Wednesday, July 30, 2014

CBR Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure Movie Adaptation

 

I wanted to review the cult favorite Bill & Ted comic book series, but first let's make a stop by the short movie adaptation of the first film...


For more Bill & Ted, check out these other reviews:

Comic title: Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure: A DC Comics Adaptation of a Nelson Entertainment Video Release
Written by Bob H. Rozakis
Illustrated by Angelo Torres 

Published by DC Comics
From 1989
Lineup Bill & Ted series
Format: Single One-Shot issue Special Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure Movie Adaptation (1989) #1.

It's been long since I last delved into a comic movie adaptation!

First things first, everyone's familiar with the Bill & Ted movies? 

In case you don't want to check out the above links for the movie reviews or are new to the series, there are two Bill & Ted movies, sci-fi parodies/time travel comedies starring Keanu Reaves, Alex Winter and the great George Carlin.

Cult comedy films.

The story of the first episode follow two dudes that get their hands on a time machine in the form of a phone booth. They use it to collect people from the past to pass a school test in the present, in order to ensure the future of human society as we know it! 

This here above is the official "movie comics adaptation" - published by DC Comics to directly tie-into the first film's release.


Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure Movie Adaptation follows the exact plot of the film. Bill & Ted are two slackers whose grades were failling recently. They get help from Rufus, a man from an utopia far off in the future. He gives them a time machine which they use to enlist the help of several historic figures to help them out for a school presentation. 

They bring back from the past Napoleon, Billy the Kid, Socrates, Sigmund Freud, Beethoven, Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc and Abraham Lincoln himself! Along the way they also met two totally rad medieval babes!

This book was released as a single one-shot comic book adaptation.

And for once, a "movie adaptation" actually followed its theater counterpart pretty closely. It's the actual plot of the final movie cut in cinema. 

Most novelization that accompany movie releases end up rushed and using an entirely different script from the final version of the films. The same goes for comic book adaptations who simply feel like shorter abbreviated takes on the films to either avoid spoiling the entire movie or avoid discrepancies in case of last minute changes/screenplay revisions (or simply they decide to ditch or completely alter the entire ending of said adaptations). 

But here, for a change, this is one rare case where they were able to fill a single issue with this entire movie-to-comic adaptation, covering the entire film in every single detail of the plot. Including all the little twists and details. 

As such reading this comic might be like a huge spoilers to the movie, so I would only recommend it for people already familiar with the movie to avoid being spoiled every scene from the film or those that are sure they won't be checking out the movie. Hey! - You'll be getting the exact same entire plot of the ~1 hour 30 film in 32 pages worth of comic book material.



Overall, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure Movie Adaptation is actually a pretty fun comic. A great faithful movie adaptation with decent enough art and perfect writing from Bob H. Rozakis.

Angelo Torres' art is simple enough but decent. Funny silly cartoony but realistic enough to capture the film on the paper. The colors can be a bit odd at the times.

They really managed to recapture the entire film, I believe they were able to get their hands on an early cut of film since so many panels appear to be shot-for-shot recreations of movie screens.

You can really recognize most of the actors here, from Bill''s father to Joan of Arc. Alex Winter and George Carlin get a fairly good interpretation in these comic panels. The only exception is maybe Keanu Reaves who doesn't appear to look much like himself in a couple of pages here and there for some reasons. (I suppose getting Keanu's trademark "Wow!" on paper is harder than you'd guess)

I give it:
2 / 3 Snoopies!

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