What’s a long wait to a pair of time travelers? It’s been 25 years (29 in our timeline) since Bill S. Preston, Esq., and Ted “Theodore” Logan played the Argent/Petra/Kiss classic “God Gave Rock and Roll To You” at the end of their Bogus Journey. Since then, it seems that the canonical Bill & Ted have been about as active as the fictional characters in our reality.
Bill & Ted Face the Music finds our heroes have seemingly having failed to live up to their destiny. They are brought before the “most important people in the universe” to explain themselves and their simple credo of “Be excellent to each other and party on, dudes,” just doesn’t cut it anymore. The Gen-X slackers are what everyone said they’d become: nothing. Their plan is to travel into the future and steal the perfect song from themselves, assuming that they’ll have already written it by then. This appears to have as much affect on the timeline as the discarded Terminator franchise movies and they (literally) find themselves in prison.
With barely a sneeze more than 60 seconds to the trailer, it’s hard to make much out of this so far. It looks like Bill & Ted are still married to the princesses (played by Jayma Mays and Erinn Hayes) and that their old pal, The Grim Reaper (William Sadler,) is still in the picture. Current information has Amy Stoch reprising her role of the oedipal stepmom, Missy, and archive footage of the late, great George Carlin being used with his family’s cooperation.
Just shy of 30 years is a long wait but other nostalgia sequels have paved the way. Still, it will be up to future trailers to connect with today’s audiences as I’ve encountered many a Zoomer who’ve never heard of the original films and there isn’t enough of a hook in the first trailer to make you feel for the Wyld Stallyns just yet. Whereas Rocky Balboa became a metaphor for getting the movie itself made and Stallone’s (still active) war against the aging process, Alex Winter has been a steady director/producer since the first movie’s release and Keanu Reeves has become an iconic figure in both film and meme. In short, we’re going to have to see more to feel more to want more.
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