FOR THOSE ABOUT TO ROCK

‘Bill & Ted’ Are Back to Give Us Hope for the Future

In “Bill & Ted Face the Music,” the third film in the “Bill & Ted” saga, the Wyld Stallyns have returned to save the world once more. They couldn’t have come at a better time.

In 1989, two Californian teenage doofuses were handed a most prodigious destiny: their music would save our bitterly divided world, uniting it once and for all in righteous, heavy-metal harmony. They possessed no actual musical skill and couldn’t guess the difference between Mongol emperor Bob Genghis Khan and Greek philosopher So-crates Johnson. But what Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Alex Winter) and Ted “Theodore” Logan (Keanu Reeves) lacked in smarts, they made up for in pure, unconquerable optimism. (And “69” jokes.) One Excellent Adventure and a hellish Bogus Journey later, Bill and Ted stood on the precipice of greatness. Their band, the Wyld Stallyns, had finally become a worldwide sensation. Their destiny, it seemed, would be fulfilled. They would be heroes. 

But when we find the pair again 29 years later in Bill & Ted Face the Music—the third and final Bill & Ted film, out on VOD and in select drive-in theaters this weekend—all that momentum has fizzled. Rather than heroes reveling in world peace, the Wyld Stallyns are now a pair of deflated middle-aged dads playing mostly empty rooms in daylight-streaked hotel bars. No song of theirs ever united the world. With heavy hearts and their marriages on the rocks, the best friends are instead on the verge of pawning their guitars and giving up their rock-god dreams for good—a most non-triumphant fate for the would-be world saviors and most diehard metal fans in San Dimas.

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Melissa Leon

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