Product Details

• Actors: David X. Cohen, Eric Kaplan, Michael Rowe, John Di Maggio, Al Gore
• Directors: Dwayne Carey-Hill
• Writers: David X. Cohen, Eric Kaplan, Michael Rowe, Eric Horsted, Matt Groening
• Producers: Claudia Katz
• Format: AC-3, Animated, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• DVD Release Date: November 4, 2008
• Run Time: 88 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (113 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001DZOC78
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,266 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Futurama: Bender's Game" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

FUTURAMA:BENDER'S GAME - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incentivise that employee for a great movie., November 4, 2008

By 

Aberwak (New Mexico, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Futurama: Bender's Game (DVD)

This movie is completely independent from the other two films, with everything back to normal at the beginning of it from when the last ended. It's pretty easy to follow along for thsoe who haven't seen the other two, or even the rest of the series. As others have mentioned, this movie takes on a D&D / Lord of the Rings feel to it as it explores the fantasy realm, but it's nicely explained as to why it happens that way. Everything seems to blend together well in this movie (the various subplots set up at the beginning join together). The movie also refers back to the original series and explains various things: a possibile origin between the Farnesworth-Wordstrom rivalry, more on the Mom-Farnesworth relationship, Nibbler being picked up off Vergon 6 as it implodes (and why it does implode), and a few other things. I think all of these add to what's known in the Futurama universe without taking away from anything, and fits very well in to what is already established.

I really enjoyed the movie, probably more than the other two movies. The one thing I didn't like so much about the DVD were the features. I didn't find them all that exciting. I enjoyed seeing how to draw the characters, and the genetics lab was somewhat interesting (but limiting). Everything else wasn't bad, but just seemed a bit short.

Features:
-Movie Commentary
-Storyboard Animatic for part one (~ 20 minutes)
-Futurama Genetics lab (you can choose two characters and see what they look like merged- but only for a small number of characters)
-Dungeons & Dragons & Futurama (~ 7 minutes, explains D&D references in the show)
-How to draw Fry, Bender/Flexo, Leela, & Zoidberg (~ 8 minutes)
-3-D modeling of various ships in the series (~ 5 minutes)
-Deleted scene (only one)
-"Blooperama," outtakes from the movie (~ 2 minutes)
-Bender's Anti-Piracy Warning
-Trailer for the fourth movie: "Into the Wild Green Yonder"

The packaging I got my DVD in was the cardboard "carbon neutral" packaging, in which the disc is put into a cardboard slit. I went out and bought a CD envelope to put in my box instead of using the slit.

The box did contain 4 Futurama postcards: giant Bender and Zoidberg (from the Anthology of Interest), Fry and Leela running away from aliens attacking, an ad to "Keep your robot clean" and a generic "The future is today, worry about it tomorrow." Even though these were mostly put in to advertise that these images were for sale in paintings, I kind of like the extra of having postcard-sized art ("One 'art' please").

39 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The unmistakable stench of dwarf urine!, November 4, 2008

By 

Senor Zoidbergo (Washington D.C.) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Futurama: Bender's Game (DVD)

The first two Futurama movies were ok (well, to be honest, Beast with a Billion Backs was terrible), but this third installment is a winner. It has all the sly humor from the classic Futurama seasons that you've missed, and then some. I enjoyed the greater inclusion of Dr. Zoidberg.

The premise is quite true to life; the Planet Express crew must deal with the increase in dark matter fuel prices. This somehow segues into a Lord of the Rings plot which I won't spoil, but it actually works out quite well. We have an interesting tie-in between Mom and Professor Farnsworth.

All the old favorite characters are here too, including Morbo the Annihilator, Nibbler, Sal, Scruffy the Janitor, and George Takei. I didn't see Zapp Brannigan or Kif, but they weren't missed, and would've detracted from the story, or rather, the semblance of a story.

In conclusion, I think it's the unmistakable stench of dwarf urine that makes this Futurama movie a winner!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars What do barbarians, great axes, and Bender's Game have in common?, December 15, 2008

By 

Michael J. Tresca "Talien" (Fairfield, CT USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Futurama: Bender's Game (DVD)

I'm the target audience for Bender's Game. A lifelong gamer of over two decades (yeeck, I'm getting old), I also know and love the book by Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game. With the title alone, the Futurama writing staff is clearly letting me know this is the movie for me.

Bender's Game starts promising, with jokes about the rising cost of fuel prices. There's also a sly joke about Leela's anger issues, which are controlled by a shock collar. A shock collar Leela starts to find ... titillating. Just when things get interesting and this plot point could turn into something awkward and funny, it's dropped.

Bender discovers that he has no imagination and, aggravated that he can't participate in a game of Dungeons & Dragons, flips out Mazes & Monsters-style, renaming himself Titanius and wandering the sewers. He then gets sent to the HAL institute, Arkham Asylum for robots. This plot point is pursued to a point and then dropped.

Meanwhile, Mom (that's her name) has been controlling dark matter prices for years, but there is a means of invalidating her stranglehold on fuel prices. Professor Farnsworth accidentally invented "anti-backwards matter" which, should it ever encounter dark matter, would render dark matter useless. It just so happens that this anti-backwards matter is a 12-sided die. Hilarious, right?

As our lovable misfits build towards a confrontation with Mom and her Killbot goons, reality shifts and suddenly everyone's in a parallel fantasy dimension. And then we get, in descending order of comedic value: D&D jokes, Greek myth jokes, Lord of the Rings jokes, Star Wars jokes, Call of Cthulhu jokes, and did I mention the Lord of the Rings jokes?

There's actually more interesting material on the extras, covering all the allusions to D&D that have appeared in Futurama and confirming that the guys who write the show are hopeless geeks themselves. Unfortunately, they're not really boosting their own geek cred with this movie.

Look, I love Futurama and I love D&D. But this movie is all over the place, using tired, easy jokes for fantasy. I always identified Futurama as a series of in-jokes for sci-fi and tech geeks, which is a much broader category than fantasy gamers. The bizarre diversion into the fantasy realm isn't well thought out, isn't particularly funny, and not all that interesting.

Sorry guys. This is one D&D adventure that doesn't give out nearly as much XP as it should.