Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey
Encyclopedia : B : BI : BIL : Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey
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, this one stars Keanu Reeves as Ted and Alex Winter as Bill. The film's original working title was Bill & Ted Go To Hell.
Plot
Bill, Ted and their fiancées (Elizabeth and Joanna) are members of the highly successful heavy metal band called the Wyld Stallyns. Chuck De Nomolos (Joss Ackland) has cultivated a severe dislike for the society created as a result of the success of Wyld Stallyns, and has schemed to prevent Bill and Ted from performing at their world-wide debut at the 4th Annual San Dimas Battle of the Bands. De Nomolos forcibly takes possession of a time machine booth, sending two evil robot look-alikes of Bill and Ted (or as Bill and Ted refer to them, "evil robot usses") back in time to kill them, which the robots are able to do surprisingly quickly. The evil Bill and Ted robots then proceed to lay waste to the lives of the real Bill and Ted, seeking to destroy the relationship with Elizabeth and Joanna in furtherance of the scheme to sabotage Bill and Ted's impact on future society.
Death aka the Grim Reaper (William Sadler) comes to collect Bill and Ted, but they are very committed to warning their fiancées about the "evil robot usses". Providing them with the opportunity to live, Death tells them that they may beat him at a contest — parodying Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal — but warns that he has never lost. 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), report their own deaths to the police and try to convince the police to protect their fiancées. But they are not believed, so they depossess the police and look for another way. Bill and Ted find a séance underway led by Bill's former stepmom, now Ted's current stepmom, Missy, but the two are mistaken for evil spirits and are cast down to Hell. After a sampling of their most worst feared childhood memories and a run-in with Colonel Oats (head of the military school in Alaska, a fear they both have), they must choose which one will be their eternal fate. Bill and Ted figure that there is only one way out: to win a contest with Death.
Bill and Ted do not play Chess with Death, the traditional game used in such a contest. Instead, they play Death at Battleship, Cluedo, Electric Football and Twister. After his defeat, much to his dismay, Death is at their command. The three of them go to Heaven to seek advice from God on who can help them defeat the evil robots. However, to gain an audience they mug three souls (to take their clothes) and recite the chorus from the song "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" by Poison to "explain" 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.
Bill, Ted, Station and a reluctant Death return to Earth and life. Bill and Ted drive to Builder's Emporium where Station selects the parts to build good robot versions of Bill and Ted. Station assembles the robots in the back of the van while Bill and Ted drive to the Battle of the Bands.
The good robots vaguely resemble Bill and Ted, and easily defeat the evil robots. De Nomolos then arrives in the time machine 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.
William Sadler also plays a minor role as an English family member.
During the credits, the Steve Vai song "Reaper" is played. The song was an original created for the film. The song can be found on The Elusive Light and Sound Vol.1.
Alternate Endings and Missing Scenes
There are several alternate endings to the movie, which don't appear on any of the video releases, but are the same in both the novelization and the graphic novel.
- 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."
"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). 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.
- 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. This was a light hearted moment that ocurrs 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 and replies "I don't like gum". As of this writing, this is the only deleted scene to be shown in full.
External links
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.