Bill & Ted 3 Scrapped A Scene With CGI George Carlin

Bill & Ted Face the Music was going to include a George Carlin appearance, but the CGI would have been too expensive. Released in 1989, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure combined time traveling sci-fi with slacker comedy to create a beloved classic. In 1991, Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted “Theodore” Logan returned for the sequel Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, which sent the rocking team to hell and back.

Now, nearly thirty years after their last adventure through various dimensions, Alex Winter’s Bill and Keanu Reeves’ Ted are back for Bill & Ted Face the Music. The long-awaited sequel sees the duo as middle-aged men still grappling with the destiny that was promised them in the original films, but now also dealing with the reality of being fathers. Of course, things quickly get crazy as Bill and Ted and their daughters are sent on a new adventure through time with nothing less than the future of the universe at stake.

In addition to Reeves and Winter, Bill & Ted Face the Music also brings back William Sadler as Death. One character who won’t return from the original films however is Rufus, who of course was played by the late comedian Carlin. As it turns out, there was at one point a plan to have Bill and Ted meet up with Rufus one more time at the Circle K convenience store from the original movie, using old footage of Carlin plus CG, but director Dean Parisot said those plans were abandoned due to budgetary restrictions. As Parisot explained in an interview with Polygon:

“We probably could have afforded to build the Circle K set but we were using footage from the original Bill & Ted. We would have had to create a CG George Carlin, which is incredibly expensive, and very difficult to pull off in a convincing way. We didn’t have the time or the money. But we had a great scene where they went back to talk to Carlin.”

The Rufus reunion, according to Parisot, was supposed to include Bill and Ted receiving one last piece of advice from their old mentor. In order to still let Rufus be part of the movie without actually appearing, Bill and Ted do receive a keepsake from him that gives them the information they need, preserving the story purpose of the excised Carlin scene. And, as Parisot says, Rufus does still show up in the movie in hologram form as an homage to the legendary Carlin.

It’s indeed unfortunate that fans won’t get to see one more meeting between Bill and Ted and their original time traveling guide Rufus, but at the same time, it’s probably a good thing that the movie didn’t try to create a CG Carlin in order to pull off the reunion. CGI technology is of course getting more sophisticated all the time and can do some amazing things, but recent attempts at resurrecting dead actors have not been met with a lot of audience approval. The most glaring example of such a failed CG comeback of course came in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story when Peter Cushing was brought back via CG to play Grand Moff Tarkin, to somewhat horrifying effect. Thankfully, Bill & Ted Face the Music decided not to take a similar trip to the uncanny valley with a CGI Rufus.

Source: Polygon

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