Movie Review - Back to the Future Trilogy

by +Alexa Rankin

Here is a back to back to Back to the Future movie review.

The year was 1985, the place was Hill Valley California and a young man called Michael J. Fox was about to go back in time and kick off one of the biggest movie trilogies of all time.

Part I
The first movie was a fast paced flick across two timezones. The young Marty McFly while assisting his friend Doc Brown with a time travel experiment finds himself hitting 88 miles per hour and travelling back to 1955, in the very same time frame where his parents met and fell in love.

His unexpected presence throws a 5/8" wrench in the works, I mean a 3/4". Anyway his future mom actually starts to fall for Marty rather than his future father and the Polaroid photo of his family begins to fade. Marty must play matchmaker in order to preserve his own future and prevent a potential paradox from happening. Marty also has to find the 1955 version of Doc Brown and convince him that time travel is possible in order to fix the Delorean time machine and make it back to 1985. Add the youthful version of bully, Biff Tannen to the mix and you have a recipe for a humorous yet thrilling movie.

For the mid 80's, the effects are pretty amazing, and nothing short of what Spielberg and Zemeckis and are capable of. The storyline is well thought out and the balance of action and comedy is well done. Overall this is a great movie and even though it's almost 30 years old, the story is still relevant and definitely one to watch for both seasoned veterans and first time time travelers.

Part II
Moving forward in time by about 4 years, we find the second movie, Back to the Future: Part II. (Movies 2 and 3 were filmed back to back and released a year apart on the success of the first movie.)

The closing scenes of part I left us with the cliffhanger that Marty and Jennifer's kids were in trouble in the future and Doc Brown was on hand with the Delorean time machine to put things right. In the midst of all the excitement, a ripple in the time line caused the future to be altered and Biff Tannen has become the King of a Las Vegas styled Megalomaniaville version of Hill Valley thanks to some 'good luck' at the race track.

Marty and Doc realise that this future is not conducive with the past that they remember and discover that Biff of the future visited Biff of the past and delivered a sports almanac which lists all the 'future' sports results. They conclude that this was the cause of Biff's good luck and return to the past to put things right.

Whether by coincidence or by good story writing, the day they return to is exactly the same day Marty went back to in the first movie. This adds to the comic confusion and creates clever screen effects as Marty has to avoid his other self while trying to once again correct history. Once more the BTTF franchise delivers a fun fast paced movie with an added dimension of paradox avoidance humor. Action, tension and laughs abound as the story unfolds to reveal the dramatic cliffhanger ending which will announce and segue into the third movie (for those who didn't know this was a trilogy).

Part III
The audience were hungry for more McFly, and the lightning strike on the Delorean which whisked Doc back to 1885 to close out the second movie made sure of that. This movie was even more fun than the previous two, with a wild west setting and some of the cast playing the ancestors of their regular BTTF roles.

The movie sees Doc Brown settled comfortably as a blacksmith in the old west settlement of Hill Valley. The blend of 'mad scientist' and 19th century metalworker gives Doc Brown a pseudo steampunk persona in this movie, even before the idea of steampunk made it into the realms of mainstream.

Marty, still stuck in 1955 finds the old Doc, and ultimately returns to 1855 to rescue his Doc and ends up tussling with Buford 'Mad Dog' Tannen. All this is happening while Emmet Brown is falling in love and convoluting future timelines. The Delorean, which has been rendered inoperable thanks to the era's low-end technology is modified to run on rails and Doc comes up with a totally loco plan to return to 1985 and destroy the time machine, since it's existence is causing trouble for all concerned.

This final movie ties up all the loose ends and also gives some insight into the history of Hill Valley and it's residents. Although not quite as frenetic as the two previous movies, except for the sequence leading up to the final time travel back to 1985, the humor is still there and there is a little action. The movie did not entirely close the door for another sequel, but after 25 years the chances of BTTF IV are slim.

Summary
This is a great trilogy and all 3 make great family movies. While each part could stand by itself as a movie in it's own right, they would be best enjoyed in sequence as originally released. I highly recommend buying this as a triple pack on blu-ray for the enhanced visuals and hours of bonus features, outtakes and deleted scenes.

I ran this through the official STP movie review rating calculator and it ended up with a 3/5. This is grossly unfair because it was programmed by a guy and since it scored a big fat zero on the boobs section of the algorithm the result was skewed. This is a hands down 4.5/5 so ignore the rating below.

Back to the Future Trilogy - 3/5

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