Unlike The Simpsons movie, Bob’s Burgers was able to find a villain in the established cast of the show and save a lot of time watching the movie. There are a lot of characters in The Simpsons, just like in the cult animated family sitcom Bob’s Burgers. Although Bob Belcher and his quirky family haven’t existed that long, both shows had already assembled huge cast members by the time they made the leap from the small screen to the big screen.
Despite this, new characters appeared in The Simpsons movie (unlike Bob’s Burgers) during the creation of a complex ambitious plot. The plot of The Simpsons movie was, like the episode of the series, actually divided into three parts, in which Homer adopted a pig, Springfield was quarantined by the government, and the Simpsons escaped to Alaska before returning to save the day. This complex plot involved the introduction of a new villain, which meant devoting screen time to an unidentified newcomer, despite the already saturated plots of the film.
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In The Simpsons movie, it was necessary to come up with a new character so that the entire overgrown cast could unite against a greater external evil. However, no matter how funny Russ Cargill was played by Albert Brooks, he really felt like a copy of Hank Scorpio and a fairly unambiguous character. Unlike the Simpsons movie, Bob’s Burgers avoided this problem by making an existing minor character, Grover Fischoder David Wayne, its villain. This meant that the animated film could cut the character from future episodes as he would be in jail without affecting the status quo of Bob’s Burgers from week to week. Thus, screen time was not wasted on introducing new characters, and the story of the movie “Bob’s Burgers” seemed more drawn out than the more ambitious plot of the movie “The Simpsons”.
Why the movie “Bob’s Burgers” didn’t need a new villain
In fairness, it should be noted that there should always have been a bigger story in The Simpsons than in Bob’s Burgers. The fact that Spider-pig became a major meme even before The Simpsons movie was released proves that The Simpsons still retained the status of a legendary work of cult pop culture until the film’s release in 2007. Thus, “The Simpsons in the Movies” became a major, advertised blockbuster, which Bob’s Burgers was never supposed to be. The movie “Bob’s Burgers” could have become a more modest detective murder story precisely because a significant part of the fans of “Bob’s Burgers” did not expect something as complex as the grandiose cross-country adventure from the movie “The Simpsons”.
While both films ended up looking like extended episodes of their respective TV shows, the Bob’s Burgers movie doesn’t need a new villain because the original show is a smaller and more down-to-earth comedy. As only the surreal plot of the Simpsons episode “Saddlesore Galaxy” proves that “jockeys are a secret fantastic race of magical elves living underground,” the show has always been a strange, more ambitious and generally larger beast. At the peak of popularity, this led to a large number of positive reviews from critics, which were enjoyed by The Simpsons. However, when it came time to do a theatrical spin-off, the same tonal mismatch meant that “The Simpsons at the Movies” needed a new major villain for its huge story, while “Bob’s Burgers” could tell a smaller story with an existing cast.
