The Abridged Script
FADE IN:
EXT. WEDDING
ALEX WINTER and KEANU REEVES are performing at a WEDDING.
ALEX WINTER
How’s it going, folks? Hey, remember how our last movie ended with a bunch of newspaper headlines and magazine covers showing our band skyrocketing to all-time legendary status, and starting to build world peace, end pollution, and create unity across the galaxy? Well turns out all that stuff only happened for like a couple of years before everybody lost interest in our music, the band broke up, and we wound up broke washed-up footnotes of musical history, pathetically struggling to fulfil a destiny which seems increasingly unlikely to ever happen.
KEANU REEVES
So yeah, it’s not QUITE a Zoolander 2-level punch to the dick, but it’s in the ballpark.
ALEX WINTER
We’re here to celebrate the wedding of Amy Stoch to Keanu’s little brother, now that she’s completed her transition from horny jailbait to horny cougar. And we also want to debut our latest attempt at THE SONG! Yes, the one song that we’re supposed to record which will unite all of humanity, and which wasn’t a thing in either of the previous movies!
KEANU REEVES
We’ve been trying to figure out THE SONG for decades. We didn’t find it in rock, metal, pop, jazz, country, country rock, rap, classical, new country, calypso, minimalism, serialism, country folk, Kansas City blues, psychobilly, K-pop, afrobeat, dangdut, alternative country, or chutney parang. But here’s hoping we’ve finally cracked it on attempt #2,189 with our foray into experimental neotraditional dark-ambient art music! O SUUUPERMAAAANNN...
They perform an ENIGMATIC TONE POEM using THROAT SINGING, THEREMIN, BAGPIPES, OCARINA, HURDY-GURDY, CALLIOPE, DOUBLE CONTRABASS FLUTE, CRWTH, and HYDRAULOPHONE, before KEANU’S DAD charges in and SMASHES EVERYTHING WITH AN AXE.
ALEX WINTER
What the hell dude?! That was totally on track to be a Best Original Song nominee in an alternate better universe.
HAL LANDON, JR.
Damnit guys, when are you gonna give this up and get real jobs? And don’t give me that “saving the future” crap! You don’t still believe you actually time-travelled or went to Heaven and Hell, do you? What absurd bullshit!
KEANU REEVES
Um, you do know that our band used to feature robots, aliens, and the Grim Reaper?
HAL LANDON, JR.
Nobody seems to have registered that, somehow.
Dejected, ALEX and KEANU go home, where they are greeted by their daughters SAMARA WEAVING and BRIGETTE LUNDY-PAINE.
KEANU REEVES
Wow, Brigette is sure doing an amazing imitation of my distinctive "Ted" mannerisms! WAY better than, say, I am.
ALEX WINTER
And Samara sure is, um, cast as my daughter! Damn, I should have given Bill some more distinct mannerisms.
BRIGETTE LUNDY-PAINE
Don’t worry, Dads! We still believe in you!
SAMARA WEAVING
To a slightly disturbing degree in fact! To the point that it kinda seems like the only thing we do with our lives is worship you guys!
ALEX WINTER
Wait a minute. Weren’t our kids... boys? Pretty sure I remember that.
SAMARA WEAVING
Nope, they decided that this time we should probably have one or two female characters with any degree of screentime or characterization, so it turns out Little Bill and Little Ted were just a couple of weirdly-named girls all along.
BRIGETTE LUNDY-PAINE
Luckily post-"Hamilton", the name Theodora is cool now!
KEANU REEVES
Wouldn’t it have been simpler to have given our existing love interests actual personalities at last?
SAMARA WEAVING
Yeah, I think the ship sailed on that a looong time ago. To demonstrate, check out this next scene:
INT. THERAPIST’S OFFICE
ALEX and KEANU and their wives ERRIN HAYES and JAYMA MAYS go to COUPLES THERAPY.
ERRIN HAYES AND JAYMA MAYS
We’re fed up with the way you two don’t treat us as individuals, Alex and Keanu! You act as though the both of you are in some kind of quadrouple with an indistinct two-headed woman-shaped blob!
ALEX WINTER
So wait. These movies are self-aware enough now to point out how indistinct from each other you guys have always been, while at the same time we’re just gonna... still do that?
ERRIN HAYES AND JAYMA MAYS
Eh, if it ain’t broke.
Suddenly, KRISTEN SCHAAL appears in a TIME TRAVEL EGG and whisks ALEX and KEANU away to THE FUTURE.
EXT. THE FUTURE
They arrive at a FUTURE where everything is an IPHONE made out of WEDDING CAKE.
KRISTEN SCHAAL
I’m the daughter of George Carlin, who you’re only just now finding out is dead but don’t worry nobody expects you to react or anything. Look, here’s a three-second hologram of him to appease fans.
GEORGE CARLIN
Greetings! Bowling isn't a sport because you have to rent the shoes.
(vanishes)
KRISTEN takes ALEX and KEANU to meet CARLIN’S WIDOW and PRESIDENT OF EARTH, HOLLAND TAYLOR.
HOLLAND TAYLOR
We’ve brought you here because time is falling apart! Historical figures are randomly being zapped from time period to time period, which you’d think would completely alter the timeline but nope!
KEANU REEVES
Bummer. Why is this happening?
HOLLAND TAYLOR
We never address it. It just is for the sake of this movie having a plot.
ALEX WINTER
Say, you don’t suppose that rampant time-travel and constant abduction of historical figures might have had anything to do with space-time getting swiss cheesed?
HOLLAND TAYLOR
I’M SURE THAT’S A TOTAL COINCIDENCE. Anyway, our research suggests that THE SONG is what stopped/will stop the timesplosion. That’s why you guys are important to the future, you perform a song which stops reality disintegrating.
KEANU REEVES
Huh? That’s why we’re important? Not because our whole body of music forged galactic peace and became the foundation upon which all future civilization was based?
HOLLAND TAYLOR
Nope nope nope, we’re retconning allll of that right down the shitter. Now instead of you being the ultimate music legends of all time, now your whole deal is that future archaeologists found a vague reference that two humans with your surnames sang a song once.
ALEX WINTER
Well that’s a huge fucking bummer for our characters, especially considering the pretty obvious twist you just unsubtly hinted at.
HOLLAND TAYLOR
We’ve been waiting decades for you to create THE SONG, but your band just got crappier and crappier, and now you’re supposed to sing tonight and you still got nothing! And you can’t go back in time to like a month beforehand to give yourselves more time, because of that confusing “clock always running in San Dimas” bullshit.
(hands them instruments)
So yeah, write the song that fixes time and unites all humanity. You’ve failed for twenty years, but I figure a couple more hours ought to be plenty of time to crack it. Bye.
(leaves)
KEANU REEVES
...Might have been a good idea for them to tell us all that a couple weeks earlier at least.
ALEX WINTER
Dude, don’t sweat it, they conveniently left us in the same room as our old phone booth time machine!
KEANU REEVES
Oh, right! We can use the same “decide to go back in time later” gimmick and send ourselves the song later. It’s probably taped to the back of one of these guitars or something right now, let’s check.
ALEX WINTER
Nah, that may be the tactic which won the movie for us both previous times, but let’s shake it up and go forward in time and steal the song from our future selves. That way we have less time to learn the song and more chance of dooming the entire universe.
They travel CENTURIES BACK IN TIME to the FUTURE. Time travel can be WEIRD like that.
INT. BAR, 2022
ALEX and KEANU find SLIGHTLY FUTURE ALEX and SLIGHTLY FUTURE KEANU playing an OPEN MIC at some BAR.
SLIGHTLY FUTURE ALEX WINTER
Tough luck, dudes! As you can see we never did figure out THE SONG, and we’re bigger losers than ever.
ALEX WINTER
Oh, so THE SONG was never performed, but then the spacetime continuum didn’t collapse in on itself? Events kept happening and civilization kept running? Kinda sounds like there’s no problem, then.
SLIGHTLY FUTURE KEANU REEVES
But we’re pissed at you guys! Your continued fuckuppery made our wives walk out on us, which seems to have turned us into assholes!
KEANU REEVES
Oh no! We’d better time travel back to couples therapy to fix this right away! Rather than, say, AFTER fixing the undelayable timepocalypse.
They go back and talk to ERRIN and JAYMA, who respond by jumping in their own TIME MACHINE with their own FUTURE SELVES and going on a TOUR of VARIOUS POSSIBLE FUTURES.
KEANU REEVES
Hey, that sounds like a fun sideplot that could finally make those characters at least a little bit interesting!
ALEX WINTER
True! Let’s give it a cumulative twenty seconds of screentime over the course of the rest of the movie.
They hop back into the TIME MACHINE and travel FURTHER into their own FUTURE.
EXT. FUTURE
Meanwhile, centuries later, HOLLAND and KRISTEN have realized that ALEX and KEANU have bailed on them.
HOLLAND TAYLOR
Well fuck it then, there’s a different interpretation of our little prophecy that maybe the time glitches are solved by Alex and Keanu dying, however that’s supposed to work. I’m gonna send a cyborg to murder them.
KRISTEN SCHAAL
Seriously?
HOLLAND TAYLOR
Plus we strongly imply the cyborg is an ex boyfriend of yours that I had RoboCopped. Why the hell did George hook up with me? I’m terrible.
KRISTEN SCHAAL
Well I'm sure there's a fascinating origin story worth its own series in there somewhere, but nuts to you! I’m gonna make the original plan work!
She travels back to meet SAMARA and BRIGETTE.
KRISTEN SCHAAL
Here, take my time machine and help your dads. Handing time machines to dropout slackers is our solution to every crisis, apparently!
SAMARA WEAVING
Okay then, according to the prophecy our dads need “their whole band” with them when they play THE SONG. That’d be the rest of Wyld Stallions, right? Our moms, the alien dudes, and Death?
BRIGETTE LUNDY-PAINE
That’s the only logical conclusion to come to based on that wording. But fuck it, instead let’s go grab whatever fucking musicians we feel like out of history, most of whom have never even heard of rock music!
SAMARA WEAVING
Sure! When the universe is unravelling due to displaced historical figures, what better solution than displacing a whole bunch more historical figures!
They go back in time and find LOUIS ARMSTRONG in 1922 since he is both a MUSICAL GENIUS and FAIRLY EASY TO DO A PASSABLE IMITATION OF.
SAMARA WEAVING
We’re from the future! Look, a smartphone which I’ve used to capture color footage of your band!
LOUIS ARMSTRONG
Heh, neat.
They then go forward and find an ACCURATE SIMULATION of JIMI HENDRIX'S WARDROBE.
BRIGETTE LUNDY-PAINE
Hi, we’re time-travellers! Observe a young Louis Armstrong, who we’ve snatched from the past!
JIMI HENDRIX
Oh nice.
Then they go way back and track down WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART instead of BEETHOVEN who already knows about BILL AND TED AND TIME TRAVEL.
SAMARA WEAVING
Hello, we’re seemingly magical beings from beyond time and space! We’re playing weird alien tones through electrical amplification!
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Interesting.
BRIGETTE LUNDY-PAINE
Huh, old-timey musicians were really fucking chill. Was it the drugs? Gotta be the drugs.
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Eh, thanks to the time storm juggling everybody all over history we’re getting used to this kind of thing. I found Julius Caesar in my breakfast cereal this morning. And, I had breakfast cereal.
SAMARA WEAVING
At any rate, this band is shaping up to be a bit of a sausage fest. We should probably grab at least one legendary female musician. Who do you think, Janis Joplin? Aretha Franklin? Hildegard von Bingen? Maria Callas?
BRIGETTE LUNDY-PAINE
How about let’s get Ling Lun, the mythical Chinese flautist who is traditionally a dude and probably never lived anyway, and Grom, a cavewoman this movie made up that we couldn’t have possibly heard of in the first place.
SAMARA WEAVING
Feels like we could have tried a little harder there.
INT. MANSION, 2025
ALEX and KEANU go a bit further forward to meet FANCY RICH ALEX and FANCY RICH KEANU.
FANCY RICH ALEX WINTER
Good news, Past Usses! We have THE SONG now!
ALEX WINTER
Oh! So, back in 2022 you hadn’t performed it in 2020, but now in 2025 you have? That... doesn’t make sense.
FANCY RICH KEANU REEVES
Yeah well this is a Bill and Ted movie and NONE of the time travel makes sense so shut up and don’t question it, take the fucking song already.
Suddenly DAVE GROHL turns up!
DAVE GROHL
What are you doing in my mansion, stealing my song?!
KEANU REEVES
Dangit, they didn’t give us a Wyld Stallyns song, they tried to trick us into stealing a Dave Grohl song! We should have known we could never have written a song on the same level as the genius behind such moving lyrics as “fingernails are pretty, fingernails are good”!
FANCY RICH ALEX WINTER
Fuck, we’re rumbled, and now the cops are coming! I guess we’ll fall back on the incredibly intelligent tactic of shooting at our past selves.
FANCY RICH KEANU REEVES
Since each of these progressively more awkward action sequences make it even MORE mind-blowing that I'm also John Wick, I agree.
ALEX and KEANU flee! Out front they encounter FUTURE CYBORG ANTHONY CARRIGAN, who luckily for them is a WACKY-COMEDY MURDER CYBORG and thus easily EVADED. They get away in the BOOTH.
ANTHONY CARRIGAN
Blast, I missed them! I’ll have to follow them to their next time period and try to reacquire them there!
(pause)
Or I could just go back in time five minutes and try again here. But I suppose that would cause a paradox! And it’s really important to the people in this franchise not to create temporal paradoHA HA HA HA HAAAA, oh man, I couldn’t even say that with a straight face.
EXT. PRISON, 2030
ALEX and KEANU go forward AGAIN and find their future selves are in PRISON and are now SUPER JACKED, BRO.
MUSCLY ALEX WINTER
YOU! We went to prison because you left us to take the fall for the crime that we committed!
KEANU REEVES
And you’re still here? You guys got more than five years for breaking and entering?
MUSCLY KEANU REEVES
We must have shanked a couple guards or something, I dunno. Anything’s possible with the inexplicably awful people you guys turn into.
Then ANTHONY shows up again, trying once more to kill ALEX and KEANU.
MUSCLY ALEX WINTER
Oh shit, we can’t allow our past selves to be shot, or we’ll cease to exist! This is something we’re capable of figuring out, suddenly!
They attack ANTHONY, allowing ALEX and KEANU to escape.
ANTHONY CARRIGAN
Darn! Hmmm, following them to the time and place that they’ll be next isn’t working. Therefore logically, I should go to a time and place that they’re NOT going. Brilliant!
He goes back to ALEX and KEANU’S STUDIO, then VAPORIZES the first people he sees. Unfortunately, that turns out to be a freshly-returned SAMARA, BRIGETTE, KRISTEN, HENDRIX, ARMSTRONG, MOZART, LING, and GROM.
ANTHONY CARRIGAN
Oops, I suck so much at my mission! Although the ninety percent of the audience who already figured out the big plot twist will appreciate the irony of me thinking that.
INT. ASSISTED LIVING FACILITY, 2067
ALEX and KEANU arrive at the END OF THEIR LIVES.
ALEX WINTER
That’s right, we’re using our rapidly-dwindling time to try the same terrible plan that’s failed three times already. It’s bound to work eventually, right?
ANCIENT ALEX WINTER
Good new, Past Usses! We have THE SONG now!
KEANU REEVES
So, back in 2022 you hadn’t performed it in 2020, or in 2025, or 2030, but now in 2067 you have? That... sounds suspiciously familiar. And still makes no sense.
ANCIENT KEANU REEVES
No, it’s for real this time! See, there are actually many timelines, all happening at once. This time you’ve stumbled onto a timeline where THE SONG really happened!
ALEX WINTER
...How does multiple timelines mean we can travel forward in time from a reality where THE SONG never happened, to one where it did?
ANCIENT ALEX WINTER
Look we honestly weren’t kidding before about the time travel in these movies not holding up, just don’t look a gift horse in the mouth okay?
But then ANTHONY shows up again!
ANTHONY CARRIGAN
That’s right, pretty much every scene ends this way now! By the way guys, sorry about killing your daughters and their friends. They’re all in Hell now.
KEANU REEVES
WHAT?! Why would all those perfectly nice people go to Hell? And how the fuck do you know where in the afterlife they’ve gone to??
ANTHONY CARRIGAN
One can only assume that my laser has been deliberately designed to not only kill people, but to instantly damn them to eternal torment? Another piece of evidence for the “Holland is just the worst” theory.
ALEX WINTER
Well if our daughters are in Hell, we’ll have to go there and get them! Come on Keanu, mere minutes from the moment when we’re supposed to be saving the universe, let’s commit suicide with no solid plan on how to get back alive afterwards!
KEANU REEVES
To be fair, it turned out to be hella easy last time.
They all SELF-VAPORIZE.
INT. HELL
ALEX, KEANU and ANTHONY arrive in HELL, which looks a lot more HIGH-BUDGET now! Luckily this extra budget was allocated to CGI EFFECTS and not SOUND-STAGE SPACE, so within about two minutes they find SAMARA, BRIGETTE, KRISTEN, and the HISTORY MUSICIANS.
KEANU REEVES
Are you guys okay? I can’t imagine how horrible it must have been, stuck being tortured in Hell for nearly fifty years!
SAMARA WEAVING
Nearly fifty - what are you talking about?
ALEX WINTER
Well, you died in 2020, and we just died in 2067, so you must have been down here for forty-seven years, right?
BRIGETTE LUNDY-PAINE
Oh stop acting like time is supposed to act in a sensible fashion in these movies.
KEANU REEVES
At any rate, we can get out of here no problem, let’s just go talk to Death, who lives in Hell now apparently.
They go find WILLIAM SADLER.
SAMARA WEAVING
Dude, you need to come back to Earth with us and rejoin the band!
WILLIAM SADLER
But according to the end credits of Bogus Journey, I rejoined the band decades ago...
BRIGETTE LUNDY-PAINE
Yeah well we’ve largely thrown that continuity out. Come on, there must be some way we can convince you. Ooh, I know, what if we challenged you to a game of-
WILLIAM SADLER
NO NO, STOP RIGHT THERE
SAMARA WEAVING
But last script we stuck to board games that existed in 1991, THIS time we can really let loose with a FULL catelogue! Ooh maybe we can start with Root Underworld or T.I.M.E. Stories or Pandemic Legacy Season 1 (Blue Box) or
WILLIAM SADLER
FUCK NO, I’LL DO WHATEVER YOU WANT, SHUT UP
They all COME BACK TO LIFE in 2020!
EXT. INTERSTATE, 2020
ALL THE CHARACTERS pile out onto a FREEWAY. It is now the time for THE SONG to happen.
ALEX WINTER
But shit, we still don’t know what THE SONG even is! Ooh - wait a minute - I just realized, apropros of nothing, what the plot twist is! The Winter and Reeves who are supposed to perform THE SONG aren’t me and Keanu, who don’t know what THE SONG is. It’s Samara and Brigette! Who also don’t know what THE SONG is! And who don't even sing or play instruments!
KEANU REEVES
Yeah, you guys and the history musicians should throw together a song at the last second! And the way that’ll unite the galaxy is that we’ll have everybody at every point of every timeline play it at once! For a very vague definition of “at once”.
ALEX WINTER
Sure, that sounds like a practical plan! We’ll just use the single button in the phone booth that splits you into an infinite number of selves across all times and dimensions - imagine accidentally hitting THAT during a rushed dial, jesus - and then give an infinite number of musical instruments that we’ve acquired somehow to every single person who ever existed or will ever exist!
KEANU REEVES
And then they’ll all play the song! Even the ones who never learned how to play a musical instrument! Or the ones from time periods before these instruments were even invented!
ALEX and KEANU infinitely multiply themselves across the entire SPACETIME CONTINUUM, while SAMARA and BRIGETTE tell the PAST MUSICIANS what to do.
SAMARA WEAVING
Hey, Hendrix, stop playing like Hendrix! Mozart, cut that Mozart shit out! Everybody abandon your individual genius and just join us in a generic jam session, okay?
BRIGETTE LUNDY-PAINE
Hmmm, now that THE SONG is actually happening I can’t help but notice that it has no lyrics, no distinct melody or riffs or hooks, and is built on the same notorious Four Chords of Pop Music as a thousand other songs.
SAMARA WEAVING
It’s okay! It turns out that everybody playing at once is the only thing that’s important, THE SONG never had to be the best song ever. Or even a good song! For that matter, clearly it didn’t have to even be played by Wyld Stallyns, or by any specific person or group, and Wyld Stallyns never had to be successful or talented or noteworthy in the first place!
BRIGETTE LUNDY-PAINE
Oh, so the events of the first two movies arguably needn’t have even happened! I bet the audience feels swell about that.
Finally all of the TIME CHAOS stops, everything that got juggled out of time gets hurriedly shoved back into place, and everyone in the the GALAXY is SAVED, even JAMES MARSDEN and FAMKE JANSSEN!
ALEX WINTER
Hooray, we did it! Now we can all live happily ever-
Suddenly INFINITE ALEX and INFINITE KEANU show up and shove instruments into their hands.
INFINITE ALEX WINTER
Quick, you have to play THE SONG!
ALEX WINTER
Wait, what? We just did that.
INFINITE KEANU REEVES
What part of this song being played at “every point of time” don’t you understand? Now quick, play, or reality will cease to exist!
KEANU REEVES
O-okay...
They play THE SONG again.
ALEX WINTER
All right, phew, NOW we can live happily ever-
Suddenly INFINITE ALEX and INFINITE KEANU show up and shove instruments into their hands.
INFINITE ALEX WINTER
Quick, you have to play THE SONG!
KEANU REEVES
Dear God what have we done.
END.