Back to the Future Part II
The future events of Back to the Future Part II take place on October 21, 2015. I have decided to use that day to post my thoughts on the film which I feel is a little underappreciated.
Back to the Future is one of the most enjoyable films ever made.
Michael J Fox, already famous on TV from Family Ties, became a big
screen star for a few years after portraying Marty McFly, a 17 year old
from 1985 who goes back to 1955 and inadvertently interrupts
his parents' meeting, threatening his own existence. Fox plays Marty
as good hearted and resourceful but a little irresponsible and
immature. Doc Brown, Marty's scientist friend, is played wonderfully by Christopher
Lloyd as a zany wild scientist at two ages (presumably his 30s
and 60s). The friendship between this unlikely pair is the heart of the series. The joy of the film is
watching Marty ensure that his parents ultimately fall in love (and
makes their 1985 lives happier in the process) and
then with great effort get home. The film has a lot of fun with time
travel but is also heartwarming and funny. Robert Zemeckis (who directed
and co-wrote the film) and Bob Gale (who also co-wrote the film)
deserve credit for creating such an original piece of entertainment.
Back to the Future ended with a scene in which Doc Brown reappears the
morning after Marty returned to 1985 claiming that Marty needs to go "back to the future" to
take care of his kids. When I first saw the film I took that
as a joke.
Yet in 1989 two sequels began filming back to back and in November
1989 Part II was released. Part III was released in May 1990. Critics
mostly did not like Part II in which each act occurs in a different time
period (2015, an alternate 1985, and 1955)
and has a rushed pace but warmed to Part III which occurs mostly in
1885 and follows a template similar to that of Part I.
After seeing Part I, I developed a joy of time travel movies,
appreciating the possibilities enabled by the plot device. I have enjoyed, among others, Frequency, About
Time, The Time Traveler's Wife, The Butterfly
Effect, Looper, the Terminator films and Timecop, all of which use time
travel in different ways. But Back to the Future Part II makes the
most use of the idea as the returning creative team of Zemeckis and Gale
have a plethora of ideas and build the film around
the consequences of using time travel irresponsibly.
Part II rewards viewers who are familiar with Part I with
recreations and often variations on scenes from Part I. Part of
the fun is watching Part II and then re-watching Part I (which was not
created with the idea of there ever being a follow-up)
to see how it all holds together.
The opening scene is the closing scene from the first film re-filmed. The main difference in the two of course is the added
perspective of Biff, unseen by the protagonists in the car, watching the
DeLorean take off and disappear and his demeanor immediately
changes from the overly friendly Biff that he has become back to the
nasty threatening one, foreshadowing all the trouble Biff is going to
cause in this film (and that this film will put an added perspective on the original). Elizabeth Shue replaced Claudia Wells as
Jennifer too in the scene but there are a couple
of other slight (mostly unintended) variations that I picked up on:
- In Part II when Marty gives the truck a happy fist pump there is a sound of it connecting.
- When Jennifer appears in Part I Marty is leaning on his arm but in Part II his arm is further up the door frame.
- When Marty approaches Jennifer in Part I he briefly puts his hand on the rear view mirror but does not in Part II.
- Jennifer immediately responds to Marty's touch in Part I but she reacts a little more slowly in Part II.
- In both versions Fox has a wonderfully funny moment when Doc pops out of the DeLorean in his wacky futuristic clothes in the manner that he turns back and gives a slight uncomfortable smile to acknowledge to Jennifer that, yes, his best friend is a bit out there (not that Marty would have Doc any other way). In Part I he does the move faster and with more subtlety.
- Fox delivers the line "What are you doing Doc?" a little differently in each film, punctuating "doing" more in Part I.
- When Marty asks if "they become assholes or something" in Part I Doc denies it right away but in Part II Doc hestitates, looks away briefly and then denies it (telling the audience that he is lying-which we will soon see).
The film is intricately structured and some of the throwaway details pay off in unexpected ways. For example when Biff first comes outside in the beginning he wants to show Marty his new matchboxes. Late in alternate 1985 Marty steals some of Biff's casino matchboxes and after Marty burns the almanac the casino matchbox turns back into the original wax job box which shows that the alternate 1985 is gone.
When Marty walks through Hilldale in 2015 he sees the town mayor is
presumably the grandson of the 1985 mayor Goldie Wilson, who he also
met in 1955. The clock tower still has not been fixed. Old Biff kind
of tastelessly tells Marty (thinking he is Marty's
son) to say hi to his grandma, a note from the first film, Biff is
still lusting after Lorraine after 60 years.
During the recreation of the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance we see scenes that were not in the original but are carefully placed
and timed so they could have taken place in the moments Part I was
showing us other things. For example when Marty
(from Part I) pulls up in the car with Lorraine, which we saw, there is
an extra beat where he sees Biff reading and moves the car away a bit,
obviously wanting to avoid him. When Mr. Strickland takes Biff's
magazine it is consistent with his character. At
the end of the Earth Angel song we see Lorraine and George kiss again, a
little more passionately than their first kiss (believable but also
probably in part to hide the fact that George had been recast). All the
scenes with Biff on the day of the dance picking
up his car and taking the little kids' ball fit right in with the
character previously established.
Although it
is a bit of a sidebar once the filmmakers decided to set the third act
in 1955 it is clear that there would be a re-staging of the
showcase Johnny B. Goode scene. In the
original the scene is an enjoyable character moment (Marty finally
gets to play rock music in front of an audience and arguably invents rock and roll). In Part II we hear the whole song again but
the focus is Marty trying to stop his earlier self from being attacked
by Biff's goons. There is no ladder on the side of the stage in the
original film and there is an additional instrumental riff in the song
after the first verse this time (probably to let Marty get to the
stage).
One of clever touches is when
Doc tells Marty not to get the Almanac until after old Biff leaves to be
sure old Biff returns to 2015.
A rarely remarked upon aspects of all three films concerns Doc's
timeline. From the beginning of Part I to the end of Part III is a
little over two weeks in Marty's life. The events of Part I are take
place over 8 days, Part II is over about two days,
and Part III is also about a week. The audience sees about 90% of the
adventure from Marty's perspective but in between Marty leaving 1955 and
returning to 1985 Doc has to wait 30 years and then presumably when
meeting Marty, pretend that he does not know
him from before. At the end of Part I Doc leaves for 2015 and returns
the next morning (did he show up the next morning to make sure Marty got
enough sleep after his Part I adventure?) but it is clear that he spent
a lot of time there, even getting plastic
surgery and has followed events of Marty's life (though he refuses to
interfere in the accident feeling Marty needs to learn to control his
temper on his own). After Doc is sent back to 1885 he gets settled and
does not write to Marty for eight months, but
all this occurs in a moment or two of screen time from Marty's point of
view at the end of Part II. When Doc reappears at the end of Part III
in the train several years have passed for him since he now has two
kids. I don't know how Doc knows Marty and Jennifer
will be there but the scene is still dramatically satisfying. However in the end even the Doc from the beginning of Part I would have aged at least 8-10 years.
I like the idea of Marty's greed causing the problem. He wants to
get rich off the future and ends up threatening it by buying the
Almanac.
Some people were confused by the alternate 1985 plot but once Biff
takes the DeLorean in the future (how exactly did he figure out how to
work the time machine aspect of it) I knew we would see repercussions of
it. When Doc puts it all on the chalkboard
it becomes clear. The stakes of this film are
Lloyd has two standout moments in the film. One is the scene in the alley in the future in which he explains a paradox to Marty. The
other is his final scene in the film in which the filmmakers recreate
the moment in which Doc looks up after Marty has
left in Part I (a great touch I always appreciated that instead of
going right back to 1985 we get to say goodbye to 1955 Doc on his own)
and then has a priceless yelp) when he sees Marty has come right back
(Marty's entrance from the back of the frame with
the music suddenly kicking up again is perfectly staged).
The
sequence in which the two Biffs meet is memorable and they despise each other showing that Biff hates himself as
much as anyone else. Old Biff shows no warmth toward his younger version; he is
only doing this to give himself a better life. Since old Biff
apparently does not exist in the 2015 version it is ironic that he may
be giving himself riches but also shortened his own life in some way (an
interview with the filmmakers suggested that Lorraine probably offed
him but a man like that would have had many enemies).
In the negative column, the film does suffer from Crispin Glover's
absence and the efforts to make the film around him (and in some scenes using a double) are obvious. I
noticed similar things in Furious 7. In both films a lot of scenes
have other characters talking about the missing
character but the character himself is almost never fully onscreen for a
dramatic moment. Given the plot of the film has Marty trying to change
the past to save his father's life the fact that there is never a
dramatic payoff (a warm scene with George-even
in his 1955 form-once Marty has recovered and destroyed the almanac
would have accomplished this) to this leaves the viewer a bit
unsatisfied. In the 1955 scenes of Part I Marty and George established a
nice friendship that Marty probably never had with his
dad before and that is missing here.
As a result the film has less heart than
the other two. The other two films have character development and
growth (Part III even has its opening credits of Marty and Doc sleeping
while in this film the credits are the viewpoint of the Delorean racing
through the clouds) but I think what some people do not like about this
one is the way it races from one point to another (Biff's meanness in all three acts is also a little too much). Nearly every moment
feeds the plot in some way. One of the very few nice moments is Marty looking at his
parents kissing in an appreciative way that he did
not have the chance for in Part I.
Would Biff really have explained to Marty exactly how he got the Almanac in the past since he has no patience for Marty?
Marty uses the trick of getting the dumb bad guy to look at
something that is not there to get out of a sticky situation three times
in this film. It worked in Part I because an 1980s kid was using it on a
1950s bully who would not know it and he used it
quietly, being sneaky. In Part II he overplays it each time and only
once uses it in 1955.
Zemeckis characters always work hard to achieve their goals but
although I enjoy the recreated 1955 scenes, I think there are too many
moments of Marty trailing Biff and almost but not quite grabbing the
Almanac.
I know the
film needed a big climax but after Biff has been punched out twice (once
by George and then again by Marty-hitting his head on the pavement both
times) would he really be up for another fight or the battle with his
car? Being knocked out by George was enough to completely change Biff
in the first film (though that probably was more social since people
stopped being afraid of him) but it only briefly slows him down here.
Also,
there are two moments that are a little off in the scene in which Biff
and Marty face off in front of the double doors. First, Biff appears by
surprise right in the frame with Marty face to face, even though it has
been established many times that Biff is much taller. Also, Marty is
knocked down when the Marty from Part I opens the door but in Part I
when Marty left George and Lorraine when we see Marty him open the door
from the inside he does not open it that wide. I do like, however, that
Marty is in such a hurry to get "back to the future" that he does not
even notice he knocked another version of himself down.
In conclusion, despite its shortcomings, I think Back to the Future Part II is a fun time travel comedy. It builds on the premise of the first film and takes the story to unexpected places. Fox and Lloyd continue to make a top notch team and Zemeckis, Gale, Silvestri and the rest of the production work hard to make the film a unique experience for the audience. ***
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