When it comes to franchises the perfect trilogy is a near impossible feat.
I mean short of Lord of the Rings and the original Star Wars trilogy it seems like the law of diminishing returns and just plain greed usually derails any attempts after the first film’s success. But thanks to its latest release by Shout Factory Selects, I would like to submit the Bill and Ted trilogy of Excellent Adventure, Bogus Journey and Face the Music as a flawless trilogy. What existed for decades as a solid duology, with the late 80s classic that was followed by the equally weird and wonderful take on the 90s in Bogus Journey, always left that door open for a third and final entry to cap the adventures of our two favorite time travelers. Well after years of rumors and delays we finally got the third film, which was everything a fan could want and so much more.
Today sees the release thanks to Shout Factory of all three films as part of the Shout Selects line in a deluxe special edition that I will be breaking down film by film below.
1989’s Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure was Stephen Herek’s follow up to his tiny monster horror masterwork (IMO!) Critters. The film, which originally started its life as a spec script about a pair of time traveling best friends who drove to the past in a van by Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson, who would stick with the franchise as scribes for all three films. The film later evolved into the story we know and love today starring Keanu Reeves as Ted and Alex Winter, as Bill, two radical teens from San Dimas, CA, on the verge of failing their history exam and not graduating in 1988. This has the future utopia they will one day inspire in 2688, dispatching a guide with a time traveling phone booth, to help them learn a thing or two about history and hopefully graduate and ensure their society.
The most painful fact I realized watching Excellent Adventure today is that the phone booth itself is a relic now what would only be recognized by younger generations as a time machine from this film, rather than a part of day to day life. The theme that starts here and runs through the whole series is growing up. When we begin this film Bill and Ted are basically still children, who’s only dream is to become famous rockstars, even though they can’t even play their instruments. Once they meet Rufus and learn that dream will one day manifest itself, it drives the narrative engine of this film and will inspire the other two to finally grow up. This film has the two buckling down and taking their charge seriously, as they navigate through the circuits of time collecting famous figures to hopefully graduate. Fun fact: one of the historical figures dropped from the original pitch thankfully, was Adolph Hitler.
Three years later saw the release of my personal favorite film of the three, the weird and wonderful Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991), originally titled Bill and Ted Go To Hell. This film was the directorial debut of Pete Hewitt (Tom and Huck, The Borrowers) with another script by Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson, who returned along with all of the original cast. This film has De Nomolos, a Terrorist/Gym Teacher from 2691 (I see what they did there) sending a pair of Bill and Ted robots back in time to kill the real Bill and Ted to prevent winning the battle of the Bands and getting their big break. Oddly enough in the first act the robots succeed in killing our most righteous heroes and sending them into the afterlife, where they must beat Death at a series of board games and traverse Heaven and Hell to win their lives back.
Given the rather widespread acclaim for the first film and its general wholesomeness, this was such a weird and dark followup and I think that’s why I loved it so much growing up. Its surreal journey through the afterlife, its 90s aesthetic and rather pitch black humor locked me in as a teenager who was growing up just like its protagonists. Like the film before it, we have Bill and Ted stuck yet again in life this time at dead-end jobs, and it takes them getting killed to motivate them to grow up into adulthood and finally learn to play their instruments to ascend to rock stardom. Thanks to that weirdness this film took some time to find its audience, but once it did it cemented this duology and made fans wonder when the next entry in the series would hit.
It would be nearly three decades until we would get the final film in the trilogy, Bill & Ted Face the Music and I think it was worth the wait. In those 29 years both stars sort of fell out, and back into favor with Hollywood, with Reeves reinventing himself as an action icon thanks to the John Wick series and Alex Winter establishing himself as an award winning documentarian. Over the years we continued to hear rumors there was a great script for a third Bill and Ted film they were kicking around and they were hoping one day to make it. While this is nothing new for franchise veterans looking to give fans hope and blogs a sound bite, this all turned out to be very much in fact true. With theaters closed during the pandemic, Bill & Ted Face the Music was released on premium VOD and it was a perfect cap to the series, its themes and its character’s stories.
Bill and Ted Face the Music picks up with Bill & Ted 25 years after the events of Bogus Journey, with the duo having yet to complete their final task foretold by the “Great Ones” from the future: writing the song that would unite the world. Their band’s popularity has run its course and they’ve gone from filling the Grand Canyon, to barely filling taco night at the local dive bar. But when time begins to collapse in on itself, the pair are visited by the daughter of Rufus, Kelly (Kristen Schaal), who lets them know they now only have 74 minutes to write the song, or existence as we know it will cease to exist. From here the film splits into essentially two narratives. The first is Bill & Ted hitting the Circuits of Time to steal the song from their future selves, à la Bogus Journey, the second features their two twenty-something music savant daughters using time travel to collect historical musical figures to be in their father’s back up band à la Excellent Adventure.
This film’s theme is growing up and the eventual passing of the torch from parent to child. As Bill and Ted toil away attempting to steal the song, it’s their children, their daughters who are then tasked with carrying the legacy of Wyld Stallyns. For fans of the series, the film keeps the cartoonishly goofiness you’d expect with a heaping dose of wholesome, heartwarming fun. Face the Music is hardly your slick big-budget Hollywood spectacle, and instead leans into its budgetary restraints which makes for some truly bizarre and fun moments. It’s no easy task to combine two films that are so different in tone as Excellent and Bogus, but it feels natural here as the two stories have an ebb and flow here that calls back to some of the best moments of the previous entries while allowing the writers to bring the thematic thread to it end and closing the phone book on Bill and Ted’s journey.
Another note and a testament to this particular fandom, is the lack of meltdown due to the fact their daughters are their heirs to their musical lineage. I mean one of the daughters is played by Samara Weaving, but still. The fact that was a major plot point and the film’s fans didn’t attempt to review bomb or just go full on Ghostbusters, says volumes about this dedicated yet progressive fandom.
Both Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey were shot on 35mm are sporting brand new 4k UHD transfers, and have never looked better. I recently caught the first two films on 35mm and the clarity and color here are unparalleled in these transfers compared to the now murky and fading theatrical prints. This is all while still maintaining the grain and warmth of the original camera negatives. So those two coupled with Face the Music, which was shot digitally, so they went back and newly remastered the digital intermediate, adding some HDR for good measure to give us a nearly definitive presentation of the film. The extras here are primarily legacy at this point with everything being brought forward thankfully, yet again. Every film comes housed in its down case and the set is housed in a very substantial boxset with some great artwork highlighting the series.
Check out the full rundown of special features below:
Bonus Features for UHD/Blu-ray
DISC ONE (BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE – 4K UHD):
- Presented In Dolby Vision
- Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround
- Audio Commentaries
- “Time Flies When You Are Having Fun”
- Theatrical Trailers
DISC TWO (BILL & TED’S BOGUS JOURNEY – 4K UHD):
- NEW 4K Scan Of Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey From The Original 35mm Camera Negative
- Presented In Dolby Vision
- Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround
- Audio Commentaries
- “Bill & Ted Go To Hell”
- Theatrical Trailers
DISC THREE (BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC – 4K UHD):
- NEW 4K Remaster Of Bill & Ted Face The Music From The Digital Intermediate
- Presented In Dolby Vision
- Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround
- The Official Bill & Ted Face The Music Panel At Comic-Con@Home
- “Be Excellent To Each Other” – Behind The Scenes With Cast And Crew
- “A Most Triumphant Duo”
- “Social Piece (Excellence)”
- “Death’s Crib”
- Theatrical Trailers
DISC FOUR (BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE – BLU-RAY):
- Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround
- Audio Commentaries
- “Time Flies When You Are Having Fun”
- “The Original Bill & Ted” – In Conversation With Chris & Ed
- “The Hysterical Personages Of Bill & Ted”
- Theatrical Trailer
DISC FIVE (BILL & TED’S BOGUS JOURNEY – BLU-RAY):
- Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround
- Audio Commentaries
- “Bill & Ted Go To Hell”
- “The Most Triumphant Making Of”
- “Score!” – An Interview With Guitarist Steve Vai
- Air Guitar Tutorial With Bjorn Turoque & The Rockness Monster
- Vintage EPK
- The Linguistic Stylings Of Bill & Ted
- Theatrical Trailers
DISC SIX (BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC – BLU-RAY):
- Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround
- The Official Bill & Ted Face The Music Panel At Comic-Con@Home
- “Be Excellent To Each Other” – Behind The Scenes With Cast And Crew
- “A Most Triumphant Duo”
- “Social Piece (Excellence)”
- “Death’s Crib”
- Theatrical Trailers
I had to say “nearly definitive” above, as a rather hard core fan of the series and this is not to the detriment of Shout Factory. It’s because both Bogus Journey and Excellent Adventure have alternate endings that were lost to time and only exist today thanks to stills and novelizations. In Excellent Adventure Alex Winter recently revealed a cut musical number at the end of the first film, that has never been seen that he recently found stills of. And at the end of Bogus Journey we lost a sequence before the Battle of the Bands that had Bill and Ted once again confronting their greatest fears, that encountered in hell, yet again in the real world. Oddly enough that sequence exists in both the novelization (Yes I’ve read it) and the trading cards, so it was deleted late into the game. So that lack of footage, that will probably never be found would qualify that “nearly” statement for me.
As a long time fan of this series, this is as good as it gets. Owning all three films in glorious 4K housed in this deluxe set is going to be on a lot of Christmas lists this year. Revisiting all three films now was a great opportunity to not only review the set from a technical aspect, but come to the realization of just how cohesive they are as a trilogy of films, both quality-wise and thematically. The films, their stories and their stars grew up with their fans, which was smart, and allowed them to dig into the fact that you’re never done growing up, and hopefully you don’t need to be thrown off a cliff to realize that. What can I say? I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting these films that will go on as a perfect trilogy for me, its got that hilariously fun beginning, the fun weird middle and the wholesome ending that sticks the landing, in a way that honestly surprised me at the love and deft that went into these films.
