WTF? Really?"

The funny thing is: LaO was in certain aspects more standard sitcom material than many other episodes. They just cut down Fry's whininess, and allowed him to act more competent and successful than before. The "loser REALLY wants something, gets his ass up, and surprisingly findes out that he can be skillful when abandoning his lazyness" is one of the most generic sitcom themes. Yet, "generic" does not always have to mean "bad/boring"

[Reply #93 on:]

Oh netflix...pick up a sad zoidberg...

[Reply #94 on:]

Oh my gosh, I was just rewatching the Futurama Live (wish they could have another one, the first one was great), and something came up:

They said Cubert died Cliff-Diving. I don't know if they were actually joking, or if it's canon. But holy sh**! Why would they even think about doing that?

[Reply #95 on:]

Plotwise, Weinstein seems to write the episodes that completely rip off american sitcoms.

[Reply #96 on:]

http://www.gotfuturama.com/Futurama/News/1372712824,40210,/Ask_David_Anything.html

[Reply #97 on:]

Plotwise, Weinstein seems to write the episodes that completely rip off american sitcoms.

Now now, I think we can all agree that The Route of all Evil had the most sitcom-y plot in the shows history.

[Reply #98 on:]

Everybody head to Reddit for a second. There is something going on that may interest you.

[Reply #99 on:]

–will650
For the show's third supposed series finale are you guys planning something with a little closure like The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings or something more ambigious like Into the Wild Green Yonder?

–DavidXCohen_
I feel like we're starting to get pretty good at writing series finales -- it's a bad sign when you have a lot of experience doing that. We are definitely going for the model of "Epic Sci Fi" blended with "possibly heart breaking emotional story". In that vein I think it's a little closer to "The Devil's Hands" in that we will spend more time on the Fry-Leela angle. As I've mentioned elsewhere, we will actually see Fry and Leela's real, genuine, actual, factual wedding in this one. People get angry with me for saying that because they think I've given too much away, but rest assured that it moves onward and upward and backward and pretty much in all directions from there.

–nitroxyl
Do you intentionally tell your animators to draw in little Easter Eggs in each episode or do your animators do it themselves?

–DavidXCohen_
A mix. Probably about 50-50. We write some into the script, and sometimes they surprise us. Sometimes we mention something in passing, like calling for an "Escher-esque" background, and they go nuts and animate a 3D landscape of rotating gears in an impossible Escher geometry. Also sometimes too they try to sneak things by us. For example in the "Beast with Two Bucks" alien sex shop, which will be appearing again later this season, we didn't notice until the episode was almost done that they had stuck a few too many disturbing alien "toys" in the display cases. We might have managed to erase them in time. Don't look to closely.

... I am to lazy for the rest, I am going to sleep now Goodnight!

[Reply #100 on:]

JDreidel
Hi and thank you for so many hours of my life well spent watching futurama.

One of my favorite aspects of the show is how serious themes and emotions can exist side by side with hilarious jokes. When writing an episode do you think about making sure this is balanced, or do you just write and let things play out as they do?

DavidXCohen_
When the show first started we didn't know what the balance should be in terms of character stories and emotion vs. serious sci-fi themes. At first I think we erred in not diving far enough into the sci-fi... we were afraid it might undercut the personal stories. But as we went along it became clearer that taking the sci-fi space-opera-drama seriously only helped the personal stories. The dramatic tension when played seriously helps the jokes play better as contrast to that. So the surprise was that we could and should do both. In the best episodes we manage that.

[Reply #101 on:]

What's your favorite episode of Futurama ?

DavidXCohen_
I usually cite "The Luck of the Fryrish" as my favorite. That's the one where Fry learns about his long-deceased brother. It was the first episode where we out-and-out went for a tear in the eye at the end of the show. This is a high degree of difficulty on an animated show, so we weren't at all sure if it would work well or how people would react. It turned out to be a fan favorite and subsequently I think it became a trademark of Futurama that we would go for these emotional endings a couple of times a year. Just when you least expect it -- WHAM! Your crying at a dumb cartoon.

I also want to put in a nod for "Reincarnation", the episode where Futurama was animated in 3 different styles. The animation (directed by Peter Avanzino) was stunning, but also we shot high on the writing... each of the three parts hinged at a key moment on something BEYOND impossible to portray in its own style of animation (eg, not just a rainbow in the black and white episode, but a rainbow with a NEW color). That wasn't easy to concoct. And one of the three segments was about the nobility of the search for scientific truth... (why were we cancelled again...?) I like elevating science when possible instead of just making it the villain responsible for genetically-engineered viruses and so on. At any rate, you wouldn't see that subject matter on another show.

[Reply #102 on:]

Best: Cohen casually saying Simpsons "crashed" in season 10. It's so refreshing hearing a Groening lad come out and say it.

[Reply #103 on:]

Regarding the grandfather paradox in "Roswell that Ends Well"... errrr... to be honest, I don't think we tried to hard on the science there. Once you get into time travel, all bets are off. We just put it out there and hope no one complains too much.

Haha I love it.

[Reply #104 on:]

I'm not going to ask if this is really the final season, because I'm guessing nobody knows for sure, but I will ask this:

Are you okay with this being the final season? Do you feel that Futurama has gone on long enough? Or would you like to see it push on into infinity, like The Simpsons?
постоянная ссылка


DavidXCohen_
When Futurama first got cancelled after four seasons on Fox, it was a little more upsetting. Four seasons is a very intermediate amount... not clearly a failure or a success. Most shows get cancelled either several seasons earlier or several later. So we weren't sure how to feel. I guess we decided on "bad".

Now having done seven seasons by our count (we include the four DVD movies as season five), and 140 episodes, it feels like a good run. If you were told in advance your show would make it that far, you would jump at the deal. Granted it took us 14 years to do seven seasons, but still, not too bad.

Also with the 52 recent episodes for Comedy Central I feel like we really got to a lot of subjects that we wanted to cover and got to develop the characters quite a bit... and this current final(?) season ends with a very strong, emotional run. So all in all, yes, I will feel okay with it if this really is the end.

The idea of catching up to the Simpsons if we were to come back is definitely more of a nightmare than a dream. To do that, we'd have to get an order of "20 episodes a year for 20 years". Noooooooooo!

If they gave you the option of writing a Futurama spin-off, which minor character's adventures would you choose to follow?

DavidXCohen_
We thought about this quite a bit... the one we almost attempted on several occasions as a "one episode" spinoff was the Zapp & Kif show. That's an example of an episode I always wanted to do that we still didn't get around to, even after the four bonus seasons on Comedy Central. My glorious dream was to do a Star-Trek-style episode where we stayed with Zapp and Kif's mission the entire time, and just have them run into the Planet Express crew in passing at some point. We would have also done a full new version of the opening credits and all. We never quite figured out the story for this one. Also we were nervous that people would get confused and angry, and throw things at the TV. I guess we panicked and chickened out. Now I feel bad.

[Reply #105 on:]

Can you tell us one episode you wish you go back and improve or completely change?

In retrospect I concede we went to far when we first came back on Comedy Central, in our second episode "In-a-Gadda-Da-Leela". Zapp and Leela get marooned on an Eden-like planet and he tries to deceive her into sleeping with him. But looking back it's a bit rapey. It was very funny at times but may have hurt Zapp's character.

[Reply #106 on:]

GopherInWI
What's a storyline that you love that won't see the light of day now that the show was cancelled?

DavidXCohen_
Josh Weinstein and I had a great idea for an episode involving a character moving (and talking) backward in time. The story was great, but it was exceedingly complicated, and it had one other minor problem -- it wasn't funny at all. Very grave and creepy. We spent three full days talking about it, though. Painful. Often when we get un-cancelled someone gets a new take on one of these half-dead ideas and suddenly it works. We'll see!

That would be very interesting episode.

TheNobleRobot
The press release announcing the cancellation seemed designed to avoid the kind of Internet riot that a cult cancellation is bound to inspire, and made a great effort to discourage any kind of potential fan campaign to keep it on the air. So, my question is: were you gritting your teeth when you provided your quotes for it? ;-)

DavidXCohen_
It was tough because on the one hand, the show was cancelled, but on the other hand, we still had a whole new season coming up. So we wanted to get the word out but not make people think it was DONE done. Kind of a confusing situation.

Here's the quote I almost used for the press release: "I couldn't be more proud of this series. Except possibly if it hadn't been cancelled three times."

[Reply #107 on:]

A clip from "The Inhuman Torch":
http://www.comedycentral.com/video-clips/7tx1wt/futurama-helium-mine

[Reply #108 on:]

So miners trapped in helium mine, is it reference to news while ago? Also helium-mine seems to be just minor storyline.

[Reply #109 on:]

Will there be a Futurama-ize me website?

[Reply #110 on:]

Best: Cohen casually saying Simpsons "crashed" in season 10. It's so refreshing hearing a Groening lad come out and say it.

Much as I would agree with the sentiment...I think you're misinterpreting him. (And even if he does feel that way, he still works too closely to Groening to say something like that. A few other people who worked on the previous Simpsons seasons and have no further professional relationship with it or Groening have been a bit more candid.) What he means is that around that time, it would have been assumed by most of the people there that The Simpsons would finally bottom out in the ratings or become tired by season 10, so it wouldn't last much longer. Cohen wrote the "Poochie" episode of The Simpsons and explained on the commentary that part of the idea behind the episode was about trying to keep an aging TV show fresh, and how the staff pretty much assumed (during season 8...when the show was still GOOD!) that The Simpsons would not last beyond a couple more seasons. He's talking past-tense here, not in retrospect as you're assuming.

[Reply #111 on:]

It was during the Simpsons Spinoff Showcase (Season 8, Episode 24) that Troy McClue referred to The Simpsons as "the family that doesn't know the meaning of the word 'cancelled'" -- a nod to the fact that the writers thought the show was aging way back in 1997.

[Reply #112 on:]

A new screenshot from "The Inhuman Torch".

[Reply #113 on:]

Much as I would agree with the sentiment...I think you're misinterpreting him. (And even if he does feel that way, he still works too closely to Groening to say something like that. A few other people who worked on the previous Simpsons seasons and have no further professional relationship with it or Groening have been a bit more candid.) What he means is that around that time, it would have been assumed by most of the people there that The Simpsons would finally bottom out in the ratings or become tired by season 10, so it wouldn't last much longer. Cohen wrote the "Poochie" episode of The Simpsons and explained on the commentary that part of the idea behind the episode was about trying to keep an aging TV show fresh, and how the staff pretty much assumed (during season 8...when the show was still GOOD!) that The Simpsons would not last beyond a couple more seasons. He's talking past-tense here, not in retrospect as you're assuming.

I refuse to let this be taken away from me, not by you and your well articulated, well balanced argument, not by anyone!

Philip J. Fry: You can't lose hope just because it's it's hopeless. You gotta hope even more, and put your fingers in your ears and go, "Blah! Blah! Blah! Blah!... "

[Reply #114 on:]

It's true. They planned to end after 10 seasons... and it just never happened.

But to be fair, he kinda implied that 20+ seasons is an unenviable mistake. At least we can be rest assured that this would never happen to Futurama.

[Reply #115 on:]

A new screenshot from "The Inhuman Torch".

If I knew any better......the place the crew is at has to be none other than Robot Hell!

[Reply #116 on:]

Someone ask David if Cubert is really dead?

[Reply #117 on:]

They said in Futurama Live last year that he'll appear in Saturday Morning Fun Pit, but it hasn't been mentioned yet whether or not he'll appear in a canon episode this Season. Hopefully he'll have 1 more appearance this Season outside of that. It'd be a shame for his final canon appearance to be Overclockwise.

[Reply #118 on:]

Yes! I love Roberto too. He makes his grand final appearance in our second to last episode, "Stench and Stenchibility", later this summer... an armed robbery of a character played by none other than Emilia Clarke of Game of Thrones. So he's going out with a bang.

That suggests to me that Roberto will re-appear with no explanation.

[Reply #119 on:]

Will there be a Futurama-ize me website?

Welcome to Peel, Frybot!

Sadly, there isn't a Futurama-ize me website, BUT the closest thing to such a website, is an iPhone and Android app that allows you to make your own Head in a Jar, based off of sprites from the show. If you search up Futurama on your Iphone/Android, you will see the Head in a Jar creator app.

It's free on the App Store and Android Market. If you don't got an iPod/iPhone, or an Android, then tough luck Frybot. It's only available for mobile devices such as ones I previously mentioned.

Hope I helped!