Back to the Future Part II
Back to the Future Part II is a 1989 American science fiction film directed by Robert Zemeckis from a screenplay by Bob Gale; both wrote the story. It is the sequel to the 1985 film Back to the Future and the second installment in the Back to the Future franchise. The film stars Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, and Thomas F. Wilson with Elisabeth Shue (replacing Claudia Wells), and Jeffrey Weissman (replacing Crispin Glover) in supporting roles. It follows Marty McFly (Fox) and his friend Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown (Lloyd) as they travel from 1985 to 2015 to prevent Marty's son from sabotaging the McFly family's future. When their arch-nemesis Biff Tannen (Wilson) steals Doc's DeLorean time machine and uses it to alter history for his benefit, the duo must return to 1955 to restore the timeline.
Back to the Future Part II
- Robert Zemeckis
- Bob Gale
- Bob Gale
- Neil Canton
Universal Pictures[1]
- November 22, 1989
108 minutes[2]
United States
English
$40 million[3]
$332.5 million[3]
The film was produced on a $40 million budget and was filmed back to back with its sequel Part III. Filming began in February 1989, after two years were spent building the sets and writing the scripts. Back to the Future Part II was also a ground-breaking project for visual effects studio Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). In addition to digital compositing, ILM used the VistaGlide motion control camera system, which allowed an actor to portray multiple characters simultaneously on-screen without sacrificing camera movement.
Back to the Future Part II was released by Universal Pictures on November 22, 1989. Though the film received mostly positive reviews from critics, it was deemed inferior to its predecessor. The film grossed over $332 million worldwide in its initial run, making it the third-highest-grossing film of 1989. Part III followed on May 25, 1990, concluding the trilogy.
Plot[edit]
On October 26, 1985, Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown arrives unexpectedly in the DeLorean time machine. He persuades Marty McFly and his girlfriend, Jennifer Parker, to travel to the future with him[N 1] and help their future children, with Biff Tannen witnessing their departure. Once they arrive in 2015, Doc incapacitates Jennifer, leaving her asleep in an alley to avoid letting her learn about her own future. Doc explains that their son Marty Jr. will be arrested for participating in a robbery with Biff's grandson Griff, leading to a chain of events that destroys the McFly family.
Doc instructs Marty to switch places with the identical Marty Jr. and refuse Griff's offer, but Griff goads Marty into a fight by calling him "chicken", and a subsequent hoverboard chase ensues. Griff and his gang are arrested, saving Marty's future children. Before rejoining Doc, Marty purchases an almanac containing the results of major sporting events from 1950 to 2000. Doc discovers it and warns Marty about profiting from time travel. Before Doc can adequately dispose of it, they are interrupted by the police, who have found Jennifer incapacitated and are taking her to her 2015 home. They pursue, as does an elderly Biff, who has overheard their conversation and retrieved the discarded almanac.
Jennifer wakes up in her 2015 home and hides from the McFly family. She overhears that her future life with Marty is not what she expected, due to his involvement in an automobile accident, and witnesses Marty being goaded by his co-worker, Douglas Needles, into a shady business deal, resulting in his firing. Jennifer tries to escape the house but faints after encountering her 2015 self. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Marty and Doc, Biff steals the time machine and returns it. Marty and Doc return to 1985, leaving an unconscious Jennifer on her front porch to sleep off the day's events as a dream.
Marty gradually realizes that the 1985 they have returned to is not the one he knows. Biff, having used the almanac to secure a fortune, is now one of the country's wealthiest and most corrupt men. He has turned Hill Valley into a chaotic dystopia, secretly killed Marty's father, George, in 1973, and forced Marty's mother, Lorraine, to marry him. Meanwhile, this timeline's version of Doc has been committed to a mental hospital. Doc deduces that old Biff took the time machine to give his younger self the almanac, and Marty learns from the alternate 1985 Biff that he received it on November 12, 1955.[N 2] Biff, acting on his future self's advice, tries to kill Marty, but he flees with Doc to 1955.
Marty secretly follows the 1955 Biff and watches him receive the almanac from his 2015 self. Marty then follows him to the high school dance, carefully avoiding interrupting the events from his previous visit, and being forced to intervene when Biff's gang goes after the other Marty performing onstage. Marty finally gets the almanac, but loses it after being again goaded into a fight with Biff. Marty chases after Biff's truck on the hoverboard, getting the almanac back as Biff is left to crash into a manure truck for the second time in a week.
Marty burns the almanac, nullifying the changes to the timeline that it had caused, as Doc hovers above in the time machine. Before Marty can join him, the DeLorean is struck by lightning and disappears. A Western Union courier arrives immediately after and delivers a letter to Marty; it is from Doc, who tells him that the lightning strike transported him 70 years in the past to 1885.[N 3] Marty races back into town to find the 1955 Doc, who had just helped the other Marty to return to 1985. Shocked by Marty's sudden reappearance, Doc faints.
Development[edit]
Director Robert Zemeckis said that initially, a sequel was not planned for the first film, but its huge box office success led to the conception of a second installment. He later agreed to do a sequel, but only if Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd returned as well. With Fox and Lloyd confirmed, Zemeckis met with screenwriting partner Bob Gale to create a story for the sequel. Zemeckis and Gale would later regret that they ended the first one with Jennifer in the car with Marty and Doc Brown, because it required them to come up with a story that would fit her in, rather than a whole new adventure.[4]
Gale wrote most of the first draft by himself as Zemeckis was busy making Who Framed Roger Rabbit. At first, the film's third act was to take place in 1967 where Lorraine was a flower child protesting the war and George was a college professor at Berkeley, but Zemeckis later stated that the time paradoxes of it provided a good opportunity to go back to 1955 and see the first film's events in a different light. While most of the original cast agreed to return, a major stumbling block arose when negotiating Crispin Glover's fee for reprising the role of George McFly. When it became clear that he would not return, the role was rewritten so that George is dead when the action takes place in the alternative version of 1985.[4]
The greatest challenge was the creation of the futuristic vision of Marty's hometown in 2015. Production designer Rick Carter wanted to create a very detailed image with a different tone from the film Blade Runner, wishing to get past the smoke and chrome. Carter and his crew spent months plotting, planning, and preparing Hill Valley's transformation into a city of the future.[5] Visual effects art director John Bell said that they had no script to work with, only the indications that the setting would be 30 years into the future featuring "something called hoverboards".[6]
When writing the script for Part II, Gale wanted to push the first film's ideas further for humorous effect. Zemeckis said he was somewhat concerned about portraying the future because of the risk of making wildly inaccurate predictions. According to Gale, they tried to make the future a nice place, "where what's wrong is due to who lives in the future as opposed to the technology" in contrast to the pessimistic, Orwellian future seen in most science fiction.[4] Gale has stated that the characterization of the 1985A Biff took inspiration from Donald Trump.[7] To keep production costs low and take advantage of an extended break Fox had from Family Ties (which was ending its run when filming began), it was shot back-to-back with sequel Part III.[8]
Release and reception[edit]
Box office[edit]
The film was released to theaters in North America on Wednesday, November 22, 1989, the day before Thanksgiving. It grossed a total of $27.8 million over Friday to Sunday, and $43 million across the five-day holiday opening, breaking the previous Thanksgiving record set by Rocky IV in 1985.[46][47] On the following weekend, it had a drop of 56 percent, earning $12.1 million, but remained at number 1.[48] Its total gross was $118.5 million in the United States and $213 million overseas, for a total of $332 million worldwide, ranking as 1989's sixth-most successful film domestically and the third-most worldwide—behind Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Batman.[49] However this was still short of the first film's gross. Part III, which Universal released only six months later, experienced a similar drop. In Japan, it had a record opening, grossing $7.5 million in six days from 153 screens.[50]
Critical response[edit]
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 63% based on 63 reviews, with an average rating of 6.2/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Back to the Future II is far more uneven than its predecessor, but its madcap highs outweigh the occasionally cluttered machinations of an overstuffed plot".[51] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 57 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[52] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.[53]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three out of four stars. Ebert criticized it for lacking the "genuine power of the original" but praised it for its slapstick humor and the hoverboard in its chase sequence.[54] Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that the film is "ready for bigger and better things" and later said that it "manages to be giddily and merrily mind-boggling, rather than confusing".[55] Tom Tunney of Empire magazine wrote that the film was well-directed, "high-energy escapism", and called it "solidly entertaining", though noting it as being inferior to the other two films in the franchise.[56]
Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader gave the film a negative review, criticizing Zemeckis and Gale for turning the characters into "strident geeks" and for making the frenetic action formulaic. He believed that it contained "rampant misogyny", because the character of Jennifer Parker "is knocked unconscious early on so she won't interfere with the little-boy games". He cited, as well, Michael J. Fox dressing in drag.[57] Variety said, "[Director Robert] Zemeckis' fascination with having characters interact at different ages of their lives hurts it visually, and strains credibility past the breaking point, by forcing him to rely on some very cheesy makeup designs".[58]
In 2018, Bob Gale, who co-wrote the movie with Robert Zemeckis, said the movie received a mixed reception because of the dark aspect of the story: "They [the audiences] were absolutely surprised by it. The whole 1985 stuff... we went places the audience was not ready to go. That is some of my favorite stuff in the whole trilogy".[59]
Accolades[edit]
The film won the Saturn Award for Best Special Effects (for Ken Ralston, the special effects supervisor), the BAFTA Award for Best Special Visual Effects (Ken Ralston, Michael Lantieri, John Bell and Steve Gawley),[60] an Internet-voted 2003 AOL Movies DVD Premiere Award for the trilogy DVDs, a Golden Screen Award, a Young Artist Award, and the Blimp Awards for Favorite Movie Actor (Michael J. Fox), and Favorite Movie Actress (Lea Thompson) at the 1990 Kids' Choice Awards. It was nominated in 1990 for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects (John Bell, Steve Gawley, Michael Lantieri and Ken Ralston), but lost to The Abyss.[61][62]
Home media[edit]
The film was released on VHS and LaserDisc on May 22, 1990, three days before the theatrical release of Part III. It was due to be the first release under the MCA/Universal Home Video banner.[63] Universal reissued it on VHS, LaserDisc, and compact disc in 1991, 1995, and 1998. On December 17, 2002, Universal released it on DVD in a boxed trilogy set, although widescreen framing problems led to a product recall.[64] The trilogy was released on Blu-ray Disc in October 2010.
Universal re-released the trilogy alongside new features on DVD and Blu-ray on October 20, 2015, coinciding with Back to the Future Day the following day. The new set included a featurette called "Doc Brown Saves the World", where Lloyd, reprising his role as Doc Brown, explains the reasons for the differences between the future of 2015 as depicted in Back to the Future Part II and in real life.[65] A new remaster as part of Back to the Future: The Ultimate Trilogy on Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray was released on October 20, 2020.[66]
In May 2020, the trilogy was released for streaming on Netflix. A small minor edit was noticed to Part II during the scene featuring the fictional soft porn magazine called Oh La La!. Gale stated that neither he nor Zemeckis were aware of this change, and believed it originated from a foreign print of the film. Shortly afterwards, Universal provided Netflix with the unedited, theatrical version of the film,[67] replacing the censored cut on the streaming platform.[68]