Why Futurama and the Eagles are the same...Yet Different (That can't be as deep as it appears to be...which is not very in the first place.)

As it stands right now, comebacks (along with the inevitable disappointment that comes with it) are up in there in terms of popularity with garishly colored T-shirts and and sorry incidents involving teenagers expressing their thought in musical forms. Although I will admit to liking the first High School Musical (okay, so I generally don' t admit that, barring this isolated occasion to make some obtuse point), the rest of these things are best generally avoided like women of ill repute (an especially apt analogy considering the fact that High School musical was mentioned before it.) Yes, comebacks suck, but the more important thing here is why they suck, and in my opinion it's because they do nothing new. It's a long silence followed by the same old thing, over and over and over...Just like this blog

To pick the equivalent of the snotty, ugly kid that gets picked on, we can turn our head to classic rock pussies/underage lovers The Eagles. Now, I'll be honest, I enjoy the Eagles brand of laid-back music; I mean, I practically grew up with them (their music I mean, not in some kind of Four and a Half Men style sitcom) and their vocal harmonies are just to die for (said semi sarcastically...) Yeah, whilst I could go on backhandedly complimenting the Eagles all day, the more important point is their new Album, the Long Road out of Eden. Or perhaps more specifally, how much that CD blew. I mean, this CD really fucking sucked.*

20 years ago however, this would have never been the case. In fact if it had come 20 years then it would probably be breath of fresh air in an industry that had drowned in lyrca and about to be sent to Flannel clad heaven. But this is 2007, and in the 20 odd that years that the Eagles haven't been together the music word has changed, and they haven't. In fact, To say that the Long Road To Eden is classic Eagles is both it's most damning indictment and it's biggest compliment.

Futurama on the other hand is a much harder beast to pin down. But looking back it appears to have the opposite problem, as the Long Road out of Eden, it's just too damn reliant on new ideas.
Perhaps I'm not going to enunciate myself as well as I ought to be throughout this post, so let me be totally clear: Futurama was still as funny as ever, but the story was generally fucking terrible. Now, on with the confusion!

Although I may enjoy complaining about it, The Simpsons movie was an example of the way to do an animated movie well. It had the perfect mix of new insanity and old staples of the series. I mean, it was expected that Homer would fuck up and somehow redeem himself (although in a stupid manner) and that's just what they delivered, and what I feel the Futurama should have been done. To paraphrase Fry, people want the same old thing, new ideas scare them.

On the other hand, kudos for being nothing like Family Guy, and actually making the movie a cohesive experience, and one that sometimes stayed true to the franchise (actually, I would like that last comment revoked, the Family Guy movie was exactly like the television show, hence being 90% of the movies problem). Whilst there are obvious breakpoints in the story at 21 minute intervals they are never are detract from the viewing, and had I not had Windows Media Player keeping time I probably wouldn't have noticed.
What I would have noticed (eh? EH!?*) are the jokes that like they were out of place.
I understand that this is a movie, and thus they have more time to fill (letting jokes in that would usually be ignored, see where I'm going?) but some of the gags are horrendous are feel terribly forced. I am mean, does anyone find 2000 election jokes funny anymore (or even in the first place)? Or for that matter, was anybody really waiting for Al Gore's return? Or Barbados Slim? Or any other the other dozen or so characters that popped in for a few seconds at the expense of a joke? Sorry to blow on the Simpsons movies horn again, I feel that it had the perfect mix of new and old ideas.

That isn't to say that it's a bad comeback (or even that it's bad in general), just that for every good thing that was reintroduced, there was another that made me confused. Which brings me to my main two points: Why the fuck can Nibbler talk? And what happened to Fry and Leela? Why did they seem so intent on throwing out three of the main concepts that steered the original series ( the concept of time travel being basically impossible being the other)? It's not so much I have a problem with them changing these things, I mean, I understand that things have to change. It's more the fact that they changed without even acknowledging them. In fact, they they completely disregarded them in favor of a half baked story.
However, much like Chocolate Chip Cookies, I enjoyed it being half baked more then I probably ought to. I mean, it was reasonably good once I got over my initial almost fan boy like disgust, the story has some great plot twists, it was just the foundation that was the problem. It's still (at times extremely) funny and it still has an emotional resonance like no other animated series today. It's just that the road to the 'Resonance' promised land was a long, torrid, and at times downright stupid one.


This rather obtuse (and nonsensical) post is my rather roundabout way of saying that Benders Big Score didn't actually suck as much as statistically should have. Perhaps I'm not enunciating myself as well as I ought to be, so let me be totally clear: Futurama was still as funny as ever, but the story was generally fucking terrible
Okay, so 'didn't actually suck' is maybe weird way to phrase it, but I feel it's a pretty apt description. I mean, after seeing it, my initial feelings weren't of amazement or disappointed, but instead of relief. I mean, there's no doubt that it's a different kind of Futurama, but if its a good or bad turn really depends an individual perspective. But individual is an idiot, you're here to hear to my opinion and here it is:






*Meaning perhaps that the Eagles somehow preformed fellatio on themselves. How's that for a mental image!
**And to be honest, it's not that bad a CD. I mean, it's 3/4 quarters bad, the same ratio as good band members in the Eagles, so you know.
***Apologies, the only thing more annoying than a bad segue is some sort of pseudo-postmodern attempt at acknowledging that a segue was made**
****If these are true, then the third most annoying thing is somebody using the term 'pseudo-post modernism' in an ironically way