Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

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Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989) is a comedy/science fiction film based on the idea of time travel. It is also a prime example of a buddy film.

The film was released by Nelson Entertainment and Orion Pictures, written by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, and directed by Stephen Herek. It starred Alex Winter as Bill S. Preston, Esq., Keanu Reeves as Ted (Theodore) Logan, George Carlin as the mystical Rufus; and eight "personages of historical significance": Robert V. Barron as Abraham Lincoln, Terry Camilleri as Napoleon Bonaparte, Al Leong as Genghis Khan, Rod Loomis as Sigmund Freud, Tony Steedman as Socrates, Dan Shor as Billy the Kid and Jane Wiedlin as Joan of Arc.

The film was made in 1987, but due to the bankruptcy of the film's original distributor, the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, the project was not released theatrically until 1989. As a partial result of the delay, certain dates in the movie originally scripted as "1987" had to be redubbed as "1988". The copyright date of this movie is 1988 and the same date appears on the DVD cover.

The film's taglines — "Be Excellent to Each Other" and "Party On, Dudes!" — as well as other California slang phrases enjoyed a brief surge in popularity in the U.S. following the film's release. The film's "no way"/"yes way" exchanges received new life in 1992's Wayne's World, though shortened to "no way"/"way."

It was followed in 1991 by a sequel, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.

Two spin-off television series were produced as Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures. The first, an animated series featuring the voices of Carlin, Winter, and Reeves, ran for 21 episodes in 1990 and 1991. A later live action series, featuring none of the cast from the movie, lasted just seven episodes in 1992. A spin-off comic book, Bill and Ted's Excellent Comic Book, (following on from Bogus Journey) was produced by Marvel Comics. There were also multi-level Game Boy, NES and Atari Lynx games released, which were very loosely based on the film's time travel aspect. A PC title and a nearly identical Amiga port were made in 1991 by Off the Wall Productions under contract by Capstone Software and followed very close to the original movie.

In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure the 50th greatest comedy film of all time.

1 Plot
2 Time Travel
3 Wyld Stallyns
4 Cast
5 Trivia
6 See also
7 External links

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Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Winter) and Ted "Theodore" Logan (Reeves), simply referred to as "Bill & Ted," are teenagers in San Dimas, California who are in danger of flunking out of high school. A guitar-playing guru named Rufus (Carlin) arrives from a future San Dimas to help them pass a vital history test, because their garage band ("Wyld Stallyns", pronounced "Wild Stallions") holds the key to world peace and ultimate truth. However, they will not achieve this destiny if the duo fail the exam and Ted's authoritarian father carries out his threat to ship him to Oats Military Academy in Alaska. Rufus lends them a time machine disguised as a phone booth, which they use to meet—and "collect"—various historical figures: Napoleon Bonaparte, Socrates (pronounced "So-crates", and given the surname "Johnson"), Billy the Kid ("Mr. The Kid"), Sigmund Freud ("frood"), Beethoven ("Beeth oven"), Genghis Khan (George Gangus Khan), Joan of Arc ("Miss of Arc", carried on in Clone High), and Abraham Lincoln, to help them with their vital history presentation.

Originally, the time machine was to be a 1969 Chevrolet van, but the idea was nixed as being too close in concept to the DeLorean in 1985's Back To The Future. Instead, the time machine was styled after a 1960s American telephone booth. In hindsight, this was quite similar to the time-travelling British police box of the BBC's television programme Doctor Who; however, the Bill & Ted telephone booth lacked the huge interior spaces of the Doctor's TARDIS. Nevertheless, they managed to get up to ten people in the booth at the same time.

It is interesting to note that Rufus never says what his name is. Instead, Bill and Ted tell their past selves to "listen to this dude Rufus".

In the original ending, Bill and Ted delivered their oral report in the classroom, with the historical figures displaying their views on the blackboard. This was discarded in favor of a more spectacular ending.

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Time Travel

The movie's entire plot is a model example of a Predestination paradox, wherein Bill and Ted are entrusted with the means to dramatically improve the entire universe of the future by a citizen (Rufus) of that very future. Near the end of the movie, Ted solves the problem of breaking into the jail by exploiting this paradox, demonstrating an unexpected (probably to himself as well) level of temporal insight. Knowing that time travellers (themselves) in the future world can provide aid to those in their current situation (as Rufus does originally), they resolve to help *themselves* break into the jail by stealing Ted's dad's keys from a couple days ago and leaving them where they will be found at the exact moment of the resolution. The astute viewer may reflect at this point that Ted's dad complained about having lost his keys at the beginning of the film, which Ted at that time knows nothing about. This accordance with the Novikov self-consistency principle, suggests that there was never any possiblity for Bill and Ted to fail. The same accordance lends validity to the fact that their removing critical figureheads from history does not cause the world of present-day San Dimas to be drastically different. Moreover, and perhaps more relevant, their history project remains impressive insofar as the history produced by the characters has not been modified by their absence. Bill and Ted are paradoxically bound to return them all afterwards, unscathed.

Of course, the abundance of flagrant macroscopic time travel flouts the chronology protection conjecture, which one may handle via suspension of disbelief.

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Wyld Stallyns

The Wyld Stallyns (pronounced "wild stallions") is the fictional metal band from the film that later proves responsible for bringing peace and harmony to the world and creating a utopia on Earth. The founding members were Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted "Theodore" Logan. They are later joined by Elizabeth and Joanna, two princesses from medieval England, Death, and "Station", a Martian.

In the sequel Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, the villain De Nomolos tries unsuccessfully to stop the band from creating a peaceful future by replacing Bill and Ted with robotic doubles. Later, Bill and Ted destroy the robots and make their world-wide debut at the 4th Annual San Dimas Battle of the Bands. As predicted by time-traveller Rufus, they bring peace to the world and eventually play a sellout tour on the planet Mars.

One of the bands they competed against in the Battle of the Bands was real-life California band Primus, led by Les Claypool. The song Wyld Stallyns performs at the competition was "God Gave Rock And Roll To You", which in real life was performed by KISS.

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Cast

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Trivia

The phone booth used in this movie was given away in a contest presented by Nintendo Power magazine (in honor of Bill & Ted's Excellent Video Game Adventure), won by a Mississippi boy who, with help, rigged the phone up to be normally usable.
At one point in the movie, a character utters "San Dimas High School football rules!" This was inserted at the behest of the town of San Dimas in lieu of the previously-written line for the character, which was "Stage Fright, Go Away!" He was supposed to say the latter because, at the time, he was on stage in front of the entire school and was suffering from severe stage fright. The writers felt the "football" comment more humorous.
Inspired by the quote from the movie, The Ataris wrote a song called "San Dimas High School Football Rules," which does not actually mention San Dimas at all. The closest the song gets is one line that talks about "looking for a high school that you know doesn't exist." (Also contrary to the song, the school does exist.)
During the presentation, Abraham Lincoln's character opens his speech saying "Four score and seven minutes ago..." which means 87 minutes ago, this scene happens 87 minutes into the movie.
When Bill and Ted went to visit Socrates, Ted says the line "All we are, is dust in the wind...dude." which refers to the lyric of a Kansas song "Dust in the Wind" (from their 1977 album Point of Know Return).
The scenes in which The Three Most Important People In The World appear, the character in the middle chair is played by Clarence Clemons. His is also a member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band.
Keanu Reeves originally auditioned for Bill opposite Alex Winter auditioning for Ted, but they were cast as the opposite characters they audtioned for.