Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure analysis

Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure:

In the beginning of the movie we see that both Bill and Ted are stereotyped as typical skater ‘dudes’ from California. Both Bill and Ted aspire to be a famous rock band called the ‘Wyld Sallions’ which contrasts with the fact that Ted’s father wants to send him to military school unless he passes his history test. Their band name (‘Wyld Sallions’) connotes how they as people are, wild, strange and dim as they can’t even spell their band name correctly. 

The narrative structure of the text begins with the equilibrium of Bill and Ted being at high school, having a good time and then rocking out to their songs. They are questioned about important figures in history which they stereotypically do not know about e.g. “Ted who is Joan of Arc?” “Errm Noah’s wife?” this put emphasise on the fact that they truly are quite dopey.

However we quickly see a disequilibrium; they’re struggle in the high school history report could lead them to not graduating high school and becoming separated thus breaking apart their dreams of being rock stars. This portrays the positive values of education, friendship and ambition in this text; although Bill and Ted are unintelligent they manage to find a man from the future called Rufus who helps them with their report, they remain as best friends and furthermore discover that in the future their music will influence the world. Throughout the movie there is an unclear foreshadowing as they repeatedly say “Most triumphant dude!” showing that Bill and Ted will be successful since they are aware of the consequences of not passing (this will be “bogus and uncool” according to them).

According to Propp's theory the villain in the text would be Ted’s father as he plans to separate Bill and Ted, which is where their mysterious friend from the future Rufus steps in as the danor and dispatches them by giving the time travelling booth which enables them to actually view these key events that they have been studying. While travelling in time they meet their princesses who are the King of England’s daughters but instead of saving them from their father, whom in this sub-plot is the villain, they decide to invite them to prom and call them “historical babes” which shows them failing to be the supposedly hero’s that they’re meant to be.

The text has a non-linear pattern as Bill and Ted repeatedly travel to many different time periods, changing the course of history which effects their present time, they also travel to the future where their music has a major influence on people, for example the enigma code of the air guitar when they say “Rock on dude” we at first believe this to be an action between the two of them as friend but in the future this message is revealed to be extremely important (ending poverty and starvation, and beginning of world peace). The action code of the text is the telephone booth which allows Bill and Ted to go back in time.

The new equilibrium of the media text is in the end when Bill and Ted present their history report in a school assembly using the real characters from the past, they pass therefore they can stay together and fulfil their dreams of being rock stars.