Sequel City — Back to the Future Part II
Published by Pop Bunker, January 18, 2011
It's 2011...somehow...and that means you may have missed the 25th anniversary celebration of the original Back to the Future. Well, you didn’t miss it if you happened to be flipping through cable channels during the holidays—I saw it listed for no less than three Back to the Future marathons on AMC, showing the movies in order all day.
The original came out in 1985, and some kind relative took eight-year-old Stevie to see it at the theater. I was all over it, and enjoyed it again during the thousands of replays it made on HBO over the next few years. It’s the sort of Speilbergian zany family-friendly action blockbuster that made tons of money in the '80s—and beyond that, it’s actually a great movie. It's a near-perfect blend of a fun, “what if” plot, good action, and wonderfully vivid characters. Michael J. Fox as the charming lead, Christopher Lloyd as the mad scientist he was born to play, Lea Thompson as the teenage girl who is boy crazy after the really wrong boy, Crispen Glover as the perfectly awkward teen and adult, and of course, one of the greatest villains of the ‘80s, Thomas F. Wilson as Biff.
The inevitable sequel was announced—or rather, sequels. Turned out, the filmmakers (headed up by writer and director Robert Zemeckis) were making a trilogy. Parts II and III were filmed back to back, with Part II released around Thanksgiving 1989 and Part III in summer 1990.
And the result? Why not keep reading and find out? In keeping with the spirit of the trilogy, I will present Back to the Future Part II for you now and follow up with a review of Part III in my next column. Enjoy!
Because Part II begins at the exact moment Part I ends, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ruin the ending to the original for you: Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) makes it home to 1985. At the end of Part I, he gets home, finds that history has righted itself, and leans back to relax with his best girl. And then Dr. Emmitt Brown (Christopher Lloyd) races up and whisks both Marty and Jennifer off to solve the future.
The future turns out to be...2015! How freakin’ old are we?!
Marty and Jennifer's son is about to throw his life away, and Marty has to put things right. (Jennifer, played by Elizabeth Shue in a recast, was seriously overacting, so the doc used a space ray to knock her out. Totally understandable.) We get to see what Hill Valley looks like circa 2015, complete with cool floating hoverboards and computerized retro '80s diners. After another Biff fight and a nice hoverboard chase scene, Marty sees an almanac that lists all the sports winners from 1950-2000. A light bulb goes off—why not make some $$$ when he gets back to 1985?
The doc points out that this is wrong and will completely screw up the space-time continuum, so Marty tosses it away. Biff, an older version of the one who was in the first film, picks it up.
Meanwhile, future cops pick up the sleeping Jennifer and drop her off at where the 2015 Jennifer lives. She wakes up and sees what future technology has in store for her: huge tv screen/fax/phone combos, freeze-dried food, and voice-activated cooking thingies. She also sees her future children (unfortunately, Fox plays both of his children in an Eddie Murphy Klumps move) and then her husband, who has fallen on hard times. Marty did not live up to his potential. He busted his hand in an accident, quit rock n’ roll, put on a few pounds, gets fired from his boring job, and…wears two ties to work every day. Sad!
‘85 Marty (our Marty, if you will) shows up to rescue Jennifer, and while doing so, Biff steals the DeLorean. Everything works fine with Jennifer, but when Marty and Doc Brown get back to 1985, they find an alternate nightmare version of Hill Valley. Biff has taken over, ruling the town from his high-rise casino downtown. They soon figure out what happened: Biff took the sports almanac and gave it to himself in the past. That version of Biff used it to amass an ungodly fortune.
Marty and the Doc have to fix the past again, especially since Alternate ‘85 has murdered Marty's dad George, institutionalized Dr. Brown, and married Lea Thompson to the lecherous Biff. Only place to do that is to go back to 1955, where Old Biff gave Young Biff the sports book that led to his rise to power. So they do. Marty and Doc Brown have to go back to the night of the dance (and the lightning strike, and everything that happened at the end of the first movie) in order to retrieve the book and make it back...to the future!
A few points:
#1. What I have just described to you is a convoluted mess. An interesting mess, and an ambitious one, but still a mess. Whereas Parts I and III can be comfortably described in one compound sentence, Part II almost requires diagrams.
I blame the filmmakers’ decision to begin the sequels exactly after the original. If they abandoned that—maybe mention it in passing as having been handled successfully—Marty and Doc Brown could have gone anywhere and anytime in history, and during any time of Marty’s life. (For starters, Michael J. Fox didn’t have to pretend to still be 16. He was still a babyface in 1989, but the 16 ship had sailed.)
Instead, the filmmakers stumble over themselves to make the Marty/Jennifer/their kids thing work with their larger story. They ended up with an overly complicated plot, and the movie (and trilogy) suffers because of it.
#2. Part II shows us what Dr. Brown only hinted at in the original—screw with the past too much and your present will turn into hell. Again, cool idea, but one that bore depressing and unentertaining results. Between the home scenes from 2015 and the dystopian Alt. ‘85 scenes, there feels like a solid hour between anything fun in the middle of this film. And fun was the original’s bread and butter. We didn’t go see it because the plot made a lick of sense, and we sure didn’t want to be bummed out by it all.
This sequel ended up inverting the patented “The Empire Strikes Back Second Movie in a Trilogy” formula: instead of a fun and moderately optimistic movie with a downer ending, this is a downer movie with a moderately fun and optimistic ending.
And anyway, you know it can’t be that much of an ending, happy or otherwise, or else how can there be a Part III?
#3. Part II proves that the future is not as charming as the past. Parts I and III go back to the past and it’s awesome. Part II goes into the future and it’s cheesy, and part of the problem is the 1989 special effects. I’m no expert, but I think that because the original used mostly practical effects—and not very many at that—it now looks more realistic than Part II with its “fancy” CGI and green screen technology.
Ok, I think I’ve done enough griping. There is a lot to like in this movie: getting most of the cast back, for one. That’s never a guarantee in Sequel City, and in fact the absence of Crispen Glover is a pronounced one. (His goofiness is missed!) Still, the big guns, Fox and Lloyd, are back. They had great chemistry in the first one, and it continues here.
Zemeckis and company are also back, and the car is back, and the music gets your heart racing like the original, and parts of every time period had its fun moments.
As much as I’ve complained about it, I have to say that Back to the Future Part II is not a horrible sequel, just a disappointing one. It’s a necessary bridge between the superior films of the trilogy, and even as outlandish as this plot gets, it does all make sense in the end. As much as a time-traveling DeLorean movie ever can.
Entertaining Scenes:
Recap of the end of the original, including the immortal line, “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”
Dr. Emmitt Brown (Christopher Lloyd) brings Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) to stop his son from doing something stupid in the year 2015. He does so, and along the way, we get a Future Biff (Thomas F. Wilson) altercation and a bitchin’ hoverboard chase.
More Tomorrowland stuff at the McFly household. ‘85 Jennifer Parker (Elizabeth Shue) sees her future home, and we get to see futuristic household appliances. Fox plays a beaten-down, older version of himself—unfortunately, he plays his own son and daughter.
Marty and Doc Brown tidy 2015 up, so they get back to 1985…and they find it’s been horribly changed! Did they accidentally land in Detroit?
Sorry about that Detroit line. Low blow. Anyway, Marty confronts Biff a few times in Alt. ’85, cumulating in a cool showdown on the roof of his casino.
Now back in 1955—and the exact same day that was covered in the original movie—Old ‘15 Biff and Young ’55 Biff share a humorous scene in the family garage.
At the dance. In a serious mind-bending Russian Doll situation, we watch Marty watching himself from the original movie, and thus, we sort of watch ourselves watching Marty watching himself from the original movie. Sort of. Twenty minutes or so self-referential scenes that are fun but maybe go on a bit too long.
The end—a chase/fight/struggle between ’55 Biff and ’85 Marty and Doc Brown. Winner gets the sports book and recorded history.
Part III is set up by…SCTV’s Joe Flaherty!
That’s all for now—look for the next edition of Sequel City when we examine Back to the Future Part III. Until then, please leave me suggestions, comments, complaints, whatever you like. Thanks for reading.
By the way: why is it ok for Marty to tinker with history for his own gain, but when Biff does the same, it’s amoral and wrong? Marty always does pretty well by the whole time-traveling racket, but when Biff tries to wet his beak, it’s a miscarriage of justice? Something to think about.