If you haven’t watched Bill and Ted Face the Music yet I recommend that you do so. In fact, if you haven’t watched any of the Bill and Ted movies in a while, I suggest you watch all three. Bill and Ted Face the Music is such a pure shot of joy, and such an epic reply to our current moment, that I think it might be exactly what this timeline needed right now.
It’s also—this is going to be hard to describe, but you know how Bill and Ted loved the pure shredding of a particular type of metal? Well, there are parts of this movie that evoke nothing so much as an especially bitter song by The National, in a most excellent way. There is a point about three quarters of the way into the movie, where the writers and Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves choose to take a scene completely seriously that is, honestly, one of the best reckonings with aging and regret that I’ve seen in a film in years. After all the reboots and genderswaps and re-imaginings, B&T FTM is one of the best returns to a classic I’ve seen, and maybe the most effecting since Mad Max: Fury Road.
On one level, the plot is as simple as Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey: Bill and Ted have to write a song that will save the world, and they get up to all kind of shenanigans along the way. But what the movie’s really about it hitting a point in life when you’re starting to take stock of your choices, wondering if maybe there was a better path that you missed, wondering if it’s too late to become what you dreamed of being when you were a kid.
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The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Bill and Ted are still trying to write that perfect song. Their princesses are still with them, for now, but the strain of being the only two people in the families with real jobs is starting to show. Billie and Thea, Ted and Bill’s respective daughters, are geniuses, but having been raised by people who believed songs were going to literally save the world, they spend all of their time sitting in the garage listening to music. The whole situation has gone stagnant. And then they find out that somehow, because the perfect song still hasn’t been written, reality itself is collapsing. What is there to do but gallivant through time again?
This adventure can’t possibly feel quite as fresh as the first one, but that’s also kind of the point. The new film references each of the previous outings while also showing how 25 years of trying to live up to the future has taken a toll on our heroes. For a few scenes it’s kind of uncanny to see Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves air guitar at each other and proclaim “Be Excellent To Each Other” but as the plot unfolds it feels more and more like hanging out with old friends. Even more fun, Samara Weaving and Bridgette Lundy-Paine are both delightful as Thea and Billie, with my only critique there being that I wish we saw even more of them.
Now if you want to go in knowing nothing, skip down to the end, cause I’m going to dig into a few spoilers and fun details for a sec.
Spoilers follow!
The one true issue I had with the film was the it got a little more wibbly-wobbly than the previous two. Bogus Journey went in a metaphysical direction so it gets a pass, and Excellent Adventure was airtight. Face the Music is a little looser, claiming that reality is going to collapse but then showing a future beyond that point. I also thought it got a little repetitive, where I would have liked to see more of Bill and Ted and their daughters adventuring together rather than splitting into two separate journeys. But really, those are minor quibbles, because the movie does so much right including:
- Kristen Schall plays Rufus’ daughter which is A+ casting but also her character’s name is Kelly, which is George Carlin’s daughter’s name.
- The film consistently dates time using B.C.E. and C.E. rather than B.C. and A.D. which is academically accurate, way more respectful to everyone who isn’t Christian, and made me squeak with delight.
- When Billie and Thea go off looking for musicians they gather a diverse crew, going first for Jimi Hendrix and then for Louis Armstrong, which was such a gorgeous way to show the fact that rock and pop music are rooted in Black musical traditions.
- The way Jimi Hendrix calls Mozart “Wulfi.”
- The way the movie portrays Ling Lun, the mythic Chinese founder of music, as a woman.
- The flute-based glee shared by Mozart and Ling Lun.
- Ted chugging vodka straight from the bottle while making aggressive eye contact with Bill, who has suggested he cut back.
- Both actors are amazing in the scene with their 90-year-old selves, but Alex Winter is especially amazing in that scene.
- The fact that the foundational musician Billie and Thea pick up is a Black cavewoman named Grom.
- Everything Anthony Kerrigan does as the neurotic killer robot named Dennis.
- The movie counts down to the culminating scene in real time! When they say they only have 51 minutes left they really do only have 51 minutes left!
- I feel like there’s a lot to be said about a trilogy of movies, that are all about Time, that spend an entire scene on the main characters forgiving Death? Like there are a lot of layers there?
Finally, the film subverts the two previous films in a most bodacious way. Rather than the world being saved by the two metal dudes from the ‘80s, Bill and Ted realize that it isn’t their song that brings everyone together, it’s their daughters’. (This is the part where I started bawling, btw.) But this isn’t just a simple baton passing, because Billie and Thea have to figure out that their deep musical knowledge is itself a skill they can use, and find the confidence to become sick producers. And Joanna and Elizabeth are the ones who realize that instead of just playing a song for a bunch of passive listeners, reality will only truly be healed when they share the means of production—in this case musical instruments—so everyone can play.
That’s when I started crying again.
End of spoilers.
Bill and Ted were the best of the teen male duos of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Wayne and Garth were catchphrase machines fitting for a duo born of sketch comedy, but not really designed to last. Beavis and Butthead, who made their debut in a short called “Frog Baseball” (it’s exactly what it sounds like), were more an examination of a sociological problem than characters you were supposed to invest in. The format of their show also distanced viewers from them as people, since their short narrative adventures were interrupted by the pair watching music videos and creating and almost MST3K-like pop culture commentary. Jay and Silent Bob were (usually) vulgar to the point of self-parody and high all the time, and aside from that time they helped The Last Scion and that one cross-country road trip, they pretty much stuck to hanging out in New Jersey. Method Man and Redman were even more high all the time, and their one movie outing was a campus comedy.
But Bill and Ted were different. They had real ambition. They were sweet, and while they referred to girls almost exclusively as “babes” they were also absolutely respectful of the women in their lives. (How many other metal bands in the ‘80s were 50% female?) Even the two no homo moments in their movies were more a diagnosis of a problem than a celebration of it—in Bogus Journey, they call back to their use of a homophobic slur by having the Evil Robot Bill and Ted say it, not B&T themselves. And, too, their movies are one of the best examples of remix culture I can think of. Rather than hanging out in a convenience store or a basement, or cultivating weed at college, they’re caught up in a fucking excellent time travel story in the first film, and a pretty fun metaphysical comedy in the second. The fact that the third film culminates in a celebration of remixes makes me want to find a phone booth so I can visit various timelines hugging Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson.
I rewatched the earlier to movies to prep for Face the Music, and they made me so happy! Like happy in a way no recent film has made me. They were fun, and inventive and weird and absolutely their own thing. Tiny details: Ted’s dad is seriously emotionally abusive, but rather than hammering away at that until it becomes a cudgel to the audience (like in Shazam, say) the movie shows us how Ted, usually effervescent, can’t make eye contact with his dad, and leans away from him. That tells us everything we know need to know, and then the movie commits to this by making Ted and his dad’s relationship something of a throughline of the trilogy. We see how completely disconnected Bill’s dad is from his son’s life, but then how he and Missy (I mean Mom) glow with pride when they watch the History Presentation at the end. When Ted tasks younger brother Deacon with watching Napoleon, Deacon’s two best friends are both girls—when did that ever happen in an ‘80s movie? (I can tell you when: Say Anything and Some Kind of Wonderful. And I think that’s it.) When B&T pick Joan of Arc up they are absolutely respectful of her military expertise—in fact the main commentary on her work is that she led an army as a teen, not that she did it as a girl.
In Bogus Journey, Hell isn’t a generic metal album cover, but instead a deeply personal experience where you have to relive a terrible moment of your life for eternity. (In Ted’s case, it’s the time he made Deacon cry cause he stole candy out of his Easter basket. I’m just trying to point out the Ted Theodore Logan is a fucking saint, OK?) Heaven is a giant room where dead Earth celebrities are casually sprinkled among dead regular Earth people, everyone gets to play a rousing game of charades with Einstein, and the boys are gently chided for assuming that the most intelligent scientists in the afterlife would be from Earth. (Speaking of, can you think of any early ‘90s band that was 1/7th robot, 1/7th Martian, 1/7th female, and 1/7th Death Himself? You can’t, because only Wyld Stallyns is on that level.)
I hadn’t realized how much B&T’s vision of the future stuck with me, but in rewatching the first two movies it was clear that that is still what I see when I think of the future. And I mean it’s a nice fantasy, isn’t it? The idea that a pair of sweet-natured white boys will write a song so good it’ll fix everything? Wipe the slate clean and grant us a beautiful future, and all we have to do is sit back, listen, and wait for it to work? But, of course, that isn’t how this works. And in addition to being loving and heartwarming and fun, Bill and Ted Face the Music gently points out that if we want a better future we have to fight for it. We have to be willing to believe our song can align the planets, we have to be excellent to each other, and we have to join the band.
Today Leah Schnelbach learned that Joan of Arc was played by a member of the Go-Gos? And also that the flaming hot crush they’ve had on Joan of Arc burns bright to this very day? Come be excellent with them on Twitter!
I always did think of Wayne & Garth as an inferior knockoff of Bill & Ted (although I’m now aware that they debuted close enough together that it might have been coincidental). If asked, I would have insisted that the proper response to “No way” was “Yes way,” not simply “Way.”
I never really experienced any of the other duos you mentioned (or even heard of that last one), except Jay & Silent Bob in Dogma, the only one of their movies I’ve seen (and they were probably my least favorite part of it). But B&T were always excellent. A bit sophomoric in ’80s-style ways that have aged poorly, but balanced with a lot of heart, optimism, and clever ideas.
I went ahead and read the spoilers despite not having seen the movie yet, but it didn’t matter much, because the big shocking twist you gave away was exactly what I guessed would happen. It just seems like the inevitable outcome in keeping with the positive, giving nature of the duo, and given that this was a story about legacy. Plus just storytelling logic 101, that whatever solution the characters think they’re pursuing for most of the story will turn out to be a red herring.
Just from what I’ve seen in clips, I’m really impressed at how uncannily Brigette Lundy-Paine channels Ted in her performance. You can even see it just in that photo above.
They missed a golden opportunity by not having the bass player come and jam with Bill and Ted in the post-credits scene, and then having the three of them leave together.
@2 That is exactly what I expected to happen in that scene as well, but I am glad in a way that it did not. That was, I have read, the very last scene they filmed in the movie and it is likely the actor was not available for that cameo.
I loved this movie for all the reasons that you described. I love that, despite some mannerisms, Thea and Billie are not clones of their fathers. They are musical geniuses in their own right, and kind ones at that. The way that they could find something great to say about horrendous music (“those eight bars were outstanding”) was just one way that they sought common ground and understanding from their first lines in the film. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen characters quite like them in a film before.
Speaking of which, one subtle advance from the first movies: where Bill and Ted cannot play their instruments in the first film, and only learn guitar in a time-travel bit in the second, here they HAVE been spending nearly three decades mastering music beyond just their values Les Pauls. They play trumpet, bagpipes, thermian, and so many more. It was a throw-away bit, but a throwaway bit that showed that these two “air heads” haven’t been sitting on their thumbs for decades either. They have grown as musicians.
All in all, I loved this film. Just what I needed this week.
Absolutely everything I wanted it to be and more. The world needs more Brigette Lundy-Paine.
I haven’t seen a bad review of this movie which is pretty dang amazing.
“Be excellent to each other.”
No theaters open in Michigan and I don’t feel like spending $20 to watch it through Amazon. Have to wait until price comes down..
Am I the only one who doesn’t see a difference between dating something BCE/CE and BC/AD? You’re still making the basic assumption that “modern” history begins with the unproven birth of Jesus, so you’re still rooting this as completely in a Christian, Western chronology as anything else. You’re putting lipstick on a pig by changing the religious terms covering a Christian calendar to generic terms covering a Christian calendar. If they wanted to be subversive, use the nengo dating system, or the Jewish one, or [insert here]. I understand that it’s a movie and they want people to follow the plot by using the most common dating system, but lets not then give the scriptwriters or directors credit for some kind of “woke” calendar. It’s almost more offensive (though I don’t think using BC/AD is offensive in the first place) because it presumes that the audience is dumb enough to not understand that it’s a cosmetic difference.
I realize the “Bill and Ted” movies aren’t historical documentaries or anything similar, but I wish they would’ve made more effort to get things right. This article mentions that one of the movies describes Joan of Arc as a military “leader”, which is misleading because historians have pointed out that the records show that there was always a nobleman in the top command position and the eyewitnesses said the commanders sometimes didn’t even tell her what they were planning to do. Some of them said they asked her for advice because they believed she was sent by God, but they made the decisions.
@7/andrewrm: “Am I the only one who doesn’t see a difference between dating something BCE/CE and BC/AD? You’re still making the basic assumption that “modern” history begins with the unproven birth of Jesus, so you’re still rooting this as completely in a Christian, Western chronology as anything else.”
Well, not entirely. Though the exact cutoff date is arbitrary (in both systems, since Dionysius Exiguus’s estimate of Christ’s birthdate was wrong anyway), there is a meaningful, global distinction between “Before Common Era” and “Common Era.” It was around 2000 years ago, give or take a few centuries, that there started to be more widespread travel and cultural exchange among different parts of the world and a more global community began to emerge. So it really is a more “common era” of global exchange and interaction, and 2020 years before present is no worse a place to draw the dividing line than any other.
Besides, people have been making this argument for decades now, but there is a growing consensus in scholarly circles to use BCE/CE. Yes, its history is in Christian culture, but every word and symbol started out in some single specific culture before becoming more universally adopted. So it’s not where it came from that matters so much as how it’s used now and in the future. It’s convenient to keep using the dating system we’re all used to, regardless of origin, but at least we can adopt a more neutral and inclusive label for it. I don’t see how that’s wrong any more than changing the name of the Washington Redskins or Aunt Jemima syrup is wrong. It is, if nothing else, polite, and that is not a thing that deserves scorn. Mocking politeness just because it’s superficial doesn’t make you wise or insightful, it just makes you a jerk. Just because something is superficial doesn’t mean it has no worth. How we choose to present ourselves and our ideas to other people is about consideration for their feelings and their points of view. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t extend beneath the surface, because the surface is our interface with other people and that is important too.
“I don’t see how that’s wrong any more than changing the name of the Washington Redskins or Aunt Jemima syrup is wrong. It is, if nothing else, polite, and that is not a thing that deserves scorn. Mocking politeness just because it’s superficial doesn’t make you wise or insightful, it just makes you a jerk.”
I think I want to marry this comment.
I don’t think anyone is making that assumption, though if you can find some historical scholar who does this, I would love to see it.
The choice we’re left with is either to use the existing calendar (which was originally implemented by the Catholic church) which is confusing in some ways, but at least familiar to people, or to go with something like the “Holocene calendar” which is based on some 10,000 year arbitrary date that no one can pin down either that would be just as confusing, but also less familiar. Or we could just go back to how ancient societies worked and start listing our years based on the number of years in the reign of “Emperor so-and-so” or based on the years of the two Consuls or who was president. That can be rather inefficient though.
People have tried changing dates in the past, many times. Sometimes the change sticks, more often it doesn’t. However, the changes usually come about because the new calendar is more accurate in some way. Moving to something like the “Holocene calendar” doesn’t really have any benefit, which is why we haven’t done it yet.
Also, I don’t think any historian has ever said that the beginning of the Common Era was the beginning of “modern history.” Insofar as historians use the term “modern period” at all, it’s generally used to refer to the post-Columbian era, about 1500 CE to the present. And that tends to be the Western definition rather than a global one. If they’d meant “Common Era” to mean “modern era,” they would’ve called it “Modern Era,” surely.
“Common Era” means exactly what it says on the tin — the calendar in common usage. Johannes Kepler coined the term (anno aerae nostrae vulgaris) to distinguish the more widely used consensus calendar from the regnal year, i.e. a calendar dating from the start of a specific monarch’s reign. So calling the Gregorian date the Common Era doesn’t presume anything about history; it merely asserts the obvious, that it’s the calendar in common usage worldwide. It doesn’t get more neutral than that.
Trying not to read this article but I skimmed up to the point where there were spoilers and didn’t see this spelled out. Currently are there any purchase or streaming options for this? I am not super keen about attending a theater at the moment. I might just have to wait until aftermarket release I suppose.
@13: TV has it to rent for $20 or to buy for $25. I ass/u/me the other various services are doing the same.
(US market. All prices in USD. Packed by weight, not volume. No soap radio.)
@@@@@ ChristopherLBennett – I respectfully disagree with a great deal of what you’ve said.
This is just a new riff on the same theme, that the birth of Jesus and the spread of Christianity was some type of global milestone. The Greeks at least as early as Alexander were aware of the existence of China, and one can make an argument that a truly intercontinental trading network predates that by at least a couple of millenia. A couple hundred years is not a minor difference, and if we’re just defaulting to the easiest, most widespread calendar usage then all we’re doing is saying that we don’t care about the Western-centric nature of the dating system. If that’s the case, lets come out and say it, and not give credit for some sort of multicultural impulse that only is actually respecting one culture.
Again, I think this is a very superficial argument. The basis of the argument is still about whether it’s inclusive to use a dating system that is tied to a religious event in one specific world religion’s calendar. A more accurate analogy, to my mind, would be that we rename the Washington Redskins the Washington Indigenous Peoples, but keep the offensive logo. Sure, you’ve made a passing attempt at being polite, but at heart it’s still exploitative. I don’t mock it to be wise, I just don’t think there’s a compelling reason to consider the BC/AD vs BCE/CE split to be anything other than spit and plaster over underlying Eurocentrism. I don’t find it offensive at all that the movie uses either of them as a dating convention, it’s far more immediately recognizable to a far wider audience than any other alternative. But I also don’t think that a minor cosmetic change is worthy of praise. Calling a person of Japanese descent a Jap is offensive because of the context surrounding internment in the 40s; calling them an Oriental is slightly more polite, I suppose, but still implies an exoticism that a Japanese person obviously wouldn’t feel about themselves.
Again, I think this is a little disingenuous. The Gregorian Calendar was introduced in 1578 and is itself nearly indistinguishable from the Julian Calendar. It absolutely presumes something about history – that the birth of Christ was a watershed event in world history that requires a literal break with past dating conventions. Which is retroactively applied by nearly 16 centuries, mind you! Otherwise, it would be equally easy to date things under the Roman system, to the founding of the Republic. There is a very specific event in mind here which is not neutral in respect to religion or culture. If we were saying that this is the year 442 CE (from the year the Gregorian Calendar was introduced), I’d have a different take on this – but the break is not in the introduction of a common global calendar. It is one religious leader, saying that the world will now date all events from the moment of the spiritual foundation of that one religion.
@15/andrewrm: “This is just a new riff on the same theme, that the birth of Jesus and the spread of Christianity was some type of global milestone.”
No, that is exactly the opposite of what I said. I’m talking about the global trend of civilizations increasing their interaction and spreading their values. The spread of Christianity is just one localized example of that process. It’s paralleled by the spread of Buddhism into China after the fall of the Han Dynasty in 220 CE, having a culturally stabilizing and unifying effect in the wake of the collapse analogous to — and preceding — the effect of Christianity after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. And those were just the earliest examples of the spread of large-scale, multiregional cultures, belief systems, technological innovations, and the like over the first millennium CE, such as the Bantu migration, Shankara’s unification of Hinduism, the rise of Islam, the spread of Mississippian culture in North America, the Silk Road trade empires, etc.
Again, I’m not talking about one specific date. Of course you can’t meaningfully divide two eras of history at any instantaneous moment; it can never be anything more than a convenient approximation, like the “border” between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. So the exact dividing line is irrelevant. My point is about the overall difference between the millennia we label as “Before Common Era” and the millennia we label as “Common Era.” The latter period — the entire period from 1 CE to the present day — is characterized by the steady increase of wide-scale, increasingly global cultural interaction, to a degree that wasn’t seen to the same extent in the BCE millennia (occasionally, yes, as with China and Rome, but not as a consistent millennia-spanning theme of the entire era). Yes, the rise of world religions such as Christianity is a major facet of that, but Christianity is just one example of the larger pattern. The past 2000 years — give or take a few centuries, of course — really are a more “common era” than what preceded them.
” if we’re just defaulting to the easiest, most widespread calendar usage then all we’re doing is saying that we don’t care about the Western-centric nature of the dating system.”
No, we’re saying that it’s unrealistic to expect everyone to agree to abandon it, so at least we can try to divorce it from its origins. Ideological purity is just an excuse to pretend you’re superior to everyone else. It’s about ego, not pragmatism.
I mean, holy hell, if you refuse to use anything based in imperialism, what language would you speak? English is a mix of words from the Saxon and Norse invaders of Britain with the words from the Norman French invaders of Britain, which came in turn from the words of the Roman Empire that conquered Gaul. There probably isn’t any language, measurement system, or other form of communication on Earth that doesn’t have some form of imperialism and conquest in its history. So your attempt to condemn using a symbolic system with a culturally problematical history is rather undermined by the fact that you’re making your argument in one of the most imperialist languages ever developed.
We can’t erase the past. We can’t sanitize our language and our culture of everything that has a biased or unfortunate origin. We can just try to be better going forward. Use the tools the past has given us, but use them in a better way.
“The basis of the argument is still about whether it’s inclusive to use a dating system that is tied to a religious event in one specific world religion’s calendar.”
Again, though, it isn’t. Jesus was not born on January 1, 1 AD. That was Dionysius Exiguus’s miscalculation that was recognized centuries ago as a miscalculation. Jesus was probably born at least four years before that date (if at all), so the date itself doesn’t represent anything whatsoever. It’s completely random and arbitrary, which makes it nice and neutral.
(Although some notable things did happen around that year, give or take. Confucius was given his first posthumous royal title, Ovid wrote Metamorphoses, the kingdom of Axum was founded in East Africa, and the Teotihuacan and Olmec Phase 2 cultures rose. Take your pick.)
It was a most triumphant conclusion to a most excellent journey.
The title sums it up perfect: made me cry, best I’ve felt all year.
I’m going to politely request that we get the discussion back on track: comments on the new film, or the previous Bill and Ted films, or related topics (other than calendar notation/dating, which I think has been covered, at this point) welcome. Thanks.
First things first … I have not seen the movie yet, but I am a huge fan of the original. That said, this review is outstanding. The pure joy of the writer crescendos though the writing resulting in a celebration of what is by all accounts not just a fun movie, but the right movie or the moment. Kudos to Leah Schnelback!
Second, why highjack the thread with petty stuff? These are movies about time travel and salvation and redemption and, ultimately, kindness. Take it to heart … “be excellent to each other.”
[handing the soapbox to the next person …]
As another long-time fan, I was very pleased to hear that the movie was actually being made, though I confess that I was spiritually prepared for it to suck — as this kind of thing so easily could. But, no: it did not suck. In fact, it was pretty damned triumphant. These days, I have a (pre-teen) daughter myself, and though she gets a kick out of the original films, she also instantly bonded with Billie and Thea. (She is not sure why they don’t have an in-character YouTube channel!) So it was cool that this film was actually looking forward, not just back, and not only for me but for my kid as well. Most luminous.
I am a big fan of this series, loved the new one, and thought this was a really good write up. My only real gripe with Face the Music is that they cast actresses 10+ years younger than Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter to play Elizabeth and Joanna (the princesses / B+T’s wives) even though the characters are all roughly the same age. I like both of the actresses and think they did a great job, but for a movie that is clearly trying to be progressive, and is partly about acknowledging the impacts of getting older, it felt like a big misstep to follow the outdated Hollywood practice of casting younger women for older male leads. Granted, they didn’t cast actresses 20+ years younger, but still, it was noticeable and a little distracting.
@21/Carlaz, you wrote that your daughter “… is not sure why they don’t have an in-character YouTube channel!”
She is absolutely right. And in my headcannon, they now do have an excellent Youtube channel.
I just saw the movie today and all I can say is that it was exactly what it needed to be. Not many sequels can say that.
If you really wanna start bawlin’, check out “Bill & Ted Save the Universe” and that comic’s alternate version of Deacon Logan. Did you know Bill & Ted’s moms kicked more ass that their sons ever did? True.
@20/Joel – maybe it’s like Frasier and Niles going to dinner? “What is the one thing better than an exquisite meal? An exquisite meal with one tiny flaw we can pick at all night.”
I think that quote explains a lot in various fandoms…
But it’s telling that, in a movie series which has the twin ethos of being excellent to one another and partying on, the tiny flaw they picked is so tiny.
the older I get, the more I find myself trying to live up to the twin ethos of Wyld Stallyns. I was really nervous about watching this film, but this article (I skipped the spoilers) has reassured me. I think I’m going to binge watch the trilogy now!
Two things:
1. This review is spot-on.
2. I’m Jewish and delighted to see BCE/CE put into common usage instead of BC/AD. The Common Era calendar might have much of its development in Christianity (after all, it is the Gregorian calendar, isn’t it?) but it has become our modern, secular, economic calendar. Perhaps in the future we will find a way to separate our common calendar from any religion but until then it’s a good step to encourage the use of BCE/CE.
A most excellent review. I agree with pretty much everything she says. This is the Bill & Ted movie we needed for 2020.
(One of my daughters, who is 11 years old, saw the first Bill & Ted movie when she was 9 and loved it. She was also very happy with this third film.)