Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey

I've added a new Tag to my list: Better Than the First. There are some movies where I vastly prefer the sequel over the original. I usually won't even bother to buy the original. This is one of them. I find it more entertaining and a better emotional journey than the first. Plus, it's chock full of connected events that lead to an awesome ending.

This is the continuing story of Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted Theodore Logan. Together they are Wyld Stallyns. In the first movie they were in danger of flunking history and Ted's dad was going to send him to military school ensuring that their band Wyld Stallyns would not materialize into anything outside of their own heads. That was the worst possible thing since in the future there is peace and prosperity for all thanks to the world-changing music and culture of Wyld Stallyns. A time traveler from the future, Rufus, comes to them in a time machine designed to look like a phone booth (hey, that would be anachronistic today as well as in the past, lol). He gives Bill and Ted use of the phone booth to travel through time and space and learn history so they can pass their big oral presentation in a couple days. Instead of just learning they end up grabbing significant historical figures and bringing them back for the presentation. While exploring medieval Europe they meet two princesses they fall for. At the end of the movie after they pass their test Rufus shows up with the two princesses telling Bill and ted that he brought them because they are part of Wyld Stalliys, too. All four of them grab their instruments and start to play, but they are terrible. Rufus ends the movie by saying that they will get better.

Let's see how the second movie plays out:





The opening scene of the movie is a guy (we find out later his name is De Nomolos) raging against the utopia they live in. He hates Bill and Ted and everything they've brought to society. He plans to go back in time to stop them from their first world broadcast and prevent them from shaping the future. He and his goons break into the university where Rufus is giving a lecture on sound and acoustics with guest speakers from across time. De Nomolos steals the time machine and sends back his secret weapons, robot versions of Bill and Ted programmed to ruin the band, kill the real Bill & Ted, and ruin their reputations for ever. As they activate the time machine Rufus snags a ride hoping to save his friends and the destined saviors of society.






Bill and Ted make it into the Battle of the Bands, barely, as the last act of the night. As they are celebrating that as well as the birthday of their princess girlfriends, they propose to them. The girls accept and the guys are riding high on life. Right after the girls leave the guys get a phone call from the robots pretending to be the girls (robots always seem to be able to mimic people's voices). The evil robots convince the real B & T that their girlfriends, who just accepted proposals from them, suddenly broke up with them. Too bad B & T aren't that bright.





The evil robots show up and pretend to be B & T from the future there to help them get the girls back. The robots convince them that they know where to find the girls (on the phone they said they were going out to the desert to be alone). The robots take B & T to the desert and reveal that they are in fact evil robots there to kill them. They force B & T to walk up a cliff and then push them off the cliff to their deaths. What will become of the future now?






B & T rise up out of their bodies as spirits, confused on what to do now. Then they see Death, the Grim Reaper, and he comes to take them onward. Bill asks if there is any way to go back and Death tells him that they can challenge him. He warns them that if they lose they will have to stay in the afterlife (I guess he means as a spirit on earth) for eternity. Ted asks what happens in they win to which Death replies, "No one has ever beaten me" with a big grin on his face. B & T can't go quietly into the dark night, they have to save their fiancees from the evil robots (I'm actually glad to see that their first priority is the princesses, not their destinies in the future). They decide to give Death a melvin (a wedgie). They tell him that his shoes are untied and then grab his robes around the groin and yank upward. B & T then walk back to San Dimas and have a couple of misadventures as ghosts. They end up crashing a seance and are mistaken for evil spirits. Then they get banished to hell by the seance leader. While in hell they find the devil who sends them to their own private hells and they realize the only way out is to challenge Death. He appears and warns them that the stakes are different now. This time if they lose they will be stuck in hell for all eternity.





As the challengers Bill and Ted get to choose the challenge. We see B & T at one end of a table in a dreary looking grey room and Death at the other. They are in front of Battleship boards (or whatever you call them), with both sides already showing 4 sunk ship counters. They trade a couple of misses and then hits, but B & T are victorious. Death, however, is a sore loser and proclaims that they must play him again for best 2 out of 3.
The second game is Clue. We see Death looking over his suspect sheet and he comes to make his final accusation. He is wrong so B & T win. They ask to go back but Death says it must be best 3 out of 5 now.
All we see is Death overlooking one of those electronic vibrating football games upset with a piece that just spins around. Bill and Ted ask "Best of 7?" "Damn right!" replies Death.
The final game is Twister with Bill and Death on the mat while Ted spins and calls the required spots. Death falls and finally admits defeat.
B & T realize that if they go back now the robots will likely kill them again. Ted comes up with a plan to make good robots to fight the evil robots. They ask Death to help them find someone for the task. He is theirs to command so he must oblige. They go to heaven and sneak into heaven (by stealing the clothes of legitimate entrants). They meet God and he tells them they must find Station to help them build their robots. They are given a map and then find Station, a pair of short Martians playing charades with the brightest minds that have passed from history. Time to go back to Earth.





Bill, Ted, Death, and the two Stations go to a hardware store to get the parts they'll need to build robots in a hurry. While pushing the cart down the aisle Death passes a man smoking (this was before they banned smoking indoors) and said "See you real soon." The man took out the cigarette and stepped on it to signify he was done smoking, for ever. I love that bit.
After they load the back of their band van with the stuff they bought the two Stations decide to play chicken and ram into one another. They fuse into one mass and then it reforms into a single 7 foot tall version of them. He then starts putting together good robot versions of B & T during their drive to the Battle of the Bands.

The character that really sets this movie apart from the prior one is Death. He is so funny. He is insecure, too, which comes out when Bill and Ted start to compliment Station on his work on the robots. "I made the wigs. I took them shopping. I pushed the cart." Even funnier when they compliment large Station on his "excellently huge Martian butt." Death chimes in, "Don't overlook my butt. I work out a lot. And reaping burns a lot of calories."

They finally get to the Battle of the Bands and it is time for Wyld Stallyns to perform. The robots get on stage and proceed to insult the audience. They proclaim that they are Bill S. Preston, Esquire and Ted "Theodore" Logan and together they are Wyld Stallyns. Then to the side of the stage the real B & T come out and say "No, we're Wyld Stallyns." The audience eats it up, thinking it's all a gimmick for the show, of course. The princesses are tied up and hanging above the stage to be dropped to their deaths at the end of the show, so B & T don't have a lot of time. They use the remote controls Station made and have their good robots burst through a wall and charge towards the evil robots. The evil robots look upwards and the good robots hit them with uppercuts and knock their blocks off (heh). Then the good robots punch the evil, headless robots in the chests and they burst into pieces (surprisingly the audience is not hit with debris). The Station Martians (separate again now) let down Joanna and Elizabeth so Bill and Ted can until them and kiss them. Everything looks good until the time machine shows up and De Nomolos is in it. He has a gun and declares that it is time to kill them once and for all. Before he does so, though, he blasts the TV cameras with a ray gun so they transmit to the entire world, not just Channel 12 as they had been, so the world can witness the birth of a new future, one ruled by De Nomolos. Bill and Ted are weighing their options in the face of his gun and Ted remarks that they'd be okay if only they had more time. Bill reminds him that they have all the time in the world. After they defeat De Nomolos they can use the booth and go back in time to set up what they need to defeat him now. A sandbag then falls from above and knocks down his gun. Then a cage falls around him. De Nomolos laughs and says that he can do that too and says that after he destroys them he will use the booth and go back and give himself a key to the cage and another gun. He raises the gun and pulls the trigger and instead of blasting Bill and Ted a banner comes out that says Wyld Stallyns Rule! Bill explains that only the victor can go back and set things up so they are the ones who setup the key and the gun to make him think he was winning. And that is what De Nomolos doesn't get. Even with a time machine, time seems to be set. Everything they do with the time machine has only furthered the timeline he was already in. He can't change it, whatever anyone does is what always happened in the first place. While De Nomolos is standing there trying to figure out what went wrong Death comes up and tells him that his shoelaces are untied. He looks down and Death gives him a melvin. Then Ted's father arrests him and they are free to proceed with the concert. They are now live in front of the whole world and the entire band of Wyld Stallyns is present (Bill, Ted, Joanna, Elizabeth, Death, Station, and the robots as back up dancers). They realize they still don't really know how to play. Good thing they have all the time in the world to practice thanks to the time machine. They take a several months to get good and have a honeymoon with their new wives (and now they have infant sons, too). Time to rock.

They play "God Gave Rock and Roll to You" but really it is Kiss playing. Their concert changes the world and ushers in the age De Nomolos was trying to prevent. Good thing he was a gym teacher not literature, or he would have known about self fulfilling prophecies. By trying to avoid the future he made it happen.

While the awesome song is playing their are a lot of newspapers and magazine headlines spinning across the screen showing how the world is changing thanks to Wyld Stallyns: Peace in the Middle East, no more droughts in the mid-west US, air pollution is being cleaned up, the economy is up, and the space program gets to Mars. The most awesome thing is the Road & Track magazine saying that Death won the Indy 500. He is quoted as saying "I didn't know I could run that fast."

Great way to end a movie!