The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015. Remaining movies: 125 Days to go: 87
Movie #315: Back to the Future Part II
First things first, I love Elisabeth Shue. She’s lovely. Adventures in Babysitting is like one of my most beloved movies from pre-adolescence, The Karate Kid is wonderful (and I don’t know why we don’t have it, since I know I used to), Cocktail was one of those things I watched a million times (also owned that one once upon a time), and not just to memorize Tom Cruise’s bartender poem, and she was positively devastating and wonderful at once in Leaving Las Vegas. Love her. But she is an awful Jennifer Parker. I’m fairly certain the actress who played Jennifer in the first film couldn’t come back for the sequels because of some other job, or maybe the filmmakers wanted a more established actress since the role was being (barely) expanded, but for whatever reason they put Shue in the sequels and it was the worst thing ever. Maybe if they’d let her have her normal hair or if she could try not to look like the effortlessly cool sex magnet the original Jennifer was, it would’ve been okay. But they didn’t. They put her in some godawful wig (I assume — if they did that to her natural hair on purpose, that’s a crime against hairstyling) and made her wear clothes that were similar to, but not exact replicas of, the outfits the original Jennifer wore, which looked weird on her body, and, I’m sorry, but sexy cool sex magnet was just never the role Elisabeth Shue was meant to play. So instead she’s just awkward and ill-fitting. It’s the first of about a dozen huge disappointments Back to the Future Part II embodied.
The first time I watched a version of Back to the Future in which the final title card definitively alluded to an upcoming sequel, I flipped my lid. Another Back to the Future movie! Yes! This was going to be great! (This was Not Great.)
When Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) shows up in front of Marty (Michael J. Fox) and Jennifer at the end of Back to the Future, he insists they come back with him to the future. Not, as Marty asks, because they’ve become assholes, but, “It’s your kids! Something’s got to be done about your kids!” It’s a great teasing line to close a movie on that you don’t know will be a franchise, but it kind of puts the filmmakers in a bind when an actual sequel is ordered. Suddenly you’ve cornered yourself into a film in which, presumably, your star actor won’t be the focus, pretty much undermining the entire reason anyone wants you to make a sequel in the first place. It’s a big problem.
Unfortunately, writer-director Robert Zemeckis and crew decided the best way around this was to 1) offer up some insignificant yet overblown, easily fixable issue with the “kids” as an excuse to get the protagonists into their future, where the real crisis of the film would come to light, and 2) have Michael J. Fox play the kids. It’s … ugh. I mean, again, I love Fox. He’s affable and charming and he carries the role of Marty (plain, regular, present-tense Marty) just fine. But there’s no reason for him to play his kids — especially not his daughter, who he doesn’t have to impersonate in order to fool Griff (Biff’s grandson, both played by Thomas F. Wilson). Just, none. He’s not good at it, it’s not funny, and it’s more distracting and weird than it could ever be beneficial. It’s a terrible move.
The other horrible decision on the part of the writers is the decision to make Marty sensitive to being called chicken. This is just the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard — even more stupid than having Michael J. Fox play all the McFly children. There is absolutely no indication that he bears this affliction in Back to the Future, why is it suddenly a cornerstone of his character? In the first film, Marty even sets himself up to look less manly and less tough than Lorraine (Lea Thompson) thinks he is. He’s attempting to playact being the unchivalrous brute who’s actually a weakling, meaning he is neither of these things in actuality AND that he doesn’t mind people, who don’t know him or whose opinions of him don’t matter, seeing him as such. So being called a chicken, be it in 1955, 1985 or 2015, should be a meaningless remark, not the underpinning of two (spoiler alert?) sequels and of Marty’s entire downfall.
Anyway, despite how it may seem, there are things about Back to the Future Part II that I do like. For whatever reason, I enjoy the dystopian 1985, complete with Lorraine’s fake boobs, a giant casino hotel, and the absurd idea that the richest man in the universe would still live in Hill Valley. I also thought it was a fascinating twist that George (Crispin Glover) was dead in this alterna-85, and the first time I saw the movie I’d thought hopefully that perhaps that was the new timeline they would visit. (They didn’t, but it was still a nice thought.) And in truth the silly futuristic vision of 2015 is pretty funny, the way all comedic visions of the future sort of are, though I do wonder if I can sue Robert Zemeckis for discouraging me from going to law school, what with me thinking all laywers would be abolished by 2015. (Hilariously, my son pointed out as we watched this today that the stupid clock tower is still broken in 2015. It’s probably the most realistic — and likely — future detail in the whole film.)
Back to the Future Part II also delves directly into the time travel paradox problem, revolving around a plot in which a future Biff steals the sports almanac and the DeLorean from present Doc and Marty, travels back to past Biff, and creates a whole new 1985 universe. It’s exactly the kind of destiny-changing catastrophe Doc warns about in the original, and it’s exactly the kind of thing I love to wrap my mind around. Sadly, the movie doesn’t even respect its own logic, because when Biff goes back to 1955 and changes everything, the 2015 he returns the DeLorean to (and that Marty and Doc are in) no longer exists. I know I’ve seen several attempts to explain and justify this over the years, but none of it makes sense. Nor does it make sense that you can leave Jennifer in a timeline that will no longer exist once you return for her and that she’ll simply revert to the correct timeline. I realize it’s a silly fantasy film, but as someone who thinks about the logistics of time travel and alternate universes quite a bit, I find the laziness employed here extremely frustrating.
Thank God the movie somewhat redeems itself in its concluding film.
Viable Option 