Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey
Promotional one-sheet poster.
Directed by	Peter Hewitt
Written by	Chris Matheson Ed Solomon
Produced by	Scott Kroopf
Starring	Keanu Reeves Alex Winter William Sadler Joss Ackland George Carlin
Music by	David Newman
Distributed by	Orion Pictures
Release dates	July 19, 1991
Running time	93 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$20,000,000
Box office	$38,037,513 (domestic)

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.

Plot

The movie opens in the future, where Chuck De Nomolos (Joss Ackland) steals a time machine disguised as a phone booth, and then sends robotic duplicates of Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) back to the past to prevent their band Wyld Stallyns from winning the Fourth Annual San Dimas Battle of the Bands, and thus removing their influence on history. Rufus (George Carlin) attempts to stop De Nomolos' plan but ends up lost in time. In the present, Bill and Ted struggle with their band Wyld Stallyns; while former 15th-century princesses and current fiancées Elizabeth (Annette Azcuy) and Joanna (Sarah Trigger) have become skilled on their instruments, Bill and Ted are still inept. De Nomolos' clones capture Bill and Ted, and kill the pair by throwing them over a cliff, then take over their lives, including ruining their relationships with the princesses.

The real Bill and Ted find themselves facing Death (William Sadler), the Grim Reaper, who challenges them to a game for their souls. They realize they have no chance of defeating him, and instead give Death a "melvin" and flee. Bill and Ted try to find someone that can help them in their ethereal state, first by possessing Ted's father, Captain Logan (Hal Landon Jr.) and another police officer, and then by trying to call out as a séance held by Ted's stepmother Missy (Amy Stock-Poynton). However, at the séance, they are mistaken for evil spirits and cast down into Hell. The two are sentenced by Satan (voiced by Frank Welker) and forced to live their own personal versions of Hell. The two realize their only means of escape is to play the Reaper in a game for their souls.

The Reaper brings them out of Hell, and lets them decide which game to play. The pair select several games, including Battleship, Clue, electric football, and Twister, each time winning and requiring the Reaper to insist on a rematch. Eventually the Reaper acquiesces and lets the pair command him. Bill and Ted realize that they only way to face their robotic counterparts and get to the Battle of the Bands is to find the smartest being alive to build them a more powerful set of robots. The Reaper takes them to Heaven and introduces him to Station (also voiced by Frank Welker), an alien that is able to split itself into two smaller versions of itself. The group returns to present-day Earth, and gather the necessary parts for Station at the local hardware store. As they race to the Battle of the Bands, Station completes powerful robotic versions of Bill and Ted. Station's robots are able to defeat De Nomolos' clones before Wyld Stallyns are due to take the stage. De Nomolos arrives from the future in the time machine, intent on defeating the band himself over a worldwide television broadcast, but Bill and Ted are able to get the upper hand with their friends' help. Rufus, who was able to return to the future and then travel to the present, helps to secure De Nomolos while encouraging Bill and Ted to get on stage and play.

As Bill and Ted reunite with their fiancées and prepare to play, they realize that their musical skills still are lacking, and the four of them disappear briefly in the time machine, reappearing moments later but aged several months; during their time, they have not only learned how to skillfully play their instruments but both couples have married and born a child. Wyld Stallyns, joined by both the Reaper and Station, play their world-changing music to a global television audience thanks to De Nomolos' interference. During the end credits, fictional newspaper and magazine articles describe the worldwide impact of the Stallyns' music towards the Utopian future.

Soundtrack

Main article: Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey: Music from the Motion Picture‎

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 Evil Bill is actually Evil Ted and vice versa. (In the theaterical version of the movie, there is an extra set of Bill and Ted clothes in the corner while the evil Wyld Stallyns are carrying off Joanna and Elizabeth. These clothes are the unzipped costumes of the switcheroo.)
• 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.

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 the first Star Wars film, 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, featuring original stories. The first arc features negative results from Death's decision to take a vacation.

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", starred in "Demon Knight" and had a cameo in the film Bordello of Blood as The Mummy.
• 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.
• Linkin Park's Lead Guitarist Brad Delson was an extra for the movie.
• 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, Bill says "Hey, don't fear the reaper." This is a reference to the song "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" by Blue Öyster Cult
• When Bill and Ted are asked "What is the meaning of life?" they reply with the lyrics from "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" by Poison.

External links

• BillAndTed.org, official fansite
• Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey at IMDb
• Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey at Rotten Tomatoes