Film Dumpster takes a trip through the space-time continuum and looks at some mind-bending time travel movies.
Part 2: Back to the Future Part II
I’m disappointed with the vision of the future presented in Back to the Future Part II. We’re getting close to the year that presented us with ultra-future visions like holographic advertising, hoverboards, quick-drying clothes, and flying cars. I think we can safely rule most of those out right now. It’s 2013 and we’re still having trouble learning how to make bicycles fly! Flying cars? Forget ’em. I guess it’s just as well, though, because can you imagine what rush hour would look like?
I realize Back to the Future Part III is the one everyone thinks of as the black sheep, but really, that one is closer to the original Back to the Future than Part II. Both are adventure movies paying lip service to science fiction, and they both revolve around the adventures of Marty McFly and Doc Brown. Part II revolves around Biff.
Yes, Biff. Sure the guy we’re actually looking at most of the time is Marty, but Back to the Future Part II is the first Back to the Future as seen from Biff’s point of view. We know that right off when old, 1985 Biff charges out of the house, sees the DeLorian launch itself into the sky, and wonder just what’s going on. And as it turns out, what’s going on revolves pretty much entirely around Biff. Back to the Future Part II starts right where the first movie ended – RIGHT where it ended, with Doc Brown needing the help of Marty and Jennifer in the future. Apparently it concerns their kids. Doc, who is now consistently violating his own rule about knowing the future, is apparently concerned about a newspaper headline he saw in the future about Marty and Jennifer’s son getting arrested. For a series that concerns, you know, time travel and changing the past, this would seem to be something of a lesser issue. But hey, Doc Brown is concerned over it, and who would argue with a raving, unpredictable guy with wild white hair who claims to be able to travel through time?
To the future they go to make the times a-change! Unfortunately, this is not what one would call a well-planned trip, and a simple operation which should have only taken a few minutes goes completely awry when Doc and Marty overlook a few things: The first is Jennifer, who starts asking too many uncomfortable questions for Doc to handle. He responds by hypnotizing her and leaving her in a back alley for the cops to come along and just find. The second is that fact that Marty still can’t stand being called a chicken. While the mission is easy enough – Marty pretends to be his own son and rejects an offer to get involved with Griff Tannen, Biff’s grandson – the idea of Griff being even louder and more obnoxious than Grandpa isn’t thought of, and once again, it’s up to Marty’s improvisational skateboarding – er, hoverboarding – skills to save the day! It’s no harm no foul, and a triumphant return to 1985! Except Jennifer was found in the alley by the Police, who took her to her 2015 home, so they now have to pick her up. Oh, and Marty bought a sports almanac. Doc, regaling Marty with one of his trademark lectures about the evils of time travel, tosses the almanac while the nearby old Biff overhears everything. Doc and Marty going off to chase Jennifer gives Biff more than enough time to retrieve the almanac, take the time machine back to 1955, and give it to his young self.
By the time Marty, Doc, and Jennifer are back in 1985, 1955 Biff worked his sports gambling magic and owns Hill Valley. Now the place sucks, and Doc explains what happened: When Biff started using the almanac, it created an alternate timeline in which Biff became the supreme ruler of everything and turned the 1985 they knew and loved into a dystopian hellhole. So now Marty must return to 1955 and spend his time chasing that troublesome little book around.
That’s the difference between Back to the Future Part II and the other movies in the series. In the others, the time travel is just an excuse to get the real story off the ground. In Part II, the time travel is the story itself. This is real hypothetical, quantum stuff we’re dealing with here. It’s the only movie in the series which actively deals with full, world-changing consequences for screwing up the time-space continuum. It’s also by far the darkest movie in the Back to the Future trilogy, with such high comic moments as Lorraine marrying the abusive Biff and Hill Valley being a Police state!
Maybe that’s going a little over the top. After all, Marty’s initial jaunt into the future introduces us to its share of fun moments, like the hoverboard chase, Griff is delightfully over the top, and Doc is as nutty as ever. Watching one of the Tannens drive headlong into a pile of manure never gets old. And in this day and age, it’s just plain fun to sit down in front of the 2015 scenes and pick out all the crap producer Steven Spielberg and director Robert Zemekis missed so badly. Primary among them is, of course, the hoverboard, and flying cars are pretty high on the list too. Also, apparently someone can control the weather. It’s pretty remarkable how far away 2015 seemed to be back when this movie came out, and we were still imagining the 21st century to be some kind of theme park. I thought the holographic advertisement for the movie Jaws 19 had a grain of truth to it – after all, 3D movies are popping up in a lot of places these days, so it doesn’t look very far off.
In spite of all the coolness, though, how many people watch this movie as kids and realize the hoverboard chase is nothing but a retread of the skateboard chase from the first movie? Any murmurs about that possibly being just a coincidence (yeah, right) will be completely quashed by the climactic scene, in which Marty wanders through the dance from the first Back to the Future, not only trying to find the almanac, but also trying to, ahem, avoid himself from the first movie.
Those have to be the most blatant examples of pandering I’ve ever seen in a sequel. Yes, we know the infallible rule of movie sequels: If it works, just do the same thing again and again until the people stop watching. There’s a reason why James Bond and Godzilla are so popular, you know! But retreading the first movie like this…. Well, it’s a unique thing to do, I’ll give it that, but it’s almost like the movie was trying to preempt the inevitable criticism about it being the first movie all over again.
I’ve long looked at Back to the Future Part II as the original Back to the Future, but from Biff Tannen’s point of view. Think about it – remember, at the end of the first movie, there was a role reversal between George McFly and Biff. Biff, who started the first movie as coward George’s domineering boss, had been changed by Marty’s past interference into a sniveling mechanic while George became an author of apparently considerable success. It’s difficult for me to believe he didn’t still have at least a little bit of resentment about George totally upending him in 1955 – maturity just isn’t in his character! Is it any wonder he would go 30 more years wondering what he saw, then take the opportunity to rescue his own past when it presented itself? He wanted to return to the past, just before the punch that changed his life, and see to it that he became the alpha dog of all time. If young Biff got the sports almanac, he would have shook off George’s KO and kept thinking himself invincible. Without it, he disappears into the crowd and nobody fears him anymore. He ceases to be BIFF TANNEN.
This is a very creative retread with a point, is what I’m getting at. I like Back to the Future Part II a lot, and maybe I’m turning into a crotchety old man who’s a little bitter about not getting his flying cars and insta-dry clothes. Still, this movie, for a retread, has a lot of creativity and originality. It doesn’t pay the usual lip service the the idea of past changes having dire future consequences; it charges gleefully right into the concept, all while maintaining its sense of fun and identity as a Back to the Future movie. Still, for everything I like about it, I just don’t enjoy it as much as I do the other two movies in the trilogy.