Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey
Promotional one-sheet poster.
Directed by	Peter Hewitt
Produced by	Scott Kroopf
Written by	Christopher Matheson Ed Solomon
Starring	Keanu Reeves Alex Winter William Sadler Joss Ackland George Carlin
Music by	David Newman
Cinematography	Oliver Wood
Editing by	David Finfer
Studio	Nelson Entertainment Interscope Communications
Distributed by	Orion Pictures
Release date(s)	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 science fiction comedy film, and the directing debut of Peter Hewitt. It is the second film in the Bill & Ted franchise, and a sequel to Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989). Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter and George Carlin reprise their respective roles. 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 traveling 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. Auditioning for the Battle Of The Bands, the organiser Ms. Wardroe (Pam Grier) tells them they are terrible but that she will put them last on the bill. De Nomolos' robots capture Bill and Ted, and kill the pair by throwing them over a cliff (the same cliff shown in a Star Trek clip earlier in the film), 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.) — "I totally possessed my Dad!" — and another police officer (Roy Brocksmith), and then by trying to call out at 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 the 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 good robots are able to defeat their evil robot 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 the time game rules. Death, having suffered the "melvin" from Bill and Ted earlier, gives one to De Nomolos. De Nomolos is then arrested by Ted's father. Bill and Ted are reunited with the princesses and wonder aloud who De Nomolos was. Ms. Wardroe, who had been hosting the Battle Of The Bands, appears and tells them she can answer that for them. She proceeds to unzip her suit and takes it off along with a mask to reveal that she had been Rufus in disguise all along. He had arrived just before the audition for the Battle Of The Bands and had disguised himself as Ms. Wardroe.

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 16 months; during their time, they have not only learned how to skillfully play their instruments but both couples have married and borne 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.

Cast

• Alex Winter as William "Bill" S. Preston, Esq. and Evil Bill
• Keanu Reeves as Theodore "Ted" Logan and Evil Ted
• Joss Ackland as De Nomolos
• William Sadler as Death (The Grim Reaper)
• George Carlin as Rufus
• Pam Grier as Ms. Wardroe
• Annette Azcuy as Elizabeth
• Sarah Trigger as Joanna
• Hal Landon Jr. as Captain Logan
• Amy Stock-Poynton as Missy
• Ed Gale, Arturo Gil, and Tom Allard as Station
• Neil Ross as Station Twin #2 (voice)
• Frank Welker as the voices of Satan, The Easter Bunny and Station

Soundtrack

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

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.

Reception

The movie received a mixed reception. As of July 2011, Bogus Journey has only a 56% positive rating from critics and a 59% positive rating from audiences on Rottentomatoes.com (compared to a 82% positive rating from critics and a 70% positive rating from audiences on the first film). Not every critic disliked it, however. Roger Ebert gave the film 3 out of a possible 4 stars, noting, "It's the kind of movie where you start out snickering in spite of yourself, and end up actually admiring the originality that went into creating this hallucinatory slapstick." (Ebert did not see or review the first film.) Dave Kehr, then of the Chicago Tribune, also gave the film 3 stars, noting how unusual it was for an Ingmar Bergman parody to show up in a teen comedy, and referring to the film as a "genuine pleasure." Gene Siskel, also of the Tribune, gave the film only 2½ stars, but did believe the second film to be better than the first. Leonard Maltin also gave Bogus Journey 2½ stars, a half-star more than he gave to Excellent Adventure.

Alternate endings and missing scenes

• In both the novel and the comic, 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 is also at least one scene which appears in the promotional trailer for the movie, as well as the novel and graphic novel. When Bill and Ted are in Hell they initially have to break rocks. During the scene, 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."

During this scene portrayed in Vai's "Reaper" the following exchange occurs:

"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 theatrical 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.)
• 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 previously won. 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, but Death is not buying it. Bill offers 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. 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.

Cameos

• 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". There was also a brief appearance by future Linkin Park guitarist Brad Delson.
• 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.
• 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. Ed is credited as 'Stupid' seance member, and Chris is credited as 'Ugly' seance member. They are given similar credits in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

Film references

• 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.
• 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.
• "You can be a king or a street sweeper but everyone dances with the grim reaper", a quote paraphrased from Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, was the final statement of convicted murderer Robert Alton Harris, who died in California's gas chamber April 21, 1992.

Sequel

In 2010, Keanu Reeves dropped hints, and Alex Winter confirmed, that talks are in process with Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon about a potential third film. In April 2011, Keanu Reeves confirmed that a third installment of the movie series was under way, However no specific dates were mentioned regarding the project.

External links

• BillAndTed.org, official fansite
• Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey at the Internet Movie Database
• Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey at AllRovi
• Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey at Rotten Tomatoes