This Is The Best Futurama Movie According To Fans
In the wake of recent news announcing the upcoming return of "Futurama," the irreverently funny sci-fi series by "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening, there has never been a better time to go back and re-experience the original series. With seven full seasons of content, split almost evenly between the series' time airing on Fox (Seasons 1-4) and Comedy Central (5-7), that's a lot of content to rewatch — 140 episodes to be exact.
However, you may notice something weird about Season 5's episodes compared to the rest of the series. Unlike every other installment, which are all one-off stories that rarely carry over between episodes, almost every episode in Season 5 shares an overarching story. That's because Season 5 was originally released as a series of direct-to-video movies. When the series resumed its regularly-scheduled format with Comedy Central, it split its four movies into four episodes each, and billed them as Season 5 on most mainstream streaming services.
Thus, Season 5 of "Futurama" has a slightly special reputation relative to the rest of the series. They provide a nice, comfortable "in-between zone" during the time-gap between the series' departure from Fox and arrival at Comedy Central. That being said, not all of them are equally good. In fact, according to fans, only one "Futurama" movie can be considered the best.
Fans love Bender's Game, but only by a slim margin
Fans have been discussing which "Futurama" movie is the best since they were released, but last year one fan on Reddit actually decided to put it to the test by running a fan poll. In total, 248 "Futurama" fans cast their votes, determining that the third movie in the series, "Bender's Game," sits at the top. The film received 89 votes, making up about 36% of the total votes. It was followed closely by the first film, "Bender's Big Score," which received 83 votes. Movies four and two, "Into the Wild Green Yonder" and "Beast With a Billion Backs," took third and fourth place respectively.
In the comments of the poll, fans did not discuss much about why each film received the number of votes it did. However, there is one potential reason why "Bender's Game" in particular would stand out to many fans, and that's because it is the most unique film out of the four. "Futurama" is generally thought of as a sci-fi series, but "Bender's Game" subverts that by setting much of the film in a fantasy world created by Bender after he plays too much "Dungeons & Dragons." So, for a short time, "Futurama" gets to poke fun at popular fantasy tropes instead of sci-fi. That's something no other film or episode has done to the same degree, and it might be why fans gravitated towards "Bender's Game" specifically.