The Abridged Script
FADE IN:
INT. FUTURE CLASSROOM
It is the FUTURE again. GEORGE CARLIN is teaching a bunch of STUDENTS who are dressed like the members of THE WIGGLES.
GEORGE CARLIN
Good morning students, and please welcome our guest speakers who are all historical figures we abducted with time travel, because in these movies we’re all about recklessly fucking with the timeline. If you open your hopelessly outdated eighties-style computer screens to page-
Suddenly JOSS ACKLAND storms in with his GOONS.
JOSS ACKLAND
I’ll take that time machine, thank you very much! Me and my minions are sick and tired of all the dumb peace and lame prosperity going on in this utopian future, so we’re going to send robots back in time to wipe out our prophets Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves! This will rewrite many centuries of history from the ground up, guaranteeing that none of us will ever be born and look let’s not think too hard about it.
He sends ROBO ALEX WINTER and ROBO KEANU REEVES back in time.
INT. MUSIC HALL
ALEX WINTER, KEANU REEVES, ANNETTE AZCUY, and SARAH TRIGGER are rehearsing for the BATTLE OF THE BANDS in front of PAM GRIER.
PAM GRIER
Holy shit Alex and Keanu, you suck just as much as last movie. Are we to understand that even though you now know that the entire future of the galaxy hinges on your band being successful, you two have practised so little that you’re actually worse than the band members who never even heard of the concept of rock music until a year ago?
ALEX WINTER
It’ll be fine. I’m sure another bunch of cosmic intervention will come along and airlift us to victory like last time.
They go and celebrate ANNETTE and SARAH’S BIRTHDAYS.
ANNETTE AZCUY
Wait, both of our birthdays? So are we twin sisters or something, then?
SARAH TRIGGER
I guess we were introduced as both being princesses living in the same castle, so it makes sense that we were both daughters of the king...
KEANU REEVES
Yeah I wouldn’t go assuming that either of you have a thought-out backstory or anything. Presumably the writers just gave you the same birthday because you’re so generic and interchangeable that nobody cares that we recast you both since the last movie, and will recast you again for the next one.
ALEX WINTER
In fact there’s so utterly little to distinguish either one of you from the other, that we’re straight-up proposing to you both in the same room at the same time.
ANNETTE AZCUY/SARAH TRIGGER
Awww, of course we will marry you stupid unemployable slobs!
ALEX and KEANU go happily home to their TINY APARTMENT. But then their EVIL ROBOT CLONES show up!
ROBO ALEX WINTER
We’re you from the future, again! You must come with us!
KEANU REEVES
I dunno, this feels kinda shifty to me.
ALEX WINTER
Relax dude, these guys must be the real us. If they were powerful robot doubles here to murder us, why would they invent a ruse to lure us away, instead of just grabbing our heads and turning them all the way around right here and now?
KEANU REEVES
I suppose that would be unnecessarily convoluted. All right, let’s go get willingly into the back of their windowless van.
EXT. DESERT
The ROBOT DOUBLES take ALEX and KEANU out to a CLIFF in the middle of the DESERT and HURL THEM OFF OF IT.
ROBO KEANU REEVES
Oh. We won. That was easy. So what now? Wanna have existential crises and start a drape business?
ROBO ALEX WINTER
No, there’s more to the plan! We’re supposed to go do Alex and Keanu’s big world-changing concert, but instead of their message of hope we’re supposed to deliver a message of, I dunno, bleak despair and neverending misery? Joss figures people will dig that just as much.
ROBO KEANU REEVES
Neat! And then let’s also kill Annette and Sarah, for literally no reason!
They LEAVE. Meanwhile, at the bottom of the cliff, ALEX and KEANU’S BODIES are lying in a bloody pile of broken bones and ruptured organs peacefully on their backs as though they drifted off while spaced out on shrooms. With them are GHOST ALEX AND KEANU!
ALEX WINTER
We actually died! Shit! Look, Death from The Seventh Seal is here and everything!
KEANU REEVES
An extended Ingmar Bergman reference in a Bill and Ted movie. Wow. It’s like if Leopold Bloom appeared in a Captain Underpants book.
WILLIAM SADLER
(grimly and reaperly)
You may challenge me to a game. If you win, I will make you alive again and basically become your slave. If you lose, nothing will happen at all except you continuing to be exactly as dead as you already are.
ALEX WINTER
Well then, given those conditions clearly the best solution is to RUN AWAY AND HOPE YOU DON’T CATCH UP TO US WITH THE TELEPORTATION POWERS YOU DEMONSTRATED LITERALLY SECONDS AGO!
ALEX and KEANU flee.
KEANU REEVES
All right, we need to stop our robot doubles from killing Annette and Sarah. What if we possessed somebody?
ALEX WINTER
You mean like their neighbor or somebody else physically near them, so we can personally explain to them the danger they’re in? Somebody logical like that?
KEANU REEVES
Not even a little bit!
They instead go and possess KEANU’S DAD, and don’t achieve anything except getting him put on PSYCHIATRIC LEAVE.
KEANU REEVES
Well that was a bust. New idea: we could try communicating through a medium. Does anybody we know happen to be holding a seance right this minute?
ALEX WINTER
This is LA in the nineties, of course that’s a thing.
They go and break in on a SEANCE being held by KEANU’S STEPMOM AMY STOCH-POYNTON.
KEANU REEVES
Hot stepmom! You need to know that Alex and Keanu have been murdered by robots from the future in a scheme to stop them from becoming future messiahs! I know it sounds like I’m just reciting the plot of The Terminator, but it’s legit I promise!
AMY STOCH-POYNTON
Lies! Clearly these are evil spirits! Where’d I put my exorcist manual?
(rummages)
KEANU REEVES
Woah what the fuck, I thought you were some new age hippy futzing around with candles in your living room to see if you can chat up dead celebrities? How the hell do you know how to-
AMY STOCH-POYNTON
(reading from Necronomicon)
CAHF AL NAFL MGLW’NAFH HH’ AHOR SYHA’H AH’LEGETH NG LLLL OR’AZATH SYHA’HNAH N’GHFTEPHAI N’GHA AHORNAH AH’MGLW’NAFH
ALEX WINTER
(being spliced across infinite dimensions)
Dude, your stepmom is hardcore.
INT. HELL
ALEX and KEANU are spit out in HELL.
KEANU REEVES
Boy, this place isn’t exactly subtle. As if the fire and brimstone and all-red color palette wasn’t enough, they’ve actually got Satan personally standing there like a big billboard saying “This is Hell just in case you hadn’t figured it out yet”. Weird though, for some reason I would have expected him to look more like Al Pacino.
ALEX WINTER
Damn, we’ve been damned! What are they gonna do to us? Flay our skin off and dump us into a lake of boiling sulfur? Let flesh-eating worms burrow into our eyes?
Suddenly CHELCIE ROSS storms up to them.
CHELCIE ROSS
I’m the guy from that military academy you don’t like, and now I’m gonna SHOUT at you! SHOUT SHOUTY SHOUT!!!
ALEX WINTER
...Okay, that’s unpleasant I guess... but is this really the best eternal torment you could think of?
LITTLE OLD LADY
(appearing)
What about having to touch an old person, then?
EASTER BUNNY
(hopping in)
Or look! I’m a cute rabbit! How terrifying, boogly-boo!
KEANU REEVES
Dude. This is hella lame. Wanna just leave using the escape option we’ve been ignoring all movie for no reason?
ALEX WINTER
Sounds like a plan! WILLIAM SADLER WILLIAM SADLER WILLIAM SADLER!
WILLIAM SADLER
(summoning Alex and Keanu to his side)
You’re thinking of Beetlejuice, idiot. But nonetheless, yeah, this whole time I apparently had the ability to instantly teleport you to my location, which suggests that ever since you ran away I’ve just been watching you fumble around for a cheap laugh.
(grins)
NOW! Choose your game, but if you lose, you will be trapped in Hell forever!
KEANU REEVES
Can we choose Tic-Tac-Toe and go first, so that it's impossible to lose?
WILLIAM SADLER
No.
ALEX WINTER
Can we choose games with a minimum of skill, raising the question of why people aren't returning from the dead all over Earth all the fucking time?
WILLIAM SADLER
Why yes!
KEANU and ALEX proceed to defeat WILLIAM at BATTLESHIP, CLUE, TWISTER, LCR, PASS THE PIGS, SCOTLAND YARD, RUMMIKUB, FIREBALL ISLAND, AN ENTIRE CAMPAIGN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES CONSULTING DETECTIVE BECAUSE HELL EXISTS OUTSIDE OF TIME SO WHY NOT, and finishing up with ZOMAX, THE SELF-PROCLAIMED WORLD'S GREATEST GAME AND POSSIBLY THE GREATEST BOX COVER EVER, THIS IS A REAL THING.
ALEX WINTER
Awesome, we won! Now we can go back alive again. But we still need a way to destroy those evil robots! What could we possibly do to bust those machines?
WILLIAM SADLER
I’m a death god with a giant blade who is at your command.
KEANU REEVES
Oh right! Therefore we should, uh... order you to break us into Heaven so we can find a dead inventor, bring him back alive also, then get him to build two more robots from scratch within the next couple of hours and have them smash the robot doubles?
WILLIAM SADLER
(deep sigh)
Not even in the ballpark of what I was suggesting, but fuck it, let’s do that ridiculous plan.
INT. HEAVEN
WILLIAM sneaks ALEX and KEANU into HEAVEN. There, they are brought to a pair of UGLYCUTE JIM HENSON TROLLS.
WILLIAM SADLER
These guys are Station, the most brilliant inventors of all time. You expected a human Earthling, right? Shows how narrowminded you are, cha!
ALEX WINTER
Or we just assumed as much because, you know, literally EVERY OTHER PERSON IN HEAVEN is a human Earthling. Are these guys the only aliens to ever get in?
STATION AND STATION
I am Groot.
("Oh yeah, we’re the worst. Us two are the only ones of our species who aren’t into rampant goat-fucking. Just fucking innocent goats all the live-long day. Personally we don’t see the appeal.")
KEANU REEVES
Oh, this trope. Where the alien clearly has the ability to speak human phonemes and understands English perfectly, but still replies only in inscrutable repetitions of the one word or phrase.
STATION AND STATION
Pika pika.
("Like we said: the worst.")
WILLIAM takes ALEX and KEANU and the STATIONS back down to EARTH.
EXT. DESERT
ALEX and KEANU have been UN-DEADED! And so have STATION and STATION, who presumably had entirely new physical bodies created for them out of nothingness!
ALEX WINTER
Wow William, you’re so super-powerful! We basically can’t lose with a godlike supernatural entity like you on our team!
WILLIAM SADLER
Actually now I’ve made every contribution to the plot that they needed me for, so from here on out I’m going to do literally nothing except completely change my character into a bumbling loser.
(pratfalls onto face)
KEANU REEVES
Oh. Could you at least teleport us around to wherever we need to be, using the powers you’ve already repeatedly demonstrated throughout the movie?
WILLIAM SADLER
Nope, too busy being moronic comic relief.
(slips on a banana peel)
ALEX WINTER
I guess the Stations will have to build intricate electronics in the back of a moving van, then.
They go to an ELECTRONICS STORE and buy EVERY RANDOM PIECE OF ELECTRONIC JUNK THEY CAN FIND using their budget of ZERO DOLLARS. Then the STATIONS unexpectedly SLAM INTO EACH OTHER and turn into a SINGLE GIANT TROLL MUPPET!
STATION
Hodor!
("Tada! Now I’m ready to invent! Now that I’ve traded my four small nimble hands for two big gorilla-sized mitts and a body which will barely fit in the van, this ought to be a cinch!")
KEANU REEVES
Neat! I mean, it looks like now you could just go up to those robots and tear them apart with your bare hands, but we’ve come this far, might as well see the worse plan through.
INT. MUSIC HALL
The ROBOT DOUBLES are preparing to play at the BATTLE OF THE BANDS.
ROBO ALEX WINTER
Bwa ha ha, once we’ve spread Joss’s crappy message which won’t work, we’ll drop Annette and Sarah from the rafters, where they are currently bound and gagged and dangling by some rope!
ROBO KEANU REEVES
When the hell did we set that up, exactly? Have they been dangling there for like three hours, or did we manage to hoist them up in the middle of another band’s set without anybody noticing?
They go out on stage. But then REAL ALEX and REAL KEANU show up with WILLIAM and STATION and their completed NON-EVIL ROBOT DOUBLES! The GOOD ROBOT DOUBLES start marching at a brisk POWER WALK towards the EVIL ROBOT DOUBLES.
ROBO ALEX WINTER
Oh dang! Two slow clunky remote-controlled robots that were cobbled together out of spare parts in the space of an hour or so! Us nimble, fully autonomous technological marvels from the future are outmatched, to be sure!
ROBO KEANU REEVES
Indeed, we are so thoroughly outclassed that we will do nothing whatsoever to defend ourselves. Even though it looks like we could easily just step out of the way.
They stand COMPLETELY STILL and let the GOOD ROBOTS punch off their HEADS.
ALEX WINTER
Awesome, that killed them! Even though there was an earlier scene where both of their heads came off with no ill effects!
Then JOSS shows up in another TIME TRAVEL PHONE BOOTH.
JOSS ACKLAND
Grrr, I will thwart your historic world-changing concert myself if I have to! First of all I will zap the TV cameras so that they start broadcasting to every television set on the planet!
KEANU REEVES
Wait a minute, clearly that had to happen in order for our late-night set at a local rock competition to have ever had lasting historical impact. Doesn’t that mean that your coming here is what caused us to become famous in the first place?
JOSS ACKLAND
Look, in the script for the first movie we already talked about the time loops-
ALEX WINTER
We’re not even talking about that. It’s just, did you really decide to prevent our rise to fame by coming to prevent this concert... this concert which got international attention because a guy named Joss Ackland showed up and hijacked it? You came back here to stop us even though there was already incredibly famous video evidence that your own presence was responsible for our success!
JOSS ACKLAND
I didn’t know that for sure. That could have been any time-travelling warmonger with my exact name and face! SHUT UP I KILL YOU NOW!
(pulls gun)
ALEX WINTER
Not so fast! Keanu and I can just pull the same “go back in time later and set stuff up” trick we did in the first movie, this time by suspending a sandbag and cage from the ceiling, positioned with utterly pinpoint precision to disarm and trap you, hanging from rope which has somehow been rigged to magically snap at the exact right split second!
Sure enough, THOSE THINGS fall from the CEILING and neutralize JOSS!
JOSS ACKLAND
But I can do the same thing, setting up a key for the cage, and another gun which literally materializes out of nowhere somehow!
Those things APPEAR. But then it turns out it was a FAKE GUN!
KEANU REEVES
You idiot, we set those things up too! Only the winner gets to go back in time, duh!
JOSS ACKLAND
...So wait. Why are you the ones who get to go back and set things up?
ALEX WINTER
Because we won!
JOSS ACKLAND
But why are you the ones who won?
KEANU REEVES
Because we got to go back and set things up!
JOSS ACKLAND
So the winner is determined by which one of us won.
(gets migraine headache)
Fine. Fuck this, I need to sit this bullshit out for a while, I surrender.
PAM GRIER
Also, plot twist-
She throws off her FUTURISTIC DISGUISE and it’s actually GEORGE!
GEORGE CARLIN
Surprise! I hitched a ride on the robot double’s phone booth, got stranded a few weeks before they arrived, then made sure you got a spot in the concert! ...And did absolutely nothing to protect you against the robo-assassins that I knew were coming to murder you!
ALEX WINTER
But dude, if you just jumped on the phone booth at the last second, does that mean you were already carrying a full-body woman suit on you the whole time?
GEORGE CARLIN
Don’t kink-shame me, man.
KEANU REEVES
All right then, everything worked out! Now we just have to play the concert and AW SHIT WE’RE STILL TERRIBLE MUSICIANS.
ALEX WINTER
That’s okay, we can just use time travel to spend a year and a half learning how to play our instruments! I seriously don’t understand why we weren’t already doing that.
They VANISH for a few seconds and then reappear with GIANT BEARDS to prove that TIME HAS PASSED.
KEANU REEVES
We’re virtuoso guitarists now!
WILLIAM SADLER
And I’m in the band too! Let us never address whether nobody in the world dies anymore now that Death has run away to be a bass player.
STATION AND STATION
Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich!
("And instead of returning to the bliss of eternal paradise, or using our second chance at life to create more world-changing inventions, we’ve decided to be bongo players for a rock band!")
ALEX WINTER
And now, finally, after fifteen minutes of theatrics which the world audience must be assuming was all an elaborately-staged skit, we will perform a song. That’s right, you actually get to hear what musical triumph we perform that starts the entire population of the world on a path to eternal peace, love, and understanding!
They start playing a KISS song.
GEORGE CARLIN
...Okay, humanity is fucked.
END.