Small Details You Missed In The Bill & Ted Face The Music Trailer

In a most excellent turn of events, Orion Pictures has finally dropped the first teaser trailer for what's sure to be the single greatest cinematic endeavor in the history of humankind: Bill & Ted Face the Music, the long-awaited continuation of the adventures of Ted "Theodore" Logan (Keanu Reeves) and Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Alex Winter). 

It's been a long time since we last saw our righteous friends. We first met them in 1988's Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, in which the pair traveled through time to collect historical figures for their final high school report and discovered their destiny: For their band, the Wyld Stallyns, to unite the world through music. Then, in 1991, we went along for Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, which saw our heroes killed by evil robot versions of themselves from the future. They descended to hell and were forced to escape by winning a terrifying and tense game of Twister against Death himself (William Sadler). 

Bill & Ted Face the Music will find the two in middle age, somehow having failed for all this time to write the song that will save humanity. There's a panel of radical dudes and dudettes from the future who are none too pleased at Bill and Ted's failure. There's the return of the famous telephone booth and the circuits of time. And there's one bright idea by Ted: to go to the future and steal the world-saving song from themselves. (Actually, it's not really stealing if you're stealing from yourself, dude.)

Fans should be overjoyed that this trailer is finally here, and the movie looks every bit as hilarious and awesome as we thought it would. With all of that excellence flying at your face, though, there are a few small details that you might have missed. We're here to break them down for you.

While we know that Bill and Ted will be made to, well, face the music and finally get around to saving the world, we don't know exactly what will set the events of the film into motion. It does appear, however, that something most bogus will befall the world — and whatever it is, it appears to be centered right around our heroes' hometown of San Dimas, California.

In one extremely brief shot in the Bill & Ted Face the Music trailer, we see a team of very science-y people in lab coats staring gravely at a holographic rendering of a globe. There's a big red spot in the area of southern California — and it looks to be made up of smaller points, suggesting some kind of pattern of activity. What kind of activity? It's not clear, but in the very next shot, Bill and Ted are standing on top of a vehicle on a packed freeway where traffic has come to a standstill. What's going on here? Could it be earthquakes? Weather events? Outbreaks of terrible music? We're not certain, but also in this scene, we see a quick flash of energy that indicates this may be when the phone booth makes its first appearance.

It's directly after this that we see Bill and Ted in the phone booth, intercut with a scene in which Ted cooks up their plan to travel to the future. But in one very interesting sequence, two things are shown in quick succession: the pair in tuxedos, giving some kind of speech at what could only be a wedding; and a shot of their daughters, Billie "Little Bill" Logan (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and Thea "Little Ted" Preston (Samara Weaving). That's right — Bill and Ted named their daughters after each other. (We were actually introduced to them as infants at the very end of Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey.)

We don't see the duo's wives — the princesses — in this trailer for Bill & Ted Face the Music, but we know they'll figure into the story. Glee's Jayma Mays is portraying Bill's wife Joanna, and Children's Hospital's Erinn Hayes will play Ted's wife Elizabeth. Still, it certainly looks like one or both of Bill and Ted's daughters will be getting hitched — and if you know Bill & Ted, then you know that there are no unimportant plot points. Perhaps it's these nuptials that will finally move the guys to write their world-saving tune? Perhaps they'll have to keep circling around in time to give a dozen versions of this speech until they get it right, for some reason? There's a lot that could be going on here, but it seems significant that this shot was included in the trailer. 

The phone booth appears early and often in this Bill & Ted Face the Music trailer, and we see it used for its intended purpose, as it transports the guys either to a possible future or another dimension late in the trailer (we'll get into that in a bit). But apparently, the trusty booth isn't the only means of traversing the circuits of time: Bill and Ted are also seen zipping along those circuits in a sleek, metallic booth that actually looks appropriately futuristic.

Of course, in one of the very next shots, the duo make a landing in the phone booth, so it appears that this upgraded booth may only be used once and perhaps for a very specific purpose. As the guys are gazing out of its window, they exclaim "Whoa!" in unison — and while they do say that a lot on a regular basis, it appears as though this upgraded booth might be taking them someplace that they've never seen before. An alternate reality or a different dimension, perhaps? 

There's one moment in the Bill & Ted Face the Music trailer that's pure joy: William Sadler, reprising his role as Death, rocking out with his excellent friends. In Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, Death was eventually brought around to the side of righteousness, joining the Wyld Stallyns and accompanying Bill and Ted on their journey to superstardom.

In this shot, we can see that at one point, the guys were indeed pretty successful with their music. There's a professionally-made Wyld Stallyns leather jacket framed on the wall; in another frame, you can spot what certainly looks like an issue of Rolling Stone with our heroes on the cover. There are other magazine and newspaper clippings on the wall, like the ones seen during Bogus Journey's closing credits. Of course, all of those clippings told us the story that Bill and Ted had basically succeeded in achieving world peace — so what could have happened to disrupt the timeline? Perhaps Death will have some knowledge of the situation to impart.

And now, about that sojourn to a possible future or perhaps an alternate reality: Apparently, in one attempt to steal their world-saving song from themselves, Bill and Ted end up snagging one iteration of the tune from ... ultra-jacked, prison-bound versions of themselves. ("How did you like our song?" Jacked Bill asks. "It was little on the dark side, but you know, that's cool," Regular Ted replies.)

It's unclear what these lunkheads did to get themselves thrown in prison, but judging by their tattoos, it appears that they hadn't lived radically different lives from their regular counterparts prior to breaking bad. Bill has a Wyld Stallyns tattoo, and Ted has one reading "Elizabeth and Billie forever" — the names of his wife and daughter.

It looks like Bill and Ted may have to encounter bunches of different versions of themselves while attempting to hunt down the song that will save the world. We can only guess as to what kind of other Bills and Teds might be out there in the multiverse, and we certainly have every hope that Bill & Ted Face the Music will show us when it arrives in theaters on August 21.