Bill and Ted Grapple with Maintaining Optimism
Bill and Ted Face the Music grapples with whether or not they're able to live up to the optimism that so many people have in them.
The 80s were an optimistic time.
People wanted to believe in the promise of the future. A lot of what was produced during that time presented a better life for all within a few decades. Teen rom-coms were ascendant and they always showed the story wrapping up with a happy ending. Sci-fi had a mostly positive way of looking at how things would turn out. Back to the Future 2 comes to mind where it showed how 2015 would have flying cars and self drying clothes and so many other things. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and the sequel Bogus Journey are perhaps the pinnacle of this type of optimism.
Coming at the end of the 80s, it tells the story of the song which saved the world, and the musicians who made it happen. The most unlikely of heroes for the story, a pair of slackers with no real prospects about the future, they're told that they will save the future and make everything better. This sends them on the previously mentioned adventure and its sequel journey. It showed how even the simplest and least praised people in society had potential to impact the future.
As anyone who was there and around today will know though, the future doesn't necessarily work out the way you want it to. Many of the sequels and reboots for movies and TV series reflect the idea that things don't come true. Bill and Ted's Face the Music is the latest and most honest version of this. Despite the way their Bogus Journey ended, looking like the world saw the brilliance of the music of Wyld Stallions who ushered in the hope and promise they believed in.
Optimism is a difficult thing to maintain however. With more than enough time, cynicism and doubt creep in. If you're not careful, it turns into anger and frustration that won't end well. A lot of the 90s was about that anger and frustration boiling over into the worst outcomes. Keeping it going takes a lot of effort, which is where we find Bill and Ted so many years later. Their intense desire to live up to the destiny they were told they had has kept them going. Continuously writing song after song in a vain attempt to live up to that idea.
The fact that they haven't ultimately comes to a head with the third movie in the series. Tasked with finally fulfilling their destiny, they're given an ultimatum to do it or see all of reality collapse. It takes them on one final adventure to face up to their unrealized potential. Along the way they grapple with what they might become if they don't and how it will ultimately end. It's a brilliant final chapter to the characters so many people have loved for years ever since it came out.
Make sure to check it out on Netflix as soon as you can. You won't regret it for a moment.
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