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!

Beatlemania Has Taken Over in I Wanna Hold Your Hand

My brother Nathan, the most avid Beatles fan in our family, was home this week, so the timing was just right for my latest Netflix delivery, a movie called I Wanna Hold Your Hand that takes place on the February day in 1964 when the Beatles played the Ed Sullivan Theatre. Though I wasn't familiar with any of the principal cast members, I'm certainly a fan of director Robert Zemeckis and producer Steven Spielberg, and the subject matter intrigued me, so when my friend Beth reviewed it here a while back, I stuck it in my queue. While I agree with her that it's a little excessively silly, a few laughs were just what we needed last night.

I Wanna Hold Your Hand chronicles the adventures of six teenagers who, for one reason or another, are determined to get to the Ed Sullivan Theatre in New York City for the Beatles' big show. They're from Jersey, and intrepid aspiring photographer Grace (Theresa Saldana), who is desperate for the chance of a career-making photo, has discovered that limousines are allowed to pull up to the hotel where the Beatles will be staying, so she sweet-talks the shy, awkward, not-yet-licensed Larry (Marc McClure) into commandeering his dad's limo and taking a little road trip.

Also along for the ride are reluctant Pam (Nancy Allen), who's about to get married and doesn't think her fiance will be thrilled about her spending her last night as a single woman out chasing the Beatles, and spastic Paul fanatic Rosie (Wendie Jo Sperber), who knows the answer to every trivia question on the radio and will risk life and limb to get to a phone in an effort to win a coveted pair of tickets. Janis (Susan Kendall Newman), a long-haired counter-culturalist who I'm guessing was named after Janis Joplin, wants to protest these artistically barren moptops in a place where she's most likely to get extensive exposure. The last to join the group is Tony (Bobby DiCicco), a Fonzie-like greaseball with a too-cool-for-school 'tude who tags along by pulling off one of the most reckless automobile stunts I've ever seen.

The chief attribute of this movie is that it is loud. My goodness, those Beatles groupies could screech. And it isn't just squealing and hollering, either; it's sobbing hysterically and trampling each other in an effort to catch a glimpse of their beloved Liverpool boys. If I were John, Paul, George or Ringo, I think I would be terrified. We don't really get to see the lads much, though we do catch a few glimpses of them thanks to Pam, who, despite not really wanting to be there at all, manages to get within close proximity to them on a couple of occasions. It's fun to hear their banter and to observe Pam's reactions, though her initial response to being in the Beatles' hotel room is rather indecent. I would have expected it of the ludicrous Rosie, but not the apparently level-headed Pam. But then this day is all about self-discovery.

While the teens arrive together, it doesn't take long for them to split up, so there's a lot of madcap action as their paths intersect and each faces different challenges in achieving the desired end. After her initial stalking efforts are thwarted, Rosie wriggles out of police custody only to hook up with Richard (Eddie Deezen), a bespectacled geek who is, amazingly, even more of a spaz than she is. An avid collector of Beatles memorabilia, this young man who insists on being called Ringo has been holing up illegally in one of the hotel's rooms. Though Rosie is still madly in love with Paul, she can't help but feel a spark of connection between her and this oddball.

Janis, too, makes a new friend in New York, a boy named Peter (Christian Juttner) whose father is holding his tickets to the Ed Sullivan Show hostage until the moptop gets a haircut. It's funny to hear the irascible father (Read Morgan) rant and rave about his son's girly hair when it's a style that, looking back, seems so natural and inoffensive. Peter is so attached to his look that he'd rather miss out on the Beatles than comply with his father's wishes, but with some help from an agitated Tony, Janis hatches a plan that leads to the boy going directly into the den of terror, complete with an intimidating one-eyed barber who reminds me of surly Mikhail from LOST.

Poor Larry does his best to accommodate Grace throughout the day, but she's so focused on getting her snapshot that it takes her a long time to realize what a gentleman he is. He strikes me as a prototype for Back to the Future's wimpy George McFly, particularly in one scene in which he utters a line that is given to George seven years later. He seems like the most normal one of the bunch, though he has his quirks, most notably very poor driving skills - though his unruly passengers don't help him out any on that score. If the hysterics of the young (and not-so-young) women in this movie are disturbing, the driving habits of the general teenage population are downright alarming.

Fans of the Beatles will enjoy bopping along to some of their hits, particularly the title song, which plays in the opening credits atop footage of the lads landing in New York. They'll also want to keep an ear out for references to later songs that are cleverly incorporated into dialogue. Meanwhile, if the 60s is your scene when it comes to music, it's fun to hear various characters discuss other musicians like Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Peter Paul & Mary. Zemeckis fans, meanwhile, should be on the lookout for elements incorporated into his later films.

I Wanna Hold Your Hand is a silly movie, and most of its characters are so shrill that they can only be handled in small doses. There's some risky business going on behind closed hotel room doors as well as out in the streets, where obsessed fans will do just about anything to increase their likelihood of contact with John, Paul, George or Ringo. But the protagonists are likable even when they're irritating, and it's fun to watch the very different ways in which they come closer to their goals. I'm not sure if I could have braved a crowd in the throes of Beatlemania, but watching it all unfold on my TV screen is a pretty enjoyable way to spend an evening.

Hanks Brings the Magic in The Polar Express, But It's Not Enough

It seems impossible to me that with all of the Christmas books I've read, I haven't ever cracked open the cover of one of the all-time classics, The Polar Express, not even when the arrival of the movie in 2004 made Chris Van Allsburg's acclaimed picture book one of the hottest sellers of the winter in the bookstore where I worked. I was all pumped up to read the book and see the movie, and somehow I did neither. But last week, I finally caught the movie. Now I feel the need to read the book even more than before, simply because I didn't quite get the film. Maybe it can explain a few things...

Like the name of the protagonist. Was this poor kid originally without a name, or was that a strange change made for the purpose of the movie? I find it very distracting not to know the name of the main character, or to be clear on just how he was selected to make this journey. Initially, I thought that this ride was especially for children who find themselves in serious doubt as to Santa's existence, but that doesn't seem to be the case with the young girl our hero befriends on the ride, nor with the thoroughly irritating know-it-all who thinks he has all the answers about the mysteries of the North Pole. The key to their invitation seems to be in the golden train tickets, which spell out a different word for each child at the end of their trip, giving them brief, compelling advice. But why was such a small selection of children chosen? And is every ride on the Polar Express this hazardous?

One of the decorations that always goes out this time of year is a little toy train we bought from Burger King when Anastasia hit theaters. I recalled that train as I watched the film, thinking of its fiery destruction in one of the movie's many intense scenes. The Polar Express takes its passengers on a voyage that is just as harrowing, with the dangers unrelenting. The protagonist and his new friends deal with one life-threatening obstacle after another.

Just one gratuitously narrow scrape involves the boy running outside after his new female friend to give her the ticket she forgot, resulting in him losing the ticket and nearly tumbling off the train. I like this sequence, though, if only because the flight of the wind-whipped ticket is like Forrest Gump's feather sequence on steroids. It gets snapped at by wolves, regurgitated by eagles, rolled into a giant snowball. It takes a swift, high-octane journey fraught with peril, somehow landing intact almost right where the girl left it - only for the boy to go trotting off after her once more, nearly losing the ticket again.

I doubt it's an accident that the scene reminds me so strongly of Forrest Gump. The movies share a director (Robert Zemeckis), a composer (Alan Silvestri) and a star (Tom Hanks). It's a regular Forrest reunion. But the result of their collaborative efforts is not quite so flawless this time. In an attempt to duplicate the mystical quality of Van Allsburg's illustrations for the big screen, Zemeckis relied on motion capture technology, which was used to bring Gollum to such vibrant life in Lord of the Rings. Each of the characters has its roots in the performance of an actor, while another actor usually provided the voice. The result is visually arresting, but I wouldn't go so far to say it's pleasing. "Spooky" would be a more accurate adjective.

Hanks practically carries the movie by himself, having acted for six different characters and voiced five. The most prominent and iconic of these, and my favorite character, is the conductor of the train, a man with a bristly mustache, a gruff accent, a twinkle in his eye and a remarkable resemblance to Hanks. He comes across as stern, intimidating... almost sadistic at times. But all of it is done with a wink, and evidently this conductor just likes to make the kids in his charge sweat a little. When it comes down to it, he's on their side. The conductor is a living, breathing, totally convincing character, and his train is a glorious piece of machinery. Nona Gaye puts in a touching performance as the protagonist's magnanimous new friend, and the late Michael Jeter, playing bumbling engineers Smokey and Steamer, has the opportunity to let his comedic gifts shine in this capper to a too-short career. Most of the other characters, however, look off-kilter. It's hard to say just how, but they're pale, ghostly figures, and for all the expense and effort that went into the project, most of them don't look any more realistic than the humans in Toy Story.

After all the hype surrounding the movie, I expected pure magic. What I ended up with was two hours spent mostly grimacing at the television, waiting to be drawn into the enchantment. I tip my hat to Hanks and those responsible for animating the conductor; the film is worth watching just for him, and for the shivery end-credits ballad penned by Silvestri and Glen Ballard and sung by the enormously talented Josh Groban. On the whole, though, The Polar Express never quite seems to get on track.