What Movie to Watch After Finishing Futurama

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Futurama has been one of the smartest and funniest TV shows for so long, it’s managed to get canceled and brought back several times. It’s easy to see why: every single episode is jam-packed with jokes, and those jokes range from the incredibly stupid to jokes based on science that about four people in the world understand. Its bent vision of the future of the universe is always a delightfully deranged adventure, and if you’re looking to bring a little more of that vibe into your life (and you’ve already binged the hilarious TV shows in that category), you should absolutely watch Idiocracy immediately.

Why You Should Watch Idiocracy After Futurama

Idiocracy and Futurama share a fundamental premise: a man of average intelligence is frozen, wakes up in the far future, and has adventures. In Futurama, Philip J. Fry (Billy West) fits right in with the ludicrous sci-fi universe he finds himself in; but in Idiocracy, Soldier Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson) emerges from hibernation five centuries later to discover that humanity has regressed so drastically he is now the smartest man on Earth — by a long shot. And if you’re thinking that Futurama played around very specifically with that premise, you’d be right — in season 3, episode 7, “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid,” floating alien brains use a beam of energy to turn humanity stupid — but the beam doesn’t affect Fry, because he is his own grandfather and thus lacks a crucial “delta wave” in his brain function, leaving him briefly the smartest human on the planet.

Idiocracy is more a tightly focused satire than Futurama, using its premise to mock modern problems and behaviors, but it’s very much on the same wavelength as the show. Just like the show, Idiocracy has loads of hilarious jokes about consumerism and how we’re all manipulated by advertising and marketing tricks, and the film is populated by the kinds of ridiculous characters fans of the show will recognize and love — like Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho (Terry Crews), the deeply stupid and incredibly violent President of the United States.

Like Fry often does, Joe finds himself responsible for saving the day despite being, well, pretty average in most ways. Exasperated by the dumbness all around him — this is a future America where the death penalty involves monster truck demolition derbies, the Supreme Court has been renamed the Extreme Court, and an energy drink called Brawndo is used for literally everything from medicine to crop irrigation — Joe plods along, doing his best, and (again, just like Fry) eventually scores a win.

For fans of Futurama, there’s no better choice for movie night. Rent Idiocracy on Prime Video.

More Movies That Fans of Futurama Should Watch

Need more to watch? The obvious choice would be the actual Futurama films that were released — Bender’s Big Score (2007), The Beast with a Billion Backs (2008), Bender’s Game (2008), and Into the Wild Green Yonder (2009). You can find them on Hulu as part of their Futurama collection, though the movies have been cut into episode-length slices. You can also buy each movie individually on Prime Video.

If you’ve already worked through the Futurama films, the next best options are other animated comedies with sharp satirical edges and science fiction settings — series and films that share the show’s willingness to mix lowbrow slapstick with genuinely clever ideas, outrageous world-building, and characters you can’t help but root for despite their many, many flaws.