In the current Dark Age, it’s almost a universal law that any successful IP from before Ground Zero will become fodder for a bastardized remake or insulting sequel. Yesterday’s post showcased Back to the Future as the sole exception to that rule. But did it break the other ironclad Hollywood law which dictates that the sequel is always inferior to the original?
We’ll find out in today’s analysis of Back to the Future Part II.
Contrary to the first movie’s marketing, Robert Zemeckis never intended his hit film to have a sequel. The “To be continued” message at the end started out as a joke hearkening back to pulp adventure serials, much like another 80s mega-franchise.
In fact, the story goes that the gag hook for the next movie was the first Michael J. Fox heard of a sequel, and he called his agent right away to make sure he’d be in it.
The studio, however, didn’t get the joke. They greenlighted Back to the Future II without consulting the original creative team. So Zemeckis and Gale found themselves drafted into making a follow up to a story they’d considered finished.
By the pair’s own admission, the process started out bumpy. Their initial idea to have Marty almost prevent his own conception again – this time by traveling to the 60s, when his parents were college radicals – hit some obvious snags. The foremost of which being that George and Lorraine are Silents, not Boomers.
It’s rumored that the studio suit in charge of the picture rejected Zemeckis and Gale’s early draft with the sharp rebuke, “Give me the f***ing script for Back to the Future 2.”
Their solution was to give audiences what every good sequel does: the first movie all over again, and more.
So, after the obligatory jaunt to 2015 mandated by the first movie – wherein Back to the Future II makes a startling number of correct predictions – Doc and Marty are forced to return to 1955. And relive the first movie. But from different angles.
The reason being that Old Biff took the DeLorean for a joyride and gave his younger self enough future information to make a fortune gambling.
And of course, this event creates an alternate timeline in which Biff presides over one of the “Crime Is Legal” meme dystopias Hollywood can’t get enough of during Republican presidencies.
We’ve covered this phenomenon before. But Hollywood’s penchant for depicting societies run by law-and-order Conservatives as scum-ridden hellholes never ceases to amaze.
Meanwhile, here in reality …
And yes, I know that hypocrisy charges have no effect on the Death Cult. Consider it an illustration of the Opposite Rule of Cult Projection.
Biff’s descent from high school bully to murderous gangster isn’t the movie’s only instance of forced characterization. Here’s where we also get Marty’s sudden, violent aversion to accusations of cowardice. In truth, it’s a form of pride, as one of Marty’s ancestors will point out in the next movie. But despite him showing no signs of this vice in Part 1, the writers append it to Marty so they can advance the plot. As a result of this rather cartoonish flaw, he loses some of his boy-next-door authenticity.
That’s not even getting into his purchase of the sports almanac. Despite all of Doc’s warnings, he still obtains future information that could drastically change the timeline. It’s so greedy and stupid as to be out of character.
But one character benefits from the writers’ extra attention. Once again, it’s Doc Brown who forms the movie’s ethical center. With the stakes raised from preventing Marty’s erasure to averting a paradox that could devastate the space-time continuum, Doc rises to the challenge.
This notable exchange between Doc and Marty always stood out to me:
DOC : Don’t worry, Marty. Assuming we succeed in our mission, this alternate 1985 will be changed back into the real 1985, instantaneously transforming around Jennifer and Einie. Jennifer and Einie will be fine, and they will have absolutely no memory of this horrible place.
MARTY : Doc … what if we don’t succeed?
DOC : We must succeed.
That is superhero dialogue from the Doc. And he earns it.
The havoc wreaked with the time machine even makes Doc repent of creating the DeLorean. He proves himself willing to destroy his life’s work for the greater good.
But we won’t find out just how far he’s willing to go … until after another cliff hanger ending that sets up the series’ final installment.
The verdict
A glitzier but flawed retelling of the original, Back to the Future Part II still has enough heart to cover its warts. Its main, unatoned-for sin is not telling a complete story. But it goes to show that Back to the Future on its worst day beats any Current Year skinsuit on its best day.
For a thrilling vision of the post-future, read my hit mecha mil-sf saga:
“Hollywood’s penchant for depicting societies run by law-and-order Conservatives as scum-ridden hellholes never ceases to amaze.”
Not arguing this in general, but is it really fair to this particular case? It was released in the Bush era, but I don’t see much that paints Biff as a conservative–he’s a pretty thinly veiled caricature of Trump, and I don’t think anyone considered Trump a conservative at the time unless they were still in the ‘Big Business=Republican’ mindset. Between that and the ‘God bless America’ line, I suppose Biff as Republican is assumed, but it’s notable taht Biff’s only policy intervention that we hear about is a push to legalize gambling.
As discussed in yesterday’s review of the first movie, 1985A was the film makers’ original vision for baseline Reagan-era 1985 in Part I. They dusted it off for Part II.
And while Biff may not look like a Conservative to you, he is how all Conservatives look in the Death Cult’s eyes.
This is pretty much dead on. The film is not great and certainly inferior to the first film but it deserves to exist and I have a good time rewatching it.
Some people tell me they prefer this movie to Part III. I make a point of never turning my back on those people.
The fact that the sequel was unplanned really comes through in the beginning. They have no real use for Jennifer being in the future, so they knock her out immediately and only give her enough to do after that so as to not make her completely pointless. But she was in the time machine at the end of the first one, so she had to be there. Bringing Marty to the future to save their children hardly seems necessary since Doc could have just told Marty enough about the problem to fix it later, just like how Marty saved Doc’s life. But Doc said that the problem was their kids. I also wonder whether Biff would be shown as such a subservient loser in the altered timeline at the end of the first movie if they had planned to have him as the main villain of the second one. And of course there’s the lack of setting up Marty’s issues with being called a coward.
That’s why the movie doesn’t really click until they get back from 2015. The future is fun in a spectacle way (and in a retrofuturism way now) but the plot that the movie actually wants to tell isn’t set up until they get back from the future.
You’re right on the money. Zemeckis has said straight out that if he knew there’d be a sequel, he’d never have put Jennifer in the car. He also wanted to set Part II in the 60s instead of 2015 because by his reckoning, every movie set in the future inevitably gets it wrong.
Back to the Future is, as a whole, an imperfect series, especially if you’re a youtube “video essayist” or long form reviewer who’s myopically focused on the plot sequence and the rules of time travel. But the series is always my go-to example of a movie being more than the sum of its parts, of a movie being crafted so well and being so wholesome that it does manage to transcend its flaws. Ultimately, it really does come down to the intangibles, I really can’t put it another way
The more I see, the more I lean toward the camp that decries YouTube as the worst medium ever. All of the big accounts with anything thoughtful to say were purged long ago. Now the entertainment side caters to cultic sperging.
What Back to the Future brings to the table is memorable characters you love to root for or hate, compelling stakes, big ideas used to solve story problems in fun ways, strong performances, and pitch-perfect action.
The franchise’s success is no mystery. We’ve known how to make movies like this for almost a century, and we used to all the time. Films with this level of entertainment value are rare now because Hollywood decided to stop making them.
Youtube video essayists, and their consequences, have been a disaster for the human race
While I haven’t had quite as negative an experience with video essayists (admittedly I don’t watch film reviews, so maybe things are different), but I have a similar experience with the website TVTropes. Once I stopped using it, I was able to enjoy media so much more, because a story is not just a collection of tropes any more than a human is a collection of organs. That goes without mentioning the asinine categories (some trope-pages are nothing more than simple outfits, such as having a cool coat or motorbike), the Leftwing Nerd bias that tints everything, and the stuff they get just plain wrong or simply don’t understand.
Tropes are tropes for a reason.
Theory: A Back to the Future soft reboot could be a good movie. It isn’t because:
a) A Millennial or Zoomer ‘fixing’ his parents would mean keeping them out of divorce court, a serious no-no for the Death Cult.
b) Traveling back in time few enough years for a Zoomer to see his parents in high school would point out the cultural stagnation the target audience has been conditioned to deny.
Yep, you said it.
This movie came out in 1989. That was a mammoth year for film.
Any year when the sequel to Back to the Future was only the 6th highest grossing had to be.
On an unrelated note, it’s been instructive seeing the Witch Test explode on Twitter and the like.
Seen a lot of interactions that go something like this:
“If I were put into a position to be a martyr I would gladly do it, because some things are more important than life.”
“Okay, but can you say that Christ is Lord right now?”
“Well, I mean I could, and I have in the past and for all you know I say it all the time. But I won’t say it now because I’m not going to put myself through the indignity of giving into your demands.”
Really puts the shallow nature of mainstream western Christianity into clear view.
The scene from Shia LaBeouf’s upcoming Padre Pio movie wherein he commands the confession has been a wonderful promotion for the Test. Enterprising Twitter Catholics have already made the clip into an animated gif.
“It’s so greedy and stupid as to be out of character.”
This and Marty’s concern with finding out if he’s rich when he arrives in 2015 makes me wonder if the writers and Fox weren’t borrowing some notes from another of Fox’s characters of the time, one Alex P. Keaton.
That’s a possible connection I’d missed. Wouldn’t put it past them.