_V_
Lorien
As many of you know, "Futurama: Bender's Game" is the 3rd Futurama straighta-to-DVD movie / 5th season which returns the show from its unwarranted cancellation in 2003 (high DVD sales and rerun rates on Cartoon Network proved that it was really cancelled for internal politics; fans love it, and as they explain when they return in the 1st dvd movie, "those asinine morons who cancelled us were themselves fired for uncompetence!")
Anyway, the entire movie is a parody of Dungeons and Dragons more than Tolkien, but because Tolkien influenced fantasy so much, there's quite a few LOTR references....which I will not list here.
Though I must say that the best references were that they have a whole scene of Treebeard helping them cross a river (its not just a cameo; animated quite impressively) but wait to see how things end up for the Ent in this one!
and they made "Roberto the Insane Robot" into their analog of Denethor ("Are you calling me crazy?! I'm not crazy! Just because I think there's a hotel inside of my foot doesn't make me crazy! Now march our legions into the ocean, I declare war on the scallops!")
Anyway, the point of the movie is that Bender sees the children playing Dungeons and Dragons, and doesn't understand how they can be "fighting in a fantasy land" when he just sees them sitting around a table. They realize that Bender, being a robot, physically does not posses an Imagination: robots aren't built with them. After much trial and error, they teach Bender to be able to imagine things by playing D&D alot. However, he takes it too far (they base this on those old rumors 30 years ago that D&D would make you go crazy and get lost in fantasy) and loses his mind: Bender becomes utterly lost in his fantasy, and starts thinking that he *actually is* his D&D character: "Titanius Anglesmith, Fancyman of Cornwood!!"
"Cornwood" is the name that Bender made up for the Middle-earth-esque fantasy-land his character is from. However, due to a dark matter reality warp in the middle of the movie (they explain this) they get trapped in an alternate reality based on Bender's imagination; a real live "Cornwood"
Anyway, at one point they show map of "Cornwood" and I was looking at a pic of it here:
and I realized something:
This is a map of Middle-earth, reversed as a mirror image. Well, it's a map of the southern lands: Gondor and Mordor. On the left, you can see Mordor reversed, with Gorgoroth in the north-east (instead of the north-west) and the "Geysers of Gygax" (their version of Mount Doom) a bit south of the actual Mount Doom. On the right hand page, on the top left you can clearly see Rauros falls, Emyn Muil, and the Wetwang marshes (where Entwash meets Anduin). They've even got Cair Andros and the mouths of Anduin, and all of the mountains and rivers of Gondor. They copied the Middle-earth map completely, but then ingeniously reversed it as a mirror image.
Anyway, the entire movie is a parody of Dungeons and Dragons more than Tolkien, but because Tolkien influenced fantasy so much, there's quite a few LOTR references....which I will not list here.
Though I must say that the best references were that they have a whole scene of Treebeard helping them cross a river (its not just a cameo; animated quite impressively) but wait to see how things end up for the Ent in this one!
and they made "Roberto the Insane Robot" into their analog of Denethor ("Are you calling me crazy?! I'm not crazy! Just because I think there's a hotel inside of my foot doesn't make me crazy! Now march our legions into the ocean, I declare war on the scallops!")
Anyway, the point of the movie is that Bender sees the children playing Dungeons and Dragons, and doesn't understand how they can be "fighting in a fantasy land" when he just sees them sitting around a table. They realize that Bender, being a robot, physically does not posses an Imagination: robots aren't built with them. After much trial and error, they teach Bender to be able to imagine things by playing D&D alot. However, he takes it too far (they base this on those old rumors 30 years ago that D&D would make you go crazy and get lost in fantasy) and loses his mind: Bender becomes utterly lost in his fantasy, and starts thinking that he *actually is* his D&D character: "Titanius Anglesmith, Fancyman of Cornwood!!"
"Cornwood" is the name that Bender made up for the Middle-earth-esque fantasy-land his character is from. However, due to a dark matter reality warp in the middle of the movie (they explain this) they get trapped in an alternate reality based on Bender's imagination; a real live "Cornwood"
Anyway, at one point they show map of "Cornwood" and I was looking at a pic of it here:
and I realized something:
This is a map of Middle-earth, reversed as a mirror image. Well, it's a map of the southern lands: Gondor and Mordor. On the left, you can see Mordor reversed, with Gorgoroth in the north-east (instead of the north-west) and the "Geysers of Gygax" (their version of Mount Doom) a bit south of the actual Mount Doom. On the right hand page, on the top left you can clearly see Rauros falls, Emyn Muil, and the Wetwang marshes (where Entwash meets Anduin). They've even got Cair Andros and the mouths of Anduin, and all of the mountains and rivers of Gondor. They copied the Middle-earth map completely, but then ingeniously reversed it as a mirror image.
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