Bill & Ted Time Travel...

[chrisspringob]

As has been pointed out, their being in the future is part of history. So it's likely they never discovered any information valuable to them, or they did but for whatever reason they couldn't avoid it. Or trying to avoid it caused it to happen.

B&T used a closed-loop time travel theory. Nothing that B&T could've done could've changed the history they knew. It was set in stone. The past came first.

That's right. I don't know why people want to make it more complicated than that. It's simple. Bill and Ted always went back in time and kidnapped those people and later returned them. It was always part of history. There was no "original timeline" in which it didn't happen. What's difficult to understand about that? The writers of B&T are just using the Novikov self-consistency principle:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle

 

[Trekker4747]

As has been pointed out, their being in the future is part of history

Well, yeah, but there's nothing to suggest that they *remembered* any of it after they got back to their proper time periods.

Who said they didn't remember? It's just that the memories of those events had no impact on history. Or, more correctly, the impact they had on history had already been made. Bill & Ted had always snatched them for their report.

Precisely.

Let's use Lincoln as an example. Say while he was in 1988 he happened to discover the simple fact that he's going to be shot in a theater and die. He thinks, "Well, I can't let that happen!" So he changes his theater plans that night. He goes to a different showtime or on a different date or a different theater or he simply gets different seats. Only for that change to result in facilitating the shooting, which wouldn't of happened otherwise.

It's a closed-loop. Lincoln, Socrates, Joan of Arc, Billy the Kid, Beethoven, Freud, and Gehangis Khan had always visited San Dimas 1988 it's part of history that they did.

There's one little gripe I will say about this movie, and it's deus ex machina at its "finest" while at the same time completely shown to be wrong.

Before Bill and Ted leave Rufus warns them that the clock in San Dimas is always running. In otherwords, Bill and Ted don't have all of the time in the world to prepare for their report, they have a time limit. This works for the story because it forces Bill and Ted to work as fast as they can to get to the report. Unfortuantly this is made irrelevant in many ways.

First of all, the clock is never an issue. Bill and Ted are never in a hurry to do things and as we learn later Ted's wearing of a winding watch (!) makes them think they have more time than they really have. But then they arrive in San Dimas just before they leave to use the time machine for the first time! So, when they re-arrived at the Circle-K they could've just stayed there and still had all night to do their report!

If they could put together the rocket-concert show they had at the end of the movie just think what they could've done with a whole day to do things! (And, to be honest their report probably should've been invalid anyway since they would've been counted absent from school that day.)

The second movie also puts this "clock always running" thing down when Bill and Ted leave for years to learn how to play but arrive back at the "Battle of the Bands" in time to obtain their destiny.

So it seems either Rufus was flat-out wrong about the "clock always running" thing or he was trying to force Bill and Ted -in their dimness- to work really hard on their report and to not dick around while trying to do it.

 

[Sephiroth]

i'm sure that Rufus just wanted to get B&T moving, or else they would be all, "fuck it, we can fix it tomorrow"

I just hope that B&T and BTTF TAS finds thier way to DVD soon

 

[Samurai8472]

You know, I never considered that, and this makes sense, especially from a movie where saying "We'll put the keys in the bush later" equaled instantly finding the keys in the bush. The same goes for part 2, when they left the concert to train and get better, and what was months or years for them, was an instant for the concert attendees.

Or in the "69 dudes!" scene

It was an endless loop of one Bill and Ted leaving while another dropped in.


I loved that the movie went back and showed us the prespective of the future Bill and Ted.

When just an hour ago in movie time they were out of the loop and seeing future versions of themselves.

 

[Brikar99]

I loved that the movie went back and showed us the prespective of the future Bill and Ted.

When just an hour ago in movie time they were out of the loop and seeing future versions of themselves.

Made even funnier when one of them says, "Man, that conversation made a lot more sense this time!" when they get back into the booth.

 

[StarshipDefiant]

As has been pointed out, their being in the future is part of history. So it's likely they never discovered any information valuable to them, or they did but for whatever reason they couldn't avoid it. Or trying to avoid it caused it to happen.

B&T used a closed-loop time travel theory. Nothing that B&T could've done could've changed the history they knew. It was set in stone. The past came first.

That's right. I don't know why people want to make it more complicated than that. It's simple. Bill and Ted always went back in time and kidnapped those people and later returned them. It was always part of history. There was no "original timeline" in which it didn't happen. What's difficult to understand about that? The writers of B&T are just using the Novikov self-consistency principle:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle

This was always something that bugged me about the terminator franchise to, even before SCC, T3 (and T4), there were/are people aruging that there was an "original" timeline

I'm on track about the closed loop, all evidence points to it, and even in a closed loop, for the traveler, time doesn't matter. There mere fact that a clock winding down meant they got back the night before, and not a few hours before seems to indicate, that to a point, they did have all the time in the world, but Rufus didn't want them to be fucking around through the timeline, potentially doing something that could make changes, and/or get them hurt/killed (suggesting that while it's 'closed' perhaps changes can happen to some degree). Again, the clock is always running is probably Rufus' way of saying "don't fuck around, get your assignment done and come back, pronto"