In any event, high school student Marty McFly, played with casual assurance by
Michael J. Fox, is a good friend of Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) a local
mad genius who had spent his family's fortune building a time machine from a
DeLorean (and John Delorean's car was a perfect choice, for it does make for a
sporty, elegant-looking time vehicle). One night, Doc Brown invites Marty to
the empty parking lot of the local mall to witness his new invention in action.
However, terrorists also show up, wanting the plutonium that Doc Brown stole
from them for use in his time machine. After they gun down the good doctor,
Marty flees the terrorists in the Delorean, and inadvertently travels back 30
years in time to the 1950s, where he encounters the teenage versions of his
parents. As you would guess, Marty accidentally prevents them from meeting as
they should have, and now-with the aid of a younger Doc Brown from that era-must
find a way to reunite his parents, as well as get back to the future.
Taking up exactly where the first film left off, Back To The Future II sends
Marty and his girlfriend Jennifer (played in the second and third films by
Elizabeth Shue, who is sadly underused) thirty years into the future, to 2015,
where he must prevent his son from making a big mistake. But Marty makes a
whopper of a mistake himself when he buys a sports almanac that lists the
winning teams for the last 60 years. He intends to bring this book back into
the past, and use the information to make a killing at gambling. This small act
of avarice sets in motion a grand chain of events, the result of which makes
Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson), the villain of the first film, into a murderous,
powerful thug who is now the de facto ruler of Marty's hometown of Hill Valley.
If the first movie was a sweet tale full of comic innocence, then the second
film was surprisingly sinister and violent. But it made sense, for director
Robert Zemeckis was trying to show the dark side of time travel, and how the
time line could be twisted if the technology fell into the wrong hands.
The third and final film, Back to the Future III, finds Marty traveling back to
the 1880s in an attempt to rescue a stranded Doc Brown before a wild-eyed
gunslinger (once again superbly played by Wilson as an ancestor to his Biff
character) can kill him in cold blood.
With the bulk of the story taking place in the 19th century, it's safe to say
that the third film is primarily a western. And it is all the better for it. It
moves at a slower, more genteel pace, in tune with the era that it strives to
recreate. And the inspired casting of Mary Steenbergen, as a love interest for
Doc Brown, only helps to add further poignancy to a story that is already rich
with romantic charm. I enjoy all three Back To The Future films, but the third
movie remains my favorite of the trilogy because of its deeper mythic resonance,
and its celebration of the human desire to explore.
One interesting fact that I've noticed is that all three Back To The Future films have
musical guest stars.
The DVDs are loaded with extras. There is the making of documentary for each
film, along with deleted scenes, outtakes, and audio commentaries by producers
Bob Gale and Neil Canton. There are also stand-alone documentaries featuring the
special effects, production archives, a live question & answer session with by
director Zemeckis and writer/producer Gale, and much, much more. Just having the
three films together would be enough, but the generous helping of special
features make this DVD set a must have, which is why it deserved five stars. --SF