[Ugh, Doc's shirt—see start of antepenultimate ¶ below.]
1. That the Back to the Future sequel would take place in the future was predictable enough—and made inevitable by the set-up at the end of the original film. Still: hoverboards instead of skateboards? That alone wins this sequel some points (and indeed is the main thing a lot of us remember about it). Bonus: the '80s Café or whatever it's called (Café '80s?) is strange to see since the idea of '80s nostalgia was a funny idea in 1989, but now that particular dystopian nightmare is fully upon us. Similarly, the kids' comment that the '80s arcade game is "like a baby's toy"—although the reason, that it requires the use of your hands, is probably a little off—is actually fairly reasonable: unless it's pure '80s nostalgia, would any of us really think that game was awesome or impressive?* Worst/weirdest moment: the cartoonish Max Headroom–style Ronald Reagan–Ayatollah Khomeini argument in which the Ayatollah is pictured before a sea of flames and saying (according to the IMDb—I didn't get it, myself), "You must have the hostage special!" Wha—?! Best/weirdest element: that 2015 is just 6 years away, and (uncoincidentally) by the time we get there, 1985 will be as long ago as 1955 was when the first movie came out. Holy fuckin' shit. Reboot, anyone?
Still got 6 years to get here...let's get crackin'.
2. But now we start getting to the good shit. Trip 30 years into the future: obvious. Trip back to an alternate version of the present? Priceless. There's something (a) awesome, from a pure sci-fi/time-travel/plot/cool-idea perspective, and (b) really kind of nightmarish about Back to the Future's alternate 1985.† Marty goes home, thinks everything's OK, but then what do you know: it's not home anymore. It's something different. Everything's different; nothing's the way it's supposed to be. Biff rules Hill Valley. George McFly is dead. Lorraine has fake breasts. Doc Brown's in a mental institution. Black people live in Marty's house (whoops: worst/most-awkward part‡). I love it in a movie when it feels like things are really going wrong. It's easiest to pull off in a remake, just by diverging from the expected/already-established course, as in the Peter Jackson King Kong when they're getting attacked by enormous insects and the music stops and the scene just goes on for a little too long and you (or, anyway, I) actually start thinking, "I mean, I know they're gonna make it, they can't possibly not, the movie's not done yet and I know what's supposed to happen, but...um...I think maybe they're not gonna make it!" Back to the Future Part II pulls this off, some: I remember seeing it in the theaters and thinking, right along with Marty, "Wait! Wait! What? What the fuck?" Because if you're back in 1985 like you're supposed to be, and things aren't the way they're supposed to be—even once you find out why—then what the hell are you supposed to do?
3. What you're supposed to do brings us to the next totally amazing thing about this sequel. Going into the future is one thing. Going into an alternate version of the present is another—and, awesome though it is, it's not as if the screenwriters invented a totally unprecedented time-travelly plot twist that no one had ever thought of before: it's basically just a totally appropriate riff on what I think it was Ray Bradbury did in that story where the time-tourist steps on the bug or whatever and then everybody's speaking a different language (right?). But Back to the Future Part II isn't done with you, yet. 2015? Check. Alternate 1985? Check. But to chop the "Alt" back off that "85," they have to go back to 1955, which means...in this sequel, they use their time machine to go back to the original movie: they don't just go back to 1955...they go back to Back to the Future! The idea that Marty has to creep around the dance, dodging Biff and himself and saving himself from Biff's goons, who think the last movie's Marty is the current Marty (whom they thought was the last movie's Marty)...that's just pretty neat. The fact that George's punching out Biff is an important thing that allows Marty to steal back the almanac, that sort of thing...also neat. Now, this isn't pulled off or fleshed out as perfectly as it could be, but it's just a great, weird, cool little thing for a time-travel sequel to do. I remember in the Space Quest games—I think it was Space Quest IV—you got in a time machine and went not to years but to sequels, like you'd travel to Space Quest X and Space Quest I...and I remember thinking that that was funny and creative, but it doesn't especially add anything to what Back to the Future had already done two years earlier! (Bonus: it's also neat§ that when Marty & Doc go back to Back to the Future Part I, Marty is visiting not just 1955 but also yesterday, and whereas Marty was just "there" yesterday, Doc hasn't been there for more than 30 years.)
Oh Là Là?! Oh Là Là?!
4. The ending! Holy shit: (a) Doc Brown, suddenly gone—and with surprisingly little melodramatic fanfare!—meaning first of all that, uh-oh, Doc Brown is in trouble, and second of all that, um...Marty McFly is totally stuck again in 1955, this time without even a plutoniumless time machine! (b) The letter sent from the 19th century? Are you kidding me? (c) Only one man can help Marty now: Doc Brown...but not the Doc Brown who was the main character of this movie: the Doc Brown who was the main character of the last movie! Immediately after Marty goes back to the future (at the end of the first movie), Marty runs up to tell Doc that he's "back...back from the future," and—well, yes, Doc faints, which is sort of dumb, but... I mean, come on! I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it!
Jeez, Marty, you want to get in the car or at least under the fuckin' umbrella before you read the 70-year-old letter?
The only thing about this movie that sucks is a lot of bullshit that's really just set-up for Back to the Future Part III—but all that stuff operates exclusively in the service of its crappy sequel, so I'm going to ignore it for now and save it for the next BTTF post: "In Which It Is Establish'd that Back to the Future Part III Is Quite Utterly Meagre & Unwatchable." But since I'm leaving something out about Part II that I'm arguing belongs to Part III, I'll drag in a little something from Part III that really belongs to Part II: there's something kind of great about the fact that Back to the Future Part III begins where both the first one and the second one left off!**
Oh, man. What a couple of movies! I mean, sure, the first one is a legitimately good movie, whereas the second one is a little...flimsier? But it's still just jam-packed with great ideas and twists and moments, making it a worthy, ballsy, hugely entertaining sequel.
What could the third one possibly do to ruin that streak...?
Part III, get ready to get judged.
* Of course, Q*bert and Ms. Pac-Man are still the greatest video games ever made.
† Yes, yes, alternate 1985. Good for you.
‡ They make an effort to make it less troubling by emphasizing the baseball-bat wielding dad's humanity with a line (that feels tacked on, to be frank) about how this family is being hounded by debt-collectors—lest we think the point of the scene is just, "Wuh-oh, angry black guy with a baseball bat, you're in trouble now!"
§ Lotsa neatness in this flick, huh?
** If you left out the second one and just started watching the third one, it would make at least a certain kind of sense...and if you identify only with the 1955 Doc Brown character, then it's totally continuous.
12 comments:
Yes, you're right. This movie is totally awesome.
Try to follow what I am about to tell you. It will blow your mind:
There are no less than THREE time-travelling Deloreans in Hill Valley in the 1955 that Marty & Doc travel to after "evil 1985" in BTTF 2.
1) The plutonium-less clock tower Delorean from BTTF 1 (remember, it's the afternoon of 11/5/55, and Doc is setting up his "weather experiment" curbside).
2) The Delorean that Old Biff steals in 2015 to deliver the Sports Almanac to Young Biff
3) The Delorean that Marty and Doc take back to rescue the Almanac and prevent Evil 1985!!!!!
Three fuckin' Deloreans!
Heyyy...good call, Savastio! In fact, depending on how you look at it, maybe there are four: remember, Doc Brown left one in a cave in 1885 that Marty and Doc's own past self blast out only the next [1955] day...the time-travel/mindfuck question, then, being whether it's "already" there before lightning strikes the flying DeLorean and sends Doc back in time.
I've already thought about this. At the exact moment that the lightning strikes the flying Delorean at the end of BTTF 2, an alternate reality is created in which that very Delorean appears in a cave. Therefore, I don't believe the 1885 cave Delorean is in Old Biff 1955 until after all of the other Deloreans leave. However, it is possible that there would be four Deloreans in an alternate version of Old Biff 1955 that we never get to see in the movie. Then again, it seems possible to me that, according to Doc's version of time travel chaos theory as postulated in BTTF 1, there may be as few as ONE Delorean in this new alternate 1955, or perhaps some number of Deloreans approaching infinity! In the words of Marty McFly, "This is heavy."
Yeah...it's a real mindfuck, Savastio: definitely weird to imagine that the DeLorean only begins to HAVE BEEN in the cave after that lightning strike, effectively materializing there...although I guess it's no weirder than Marty's hand fading in and out of existence (or rather out and in), or a newspaper headline changing, or a bad neighborhood morphing into a good one around a sleeping girlfriend on a bench.
The bad news is that ultimately I think it just doesn't make any sense, all this changing of history: e.g., shouldn't the change that resulted in the alternate 1985 also have changed 2015? Or, looking to the first film, the idea that Marty would slowly disappear seems to make sense only insofar as it's narratively useful: on what schedule or at what rate is this happening? Does the universe provide reckless time travelers with a grace period to fix their mistakes? What kind of clock is ticking? The space–time continuum should be shredded now like a Kleenex kept in somebody's pants pocket for too long.
All this reminds me of Douglas Adams's thing about time-travel grammar... In a way, the BTTF series can be taken as an educational video proving (through reductio ad absurdum) that time travel is a logical impossibility.
You're absolutely right about Marty's slow death in BTTF 1 being totally illogical and used only as a plot device. In reality, as soon as Marty pushes his dad out of the way of his future father-in-law's oncoming vehicle, he should have disappeared on the spot as soon as he laid hands on George. Actually, that would have been a really great alternate ending, except the movie would have only been about 40 minutes long.
And you're right, when Old Biff leaves 2015 to go back to 1955, he should NEVER have been able to travel back to the original 2015 reality that he left. Instead, Old Biff would have gone back to the 2015 where he was all-powerful ruler of Hill Valley, and there would have been two of him. I never thought of that. Then again, when Marty saves himself in BTTF 1 by making sure his parents fall in love, he should have gone back to 1985 and seen an alternate version of himself! Where is the Marty that was born in this new, alternate 1985 where he has cool parents?
Man, I'm glad we had this conversation.
As for the alternate Marty, see the last [nonfootnote] ¶ of this post: there's some reason to imagine that the Marty we see escaping in the DeLorean in Lone Pine Mall (as opposed to our hero, whose departure point was Twin Pines Mall) will return to yet another alternate 1985...
Wait, did you write your sure-to-be-withering critique of Part III yet? Because you're WRONG about it. Even though you're totally right about Part II, which is some of the best pop sci-fi anywhere. Part III is the least of the trilogy, certainly, and something of a minor entertainment, but to call it "unwatchable" is just a baffling statement. Maybe I'm blinded my childhood nostalgia, but it is a very fun Western-comedy pastiche that has the cool rhyming effects with the other two films plus some interesting diversions from them. E.g., the role reversal between Marty and Doc, where Doc becomes the romantic lead and Marty the romantic sidekick. Only in the 19th century! And who couldn't love that exciting train climax? I think possibly you need to relax your jumpy critical instincts a bit, possibly aided by some beer, wait for Part III to come on TBS or whateverthefuck basic cable network at a random hour of the day, and LET THE LOOOOVE IN. You want it.
Withering critique of Part III soon to come. Watched it just recently, Brian. Like you, I remembered it as being at least very entertaining. Have you seen it recently? I was shocked by how bad it is.
BTTF 3 is actually a very good movie. For all of the reasons stated by Brian, not to mention Biff as Buford Tannen. And how about when Marty walks into the saloon with his pink cowboy duds, and the one dude says of his clothes "Looks like he pulled 'em off'um a dead Chinese." Still hysterical. Not to mention Buford getting the manure treatment at the end. The Tannens are manure magnets!
And who knew Doc could dance? I could go on...
Very good, Savastio? Hm. Well, here's my response to that: 55 reasons why BTTF3 is one of the worst sequels ever made.
Here's the real mind-fuck:
When Doc and Marty get in the car after Marty gets the date of the book transfer from Biff-Alt'85, Doc says not to worry about Jennifer because the world will instantly transform around her.
A version of Jennifer is, in fact, on the porch when Marty returns from 1885. But is this the only Jennifer?
As mentioned, when Marty comes back to 1985 and it's Lone Pine Mall, etc. at the end of the first one, a version of Marty is about to head to 1955 and do all of that, so we are assuming that Marty, at least, remembers his original history despite being put in an alternate reality, and that altering reality doesn't change the time travelers' perceptions.
Now, if there's one fate-driven reality, this is cool. But if there's, as Doc supposes, one timeline that everyone shares, how is not she but everything else affected? Why should what was done to her in the alternate reality not be un-done.
The last possibility is that there are infinite realities, in which case Marty left the love of his life in a hellish version of 1985. She will remember going to 2015, and her life with Marty before that, but Alt-'85 Marty will return from Switzerland and not know who she is, and she will be royally f-ed.
Maybe that's a fourth movie: Doc realizes Jennifer is in Alt'85 so they need to somehow go Back to Back to the Future Part II and allow Biff to keep the book (or get him a new one) to recreate the hellish 1985 so perfectly that 1985+* Jennifer will appear on the porch and they can get her out of there (and Einstein too).
* Meaning the version of 1985 as it stood at the end of the first movie. You know what, I want to list them all:
1. Original 1985 Biff wrecked car
2. 1985+ McFlys successful, Marty on his way to being an asshole.
3. Alternate 85 Where Biff is rich and powerful and married to your mother, and Doc has made the front page.
4. 1985++ Not visited, but after book is burned we have two newspaper clippings in which Doc is Commended and George honored.
5. 1985+++ Similar to previous except Shonash/Clayton Ravine is now Eastwood ravine, and the Delorean is wrecked on a train track.
6. Real 1985 In which Marty McFly does not exist at all and I was in kindergarten, and in which the Marlins, not the Gators, are the future MLB team of Miami (presumably the precedent year for today's reality).
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