Talking Futurama - A Pharaoh to Remember

Maybe the phrasing wasn't clear. Cleo ruled just before AD calendars. The Great Pyramid was completed sometime between 2600 and 2400 BCE. I'm saying the distance from her to us is about 2k years. The distance from the Great Pyramid to her is about 2.5k years or older by about 500 years.

Ron Sterling

There may have been some new developments but last I understood it the Israelites were most probably slaves during the time of Rameses ( the Second according the propaganda the Egyptians wrote down on their tombs, at least a thousand years after the pyramids of Giza were built.

John Harrison

It might be a typo but the Giza pyramids are about 2,000 years before Cleopatra herself.

John Harrison

I think one of the reasons the myth of Israelites/Jews building the Pyramids persists is because we often don't consider how old they really are, especially compared to other very ancient things. A good frame of reference is this: Cleopatra ruled over Egypt just a little over 2000 years ago. The Pyramids at Giza were older to her, by about 500 years, than she is to us.

Ron Sterling

If Fry's lines don't come from a Futurama writing room it's actually just Sparkling Doug.

I don't like revisiting this one because even in the funeral scene Bender becomes kind of unbearable. OK, "loud-ER and sad-DER" is pretty hilarious but the way he shits on everyone makes me uncomfortable. I did find it amusing that Bender snuck past the guards by throwing balls to distract them. Fry and Leela could've snuck back to the ship at any time if they'd thought of that.

PurpleComet

A good example of Futurama's “anything for a joke” mentality. Even considering just how horrible and unsympathetic Bender is in this, it's still hard to tell if they pushed the parody of sitcom emotional arcs too far, or not far enough. Still lots of funny lines, though! By the way, The Time Machine is a great novel and still holds up. If you read just one book whose ultimate conclusion is “humanity doesn't actually matter”, why not make it this one?

Christmas Ape

have to admit this wasn't one of my favorites due to Bender's characterization and complete disregard for Fry and Leela but re-visiting it I found myself enjoying it more as a 'jokey' episode. "The Pharaoh...suddenly died!" gets an ugly laugh out of me

Blake R.

We do claim him, though. He got his first acting gig on Neighbours, which is the most quintessentially Australian way to get into the industry.

Declan Kennedy

I was ready to Genius At Work you for saying Guy Pearce is a British actor, but it turns out he was born in England and then grew up in Australia, so you're technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.

Tyler

Well I let my slaves pee. Take that, Bezos!

Lockerus

This might be the most vulgar display of it, but I do like how Bender has the unique ability to be as selfish and evil as the story wants him to be. He can go from "Kill all humans!" to feeling sentimental about orphans and somehow pull it off. In this episode he even resembles Mr. Burns by having Fry and Leela entombed with him as Burns plans for Smithers. Bender just having no appreciation or regard for human life in this episode is just darkly funny to me.

Joe Hodgson

I really enjoy the subversion of the ancient aliens trope implied by the slave master telling Fry that his people learned pyramid building from the ancient Egyptians, instead of the other way around. Also that the ancient Egyptians taught them space travel as well. Very funny joke that I missed on many previous rewatches.

Graeme Black Robinson

There's so much more about Simon Wells that wasn't mentioned here: His filmmaking background is in animation, not live-action. He helped direct (either with others or solo) all the films released by Spielberg's Amblimation studios (An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, We're Back: A Dinosaur's Story and Balto), with their employees absorbed into Dreamworks, and he got to co-direct The Prince of Egypt. He was brought onto The Time Machine literally out of the nepotistic novelty of H.G. Wells' grandson making it, and found the experience of making a live-action film so stressful and exhausting that with just a few weeks left filming he dropped out, and Gore Verbinski had to step in to finish the film shoot. His most recent directorial work was, yes, MARS NEEDS MOMS, the infamously bad ImageMovers Digital film that set records for how much of a flop it was. I assumed that'd be the last time he'd ever get to direct, but according to IMDb he is directing a film based on the UK children's book series Tom Gates. If you wanna watch an Abbott and Costello movie, I highly recommend Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, where they cross over with the Universal monsters and is rightfully held up as a classic of that era.

Harry Thornton