"In the small town of San Dimas, a few miles away from Los Angeles, there are 2 nearly brain dead teenage boys going by the names of Bill S, Preston ESQ. and Ted Theodore Logan, they have a dream together of starting their own rock and roll band called the 'Wyld Sallions'. Unfortunately, they are still in high school and on the verge of failing out of their school as well, and if they do not pass their upcoming history report, they will be separated as a result of Ted's father sending him to military school. But, what Bill and Ted do not know is that they must stay together to save the future. So, a man from the future named Rufus came to help them pass their report. So, both Bill and Ted decided to gather up historical figures which they need for their report. They are hoping that this will help them pass their report so they can stay together." Written by John Wiggins and found on IMDB
Discussion:
So once you get passed the comedic aspect of Bill and Ted with their overuse of airhead slang, the overly cliche encounters with stereotyped historical figures - you will be impressed to find that this movie actually treats certain issues of time travel quite cleverly, especially when it comes to typical time conundrums such as meeting yourself in the past or leaving yourself something in the past that you will need for the future which you acknowledge in the present (i.e. when Ted needs his dad's keys).
One of the clever allusions you may recognize - - - they travel in an American telephone booth which is highly reminiscent of that other time traveler we have encountered, Doctor Who and his police box.
This film is also one of the few time stories in which we will encounter a Utopian future (i.e. an ideal future). Wells's unnamed time traveler in The Time Machine encounters a future where the human race has wasted to idiocy and cannibalism while in Time After Time the character of Wells finds the future filled with violence, far from the ideal he imagined. The Doctor in Doctor Who is constantly traveling to a different world in different times and we see an image of the future that has high points and severe low points.
Unlike the other narratives we have encountered and will encounter, Bill and Ted are gifted with time travel and suffer no ill consequence. In fact, the ability to time travel saves them, allows them to glimpse the most ideal of futures - that they will usher in an era of peace and happiness for centuries.
Their motivation is purely selfish, but because of their potential futures, this selfishness is actually accepted and rewarded. However, they are still limited in their ability to fully use this godlike power even if they suffer no negative personal consequence in its use. The one limitation imposed upon them is that they can only take this one trip and within the timeframe of one night (San Dimas) time.
Temporal Anomalies:
However, before one can end a discussion of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure it must be acknowledged that certain aspects of the film are unexplained and undeveloped. Now I caution you here that this film was intended as a comedy and succeeds at that. But for the purpose of this class, it is is important to point out the inconsistencies in order to better understand time travel and its theories:
"Our understanding of time requires that causes must exist sequentially before their effects, even if they are displaced temporally due to time travel. This means that there must be an original timeline, a history, running from 1988 to 2688 before Rufus can travel back to 1988. But according to the premise, if Rufus does not make that trip, Wyld Stallyns will be just another obscure garage band, and the entire society based upon their music will never exist. Thus we have the problem that Rufus won't make the trip unless he makes the trip--he causes his own history. This is the reverse form of the grandfather paradox, the inevitability problem: if you appear in the past, you are destined to depart from the future. (For those paying attention to alternative time travel theories, this is insoluble in the dimension-hopping view, although it does work in the fixed timeline theory, because all actions by everyone are inevitable. This film may be an argument for the fixed timeline theory . . . " - from Temporal Anomalies in Time Travel Movies (a site dedicated to unraveling the inconsistencies)
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