Doc Brown Tackles Love While Marty Conquers the West in Back to the Future III

I’ve long loved the first two Back to the Future movies, but I never got around to the third until recently. I’d heard from some that it wasn’t quite up to snuff, but I found it an enjoyable romp.

Unlike the dizzying second installment, Back to the Future III is mostly rooted in one time: the Old West. Despite Doc Emmett Brown’s (Christopher Lloyd) explicit instructions to Marty (Michael J. Fox) to destroy the time machine and not attempt to retrieve him from 1885, when the loyal teen finds out that a grisly fate awaits his eccentric friend if he doesn’t intervene, he’s compelled to hop in the time machine yet again.

In some ways, the movie is very repetitive, but then so was the second. The fun is in seeing how essentially the exact same scene can be transplanted into another time. Naturally, Biff’s surly ancestor Mad Dog (Thomas F. Wilson) is at the heart of much of the trouble. I barely recognized Wilson under his accent and outlaw get-up, though his basic mannerisms are pretty similar. Other familiar faces pop up in distant past too. I’m most amused by Marty’s principal showing up as the sheriff.

Fox doubles as his great-great grandfather, fresh-off-the-boat Seamus, which makes Lea Thompson’s presence as Marty’s great-great grandmother even more eyebrow-raising. It’s weird to see Marty’s 100-years-older twin married to a dead ringer for Marty’s mother – and why does his paternal great-great grandmother look like his mother, anyway? But it’s more fun to keep recycling the same actors, and Thompson’s phony accent annoys me less than her voice in the other installments.

This movie really isn’t about Marty, though, aside from his finally learning how to back down from a pointless challenge. Mostly, it’s about Doc falling head over heels for brainy schoolteacher Clara (Mary Steenburgen). Lloyd isn’t your typical romantic lead, and certainly not in this role, but even though Doc had always considered himself too logical and scientifically-minded to get caught up in romance, once the bug bites him, he’s as smitten as a schoolboy, and he and Clara make quite the charming couple even though the character must be about twice her age.

It’s fun for us to see Doc in this unexpected situation. Not so fun for Marty, who’s got one great shot at getting the time machine running again. If he fails, he’s likely to be stuck in the 1800s forever, so this is not a great time for Doc to be distracted.

This third installment is entertaining, with fun nods at the previous movies – like Doc and Marty using each other’s catchphrases – and at the western genre. Marty particularly has fun appropriating the name Clint Eastwood.

I don’t know why it took me so long to get there, but Back to the Future III is a journey to the past that I’d gladly take again.

Marty and Doc Navigate the Future and the Past in Back to the Future II

It has recently occurred to me that my movie viewing in my childhood was pretty mixed up. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was introduced to no fewer than five classic series with the second installment. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Ghostbusters II. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. And the one that got me thinking about it in the first place, Back to the Future II. I guess the second installments all made their way to video just as I was old enough to start immersing myself in movies – and my family was up with the times enough to have a VCR…

At least with Back to the Future II, if you’ve seen the second movie, you’ve sort of seen the first movie too. That’s because much of the first film is embedded in the second as ordinary 80s teen Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) travels back in time with zany scientist Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) in order to prevent perpetual antagonist Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson) from acting on a tip from his future self that will lead to disaster for Marty, the Doc and the town in general. This segment of the movie is dizzying and confusing, since there are two versions of both Doc and Marty running around and the events from the first movie are being presented from a slightly different perspective. It sure is a lot of fun, though.

Before Marty and the Doc travel back to 1955, they head to 2015 with Marty’s girlfriend in tow, on a mission to prevent a future calamity involving Marty and Jennifer’s lily-livered son (also Fox). While this portion of the movie is independent of the first, several scenes closely mirror those in the first movie. In particular, Marty’s thrilling skateboard chase from the first movie becomes a hoverboard chase in the second, and instead of wowing everybody with his mad skills, Marty is something of a laughingstock. Same goes for his arcade game prowess. There’s nothing hip about him here, and he has to adjust quickly to this new time if he is to have any hope of making a better future for his family.

While the first Back to the Future movie lovingly spoofs both the 1950s and the 1980s, this movie adds another era into the mix, the as-yet-unknown future that now is only four years away. Something tells me that I won’t be able to zoom down the street on a hoverboard by then, but some of the other futuristic innovations don’t really seem too far off. One of the niftiest gadgets in the movie is Marty’s self-drying vest, though I’m not clear on whether that is something of the future or an exclusive invention of the doc’s.

In the first movie, Marty’s main objective is to get his parents to fall in love with each other. Here, we see him in three different time periods, but his ultimate objective is to prevent Biff from acting on the information contained in the almanac that Marty purchased in 2015 and the much older Biff stole, then promptly presented to the teenage Biff after taking the time machine for a joy ride. He has to get the almanac away from Biff, but he can’t stop him from getting it in the first place or the space-time continuum will be compromised. Of the three installments in the series, this is the one that most emphatically demonstrates the dangers of meddling with time travel. As Marty doubles back on his previous adventures, it becomes clear just how complicated maintaining the space-time continuum truly is.

Back to the Future II is basically divided into three segments. Of these, the future portion is the most fun and imaginative, though it contains the most annoying performances. Wilson ramps up the obnoxious factor to play Biff’s hot-headed grandson, and ornery old coot Biff is a bit grating too. We’ve got three different Fox characters all in close proximity to one another; Marty Jr. is even wimpier than George in the first movie, while the older Marty is just depressing. And Fox playing Marty’s daughter is just plain weird. Mostly, though, it’s Lea Thompson’s Lorraine who gets under my skin. I find her voice obnoxious whether she’s a teen, a middle-aged mom or a pushing-80 grandma, and her voice is so wobbly at this stage of her life that I would almost rather listen to the insufferable Olive Oyl from Popeye. Almost.

The alternate 1980s segment reminds me of It’s a Wonderful Life; instead of Pottersville, we’re getting a vision of what Marty’s town would look like if Biff ran the joint. It’s not a very nice place. Dark and oppressive except for the centerpiece of a shiny casino, Biff’s personal den of debauchery, it’s the most nightmarish set in the series, and the movie never allows us to see whether Marty has managed to make everything right again with his 1950s interference. No, for that we have to check out the third movie, and I can’t believe it took me until this year to do that. Rewatching Back to the Future II recently, I was struck by just how much sequel bait is scattered throughout the movie. I didn’t remember this at all, nor did I recall just how much of a cliffhanger the ending was. Clearly, we’re meant to see the last installment as essential to fully appreciating the second.

Director Robert Zemeckis and composer Alan Silvestri, whose stirring, adventurous score feels almost as epic as John Williams’ here, are a fantastic team in this movie, as well as the two that bookend it. All those actors playing multiple characters gets a bit silly, and you can’t scrutinize the time travel too carefully or the logic will start to crumble, but this sure is a fun movie. So what are you waiting for? As Biff would say, “Make like a tree and get outta here” – to the nearest video store so you can get zapped back to this quintessential 80s series.

It's Grand Getting LOST in Back to the Future

I’m a geeky 80s child, so it should come as no surprise that I love the Robert Zemeckis era-hopping romp Back to the Future. What may be surprising is the fact that I saw the second movie about a mad scientist, his time-traveling DeLorean and the hapless teenager caught up in the craziness before I saw the first. When I did see the original movie for the first time, it was fun to pick out all of the references that filled the second movie. They were that much funnier now. My experience of watching Back to the Future this time around was similar, but instead of looking at it through the lens of the second movie, it was through the lens of LOST. I hadn’t watched the movie in years, so this was my first time watching specifically looking for places where Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse and other writers of my favorite show took their cues for their own epic. It may be kind of a goofy way to watch a movie, but it’s certainly fun.

Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is an ordinary teenager in 1985. He lives with his parents, wimpy George (Crispin Glover) and world-weary Lorraine (Lea Thompson), along with two quarrelsome siblings, and he has a girlfriend who plays a more significant role in the second movie. Like Daniel, the title character in The Karate Kid, another 80s staple, Marty spends a lot of time hanging around with a late-middle-aged man who has a lot to teach him. Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) is a genius. Of course, he’s also borderline insane, which Lloyd brings across in a way few other actors could. Marty is a trusting soul to put his life in the good doctor’s hands, trusting that his experiments aren’t going to get him killed. Then again, sometimes he has no choice.

After the combination of a freshly fine-tuned time machine and the threat of a band of Libyan gangsters who furnished Doc Brown’s plutonium leads Marty to take a little jaunt to the 1950s, he finds himself in a strange yet familiar world. It’s his own hometown, but the clock’s been dialed back, and it’s now 1955. In no time at all, he manages to make one of the classic blunders; just after Never Get Involved in a Land War in Asia and Never Go In Against a Sicilian When Death Is on the Line, I believe you would find Never Go Back in Time and Let Your Own Mother Fall In Love With You. Yup, that’s a pretty big problem, and not just because of what something like that is bound to do to poor Marty’s psychological health. Because if the teenaged Lorraine is head over heels for suave Marty, how is she ever going to hook up with pathetic George, who spends all of his days cowering in fear of lunk-headed Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson)? If that doesn’t happen, Marty will cease to exist. Oh, and the paradox will tear a hole in the very fabric of space and time, and the universe will collapse upon itself. So, no pressure, kid.

After his accidental run-in with his mother, what Marty really needs is to touch base with Doc Brown, the one person who can help him get his bearings. He does, and after he manages to convince him that his time travel babble is the truth, he leaves the Doc to tinker with his machinery so that when the famous bolt of lightning strikes the town’s historic clock tower in a few days, Marty in the DeLorean will be able to harness that energy to get him home. It sounds complicated, and it is, but Marty still has the tougher task: making a man out of his lily-livered dad, who’d much rather curl up inside with a good sci-fi novel than defy brutish Biff or ask Lorraine out. The scene in which Marty convinces him to show a little gumption demonstrates Marty’s cleverness and always reminded me a lot of the scene in Dumbo in which Timothy the mouse uses the power of subconscious suggestion to get his flying friend his big shot in the circus. But getting George on board is only half the battle…

Looking at the movie as a LOST fan, the most obvious nod in the show was when Hurley came right out and mentioned Marty’s disappearing hand in the scene in which he plays the guitar at the dance where his parents are destined to fall in love with each other. This moment became the cornerstone of one of the funniest exchanges in the show’s most mind-bending season, one that attempted to establish the parameters of how this time-hopping stuff worked and that openly acknowledged that suspension of disbelief was a must. But there are other references too. For instance, everything in the film builds up to the moment when the lightning strikes that clock tower, and on the show, Desmond’s first premonition involving Charlie’s death involves him getting struck by lightning. In the movie, Marty writes a note to Doc in hopes that he will read it and prevent a future tragedy; in the series, Daniel writes a note to himself so that when his hour is darkest, he will remember who it is that he can call upon for help.

That who would be Desmond, and it’s the relationship between Desmond and Daniel, so beautifully established in season four’s The Constant, that I found myself thinking of most as I watched this movie. Desmond, like Marty, is out of chronological synch with the rest of the world, and he’s totally disoriented. He badly needs a mentor. He finds one in the form of Daniel Faraday, who he met in the future. While he and Daniel were barely acquaintances in the future, as opposed to Marty and Doc, who were already firm friends, there’s enough of a connection there to build on. Both Desmond and Marty seek out younger versions of their mentors and get very skeptical receptions from these eccentric scientists. Both gain their trust after furnishing numbers that are key to the proper functioning of an audacious experiment. Both Desmond and Marty end up on a mission that involves bringing together two people whose love is deep but endangered – in Desmond’s case, it’s himself and Penny, while in Marty’s, it’s his parents. And in both cases, I find the friendship between the unwitting time traveler and the one person best equipped to help him navigate his strange situation to be extremely touching.

Another point of similarity is the fun Spot the Differences exercise when it comes to the beginning and end of the movie. At the beginning of season six, everyone noticed that in the controversial Sideways world in which 815 doesn’t crash, there are changes in these long-established characters, as well as their circumstances on the flight. That game of figuring out what was different about each person continued throughout the season, but it’s the two Flight 815s that really seem an homage to Back to the Future. Cursed Hurley considers himself lucky. Nervous flier Rose is the one reassuring Jack. Self-serving Sawyer’s looking out for his fellow man. What’s going on? In Back to the Future, we get to see Marty’s family before his journey and afterward, in which each member ends up changed as a result of Marty’s actions 30 years earlier. The main impact: Dad, played with such marvelous fidgety awkwardness by Glover, now has some self-confidence, and Lorraine is taking better care of herself. He changed just a tiny bit, but not enough to negate his own existence.

Back to the Future is one of those essential 80s movies, but you don’t need to have grown up in that era to appreciate its humor and fun, and you certainly don’t need to have watched LOST to understand why Marty and Doc make such a terrific team. Then again, it sure doesn’t hurt!