Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey
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| Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey | |
|---|---|
 Promotional one-sheet poster. |
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| Directed by | Peter Hewitt |
| Produced by | Scott Kroopf |
| Written by | Chris Matheson Ed Solomon |
| Starring | Keanu Reeves Alex Winter William Sadler Joss Ackland George Carlin |
| Music by | David Newman |
| Distributed by | Orion Pictures |
| Release date(s) | July 19, 1991 |
| Running time | 93 min. |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $20,000,000 |
| Gross revenue | $38,037,513 (domestic)[1] |
| Preceded by | Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure |
| Followed by | Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey is a 1991 American comedy science fiction film, the sequel to Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Like the first film, it stars Keanu Reeves as "Ted" Theodore Logan and Alex Winter as Bill S. Preston Esq. The film's original working title was Bill & Ted Go To Hell.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
Three years after receiving an A+ on their history report, Bill and Ted are still struggling with their band, Wyld Stallyns, despite help from their fiancées Elizabeth and Joanna (princesses of 15th Century England whom they met in the first film and Rufus brought back from their time). The girls can play their instruments, but the guys cannot. Meanwhile, in the future, the villainous Chuck De Nomolos (Joss Ackland) schemes to prevent Bill and Ted from performing at the Fourth Annual San Dimas Battle of the Bands, thereby preventing them from influencing history with their rock music. De Nomolos forcibly takes possession of a time machine (once again, in the guise of a phone booth), sending two evil android versions of Bill and Ted back in time to kill them. Bill and Ted are quickly abducted and driven to the desert, where their android doppelgangers throw them off a cliff featured in the iconic Star Trek: The original series "Arena".
Death, a.k.a. the Grim Reaper (William Sadler), comes to collect Bill and Ted, telling them that if they beat him in a contest he will give them their lives back. Assessing their chances of winning, they resort to giving Death a melvin and escape. Bill and Ted possess two police officers (including Ted's dad) in an unsuccessful attempt to protect their fiancées, and also infiltrate a séance led by Bill's former stepmother, now Ted's current stepmother, Missy, now a New-Ager. The two are mistaken for evil spirits and are cast down to Hell.
After encountering Satan (voice by Frank Welker), Bill and Ted are doomed to their own personal versions of Hell. First they are menaced by the fanatic Colonel Oats (Ted barely escaped enrollment in Oats' Alaskan Military Academy in the first film). Bill and Ted split up and are subjected to some of their worst childhood memories. Bill recalls being forced to give a kiss to his vile, aged grandmother, Granny S. Preston, Esq. (also played by Alex Winter), while Ted is chastised by the Easter Bunny (Frank Welker) for stealing his brother's Easter candy. Reuniting in the tunnels of Hell, Bill and Ted figure that there is only one way out: to play the Reaper, and win.
Bill and Ted challenge Death to a variety of games, including Battleship, Cluedo, electric football, and Twister, all of which Bill and Ted win. Although Death proves a poor loser, he is at their command and, with his help, the three travel to Heaven to seek advice from God. After mugging three innocent souls, the trio gain entrance to Heaven by appropriating the chorus from "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" by Poison as their answer to St Peter's question, "What is the meaning of life?" Using a map they receive from God, they find the smartest scientist in the afterlife, an alien named Station who has the ability to split his body into two smaller versions of himself (Frank Welker).
Bill, Ted, Station, and a reluctant Death return to Earth. Station builds crude "good robot" versions of Bill and Ted as they drive to the Battle of the Bands. The good robots easily defeat the evil versions, and De Nomolos arrives in the time machine booth and directly challenges Bill and Ted. The film's conclusion relies on a series of events that at first appear to be contradictory grandfather paradoxes but are resolved as overlapping predestination paradoxes.
After De Nomolos has been defeated, Bill and Ted disappear in the time machine with their fiancées to improve their musical skills. Reappearing immediately after leaving, Bill has grown a long beard (a la ZZ Top) and Ted a pointed goatee. Each of them has fathered a baby with their (now) wives. They then go on to play their set as the Kiss rendition of Argent's "God Gave Rock and Roll to You" is heard on the soundtrack, and the credits show various newspaper clippings suggesting they go on to shape the future in much the same way as described in the first movie as the saga ends.
[edit] Soundtrack
Main article: Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey: Music from the Motion Picture
[edit] Alternative endings and missing scenes
- In both media, De Nomolos ends up being killed by the exploding heads of the Evil Bill and Ted. He ends up in hell, where he spends all eternity with the evil Bill and Ted.
- There's also at least one scene which appears in the promo trailer for the movie, as well as the novel and graphic novel. When Bill and Ted end up in Hell after their exorcism at the hands of Missy, they initially arrive in Hell and start having to break rocks (this part also is in the "Reaper" song at the end of the movie/soundtrack). In it, a Demon pulls a rat out of its mouth, at which point Ted exclaims that he knew a guy who "got one of those in a bucket of chicken once."
In Vai's "Reaper" this is the part where the following lines happen:
"Dude, I totally broke a rock!"
"Excellent!"
"Y'know, I kinda like this!"
- An alternate scene where evil Bill and Ted reveal to Joanna and Elizabeth their secret by unzipping their faces and torso and introduce that one is the evil version of the other.
- Another such scene has the Evil Bill and Ted using a set of canisters from their chests to produce real-world versions of the monsters from Bill and Ted's personal Hells (the Easter Rabbit, Granny S. Preston Esq. and Colonel Oats) and prevent them from getting to the concert. These three chase Bill, Ted, the Reaper and Station down just after they collect the parts for the Good Robot Usses, and Bill and Ted realize that they have to face their fears to defeat them. In the comic book version, Bill finally kisses his grandmother, Ted phones his little brother and confesses to stealing the candy, and the pair manage to bring out Oats' sensitive side, causing each of them to vanish. In the filmed version, the pair simply refuse to show their fear, which causes the monsters to shrink into nothingness. Although this scene never takes place in the finished film, it is foreshadowed by the evil robots (they say "Good luck getting to the concert, losers!" even though they make no effort to stop them).
- Finally, in the original version of the climax, Evil Bill and Ted repeatedly kill Bill and Ted after the Good Robot Usses run off. Bill and Ted force the Reaper to bring them back each time, citing the number of games they beat him at while in Hell. Part of this scene (Bill and Ted being flung across the stage) made it into the theatrical trailer.
- One scene did manage to be restored for the 1996 TBS television broadcast and currently for Spike TV broadcasts (as of June 2007). This was a light hearted moment that occurs as soon as Station starts to work on "the good robot Bill and Ted" while they were on their way to the Battle of The Bands. Death switches seats with Ted and confronts Bill with the belief that he is unappreciated. Bill tries to pep talk Death by telling him it's not true, but Death is not buying it. So Bill makes it up to him by giving him a stick of gum. Death puts the gum in his mouth, wrapper and all, and immediately spits it out, replying "I don't like gum". As of this writing, this is the only deleted scene to be shown in full.
[edit] Marvel Comics adaptation
To coincide with the release of the movie, Marvel Comics released a one-shot comic book adaptation of the movie, hiring Evan Dorkin to adapt the screenplay and pencil the art (Fabian Nicieza admired Dorkin's work on Pirate Corp$!) with Stephen DeStefano, Marie Severin and Ron Boyd as inkers. Like Archie Goodwin's adaptation of A New Hope, Dorkin worked from the original script, which included many of the deleted scenes, and portrayed Death as the archetypal skeletal figure. Due to the popularity of the comic, Marvel commissioned a spin-off series, Bill & Ted's Excellent Comic Book, which kept the talents of Dorkin, DeStefano and Severin. The series ran for 12 issues.
[edit] Production notes
- One of the bands competing in the Battle of the Bands was real-life California band Primus, led by Les Claypool, performing "Tommy the Cat" from their then-current album Sailing the Seas of Cheese. In addition to Primus, "Big" Jim Martin of the band Faith No More also has a cameo as a time traveling lecturer from the past addressed as "Sir James Martin".
- The song heard as Wyld Stallyns perform at the competition was "God Gave Rock and Roll to You", a song originally performed by Argent, and covered by KISS for the soundtrack (retitled "God Gave Rock 'n' Roll to You II"). The song is preceded in the film by a track by Steve Vai, which is, in fact, the only part of Wyld Stallyn's actual performance that is heard.
- The concept of Bill and Ted attempting to win back their lives by challenging Death to a game is a reference to the famous Ingmar Bergman film The Seventh Seal, in which a knight plays chess with the Grim Reaper in an attempt to save his life.
- William Sadler, who plays Death, can also be seen as the British father reacting ("My word...") to De Nomolos on television. Additionally, Sadler reprised his role as Death (including the Ingmar Bergman inspired makeup and accent) in the anthology horror series Tales From the Crypt during the Crypt-Keeper bookend sequences for the episode "The Assassin." Sadler had previously appeared in the series' first episode "The Man Who Was Death".
- In the scene where Bill and Ted are addressing God, there are two statues at the base of the staircase. One is of Michael Powell and the other is of David Niven, a homage to Powell and Pressburger's 1946 afterlife classic A Matter of Life and Death (known in the US as Stairway to Heaven). The vast white expanse of stairs is also a visual homage to the memorable stairway in this film.
- The scene of Bill and Ted's death takes place at the often filmed Vasquez Rocks park in Agua Dulce, California, which can also be glimpsed in "Arena", the Star Trek episode they watch on TV right before the evil androids appear. A shot of Bill and Ted being herded up a rock formation by their evil doubles directly mirrors a scene from the episode. It is also the setting for the climax of Star Trek: Generations.
- Alex Winter himself plays "Granny S. Preston, Esq." (makeup effects by Kevin Yagher).
- Director Peter Hewitt makes a cameo as the scruffy-looking smoker in Builders' Emporium to whom Death mumbles, "See you real soon." Writers Ed Solomon (with glasses) and Chris Matheson (in white shirt) appear as New Agers at Missy's seance.
- The name "De Nomolos" reversed reads "Ed Solomon", one of the film's writers.
- The scene where Ted's mother holds a seance and Bill and Ted are mistaken for evil spirits she picks up a book entitled The Riddance of Evil and starts to chant these words, "D´lrow eht elur, l´liw sirhc d´na de." In reverse it says, "Ed and Chris will rule the world," referring to writers Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson.
- When the two "Station" aliens charge at each other and jump in the air, the cables hoisting them up are briefly visible.
- After Death agrees to bring Bill and Ted back to life, Ted says "Hey, don't fear the reaper." This is a reference to the song "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" by Blue Öyster Cult
