Back to the Future Part II
Back to the Future Part II is a 1989 American science fiction film directed by Robert Zemeckis from a screenplay by Bob Gale; both conceived the story. It is a sequel to the 1985 film Back to the Future and the second installment in the Back to the Future franchise. The film stars Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson and Thomas F. Wilson, with Elisabeth Shue and Jeffrey Weissman in supporting roles.
The film follows Marty McFly and his friend Doctor Emmett "Doc" Brown as they travel from 1985 to 2015 to prevent the former's son from tarnishing their family's future. When their arch-nemesis Biff Tannen steals the DeLorean time machine and uses it to alter history for his benefit, the duo must return to 1955 to set things right.
The film was produced on a $40 million budget and was filmed back-to-back with its sequel Part III. Filming began in February 1989, after two years were spent building the sets and writing the scripts. Back to the Future Part II was also a ground-breaking project for visual effects studio Industrial Light & Magic. In addition to digital compositing, ILM used the VistaGlide motion control camera system, which allowed an actor to portray multiple characters simultaneously on-screen without sacrificing camera movement.
Back to the Future Part II was released by Universal Pictures on November 22, 1989. Though the film received mostly positive reviews, it was deemed inferior to its predecessor by critics at the time of release. In the years since, the film has been reappraised and is now considered one of the best sequel and science fiction films of all time. The film grossed over $332 million worldwide in its initial run, making it the third-highest-grossing film of 1989. Part III followed on May 25, 1990, concluding the trilogy.
Plot
On October 26, 1985, Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown arrives unexpectedly in the DeLorean time machine. He persuades Marty McFly and his girlfriend, Jennifer Parker, to travel to the future with him and help their future children, with Biff Tannen witnessing their departure. Once they arrive in 2015, Doc incapacitates Jennifer, leaving her asleep in an alley to avoid letting her learn about her own future. Doc explains that their son Marty Jr. will be arrested for participating in a robbery with Biff's grandson Griff, leading to a chain of events that destroys the McFly family.Doc instructs Marty to switch places with the identical Marty Jr. and refuse Griff's offer, but Griff goads Marty into a fight by calling him "chicken", and a hoverboard chase ensues. Griff and his gang are arrested, saving Marty's future children. Before rejoining Doc, Marty purchases an almanac containing the results of major sporting events from 1950 to 2000. Doc discovers it and warns Marty about profiting from time travel. Before Doc can adequately dispose of it, they are interrupted by the police, who have found Jennifer incapacitated and are taking her to her 2015 home. They pursue, as does an elderly Biff, who has overheard their conversation and retrieved the discarded almanac.
Jennifer wakes up in her 2015 home and hides from the McFly family. She overhears that her future life with Marty is not what she expected, due to his involvement in an automobile accident, and witnesses Marty being goaded by his co-worker, Douglas Needles, into a shady business deal, resulting in his firing. Jennifer tries to escape the house but faints after encountering her future self. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Marty and Doc, Biff steals the time machine and returns it. Marty and Doc return to 1985, leaving an unconscious Jennifer on her front porch to sleep off the day's events as a dream.
Marty gradually realizes that the 1985 they have returned to is not the one he knows. Biff, having used the almanac to secure a fortune, is now one of the country's wealthiest and most corrupt men. He has turned Hill Valley into a chaotic dystopia, secretly killed Marty's father, George, in 1973, and forced Marty's mother, Lorraine, to marry him. Meanwhile, this timeline's version of Doc has been committed to a mental hospital. Doc deduces that old Biff took the time machine to give his younger self the almanac, and Marty learns from the alternate 1985 Biff that he received it on November 12, 1955. Biff, acting on his future self's advice, tries to kill Marty, who flees with Doc to 1955.
Marty secretly follows the 1955 Biff and watches him receive the almanac from his 2015 self. Marty then follows him to the high school dance, carefully avoiding interrupting the events from his previous visit, and being forced to intervene when Biff's gang goes after the other Marty performing onstage. Marty finally gets the almanac, but loses it after being again goaded into a fight with Biff. Marty chases after Biff's car on the hoverboard, getting the almanac back as Biff is left to crash into a manure truck for the second time in a week.
Marty burns the almanac, nullifying the changes to the timeline that it had caused, as Doc hovers above in the time machine. Before Marty can join him, the DeLorean is struck by lightning and disappears. A Western Union courier arrives immediately after and delivers a letter to Marty from Doc, who tells him that the lightning strike transported him to 1885. Marty races back into town to find the 1955 Doc, who had just helped the other Marty to return to 1985. Shocked by Marty's sudden reappearance, Doc faints.
Cast
replaces Claudia Wells as Jennifer Parker and Jeffrey Weissman replaces Crispin Glover as George McFly, though Glover appears in archive footage from the first film. James Tolkan reprises his role as Mr. Strickland, as do Billy Zane, Casey Siemaszko and J. J. Cohen as Biff's cronies Match, 3-D and Skinhead.Griff's gang in 2015 includes Ricky Dean Logan as Data, Jason Scott Lee as Whitey and Darlene Vogel as Spike. Stephanie E. Williams plays Officer Foley, while Zemeckis' then-wife Mary Ellen Trainor has an uncredited role as Officer Reese. Flea appears as Marty's coworker Douglas J. Needles and James Ishida plays his boss Mr. Fujitsu. Donald Fullilove, who played Goldie Wilson in the first film, makes an uncredited appearance as his hovercar salesman grandson Goldie Wilson III. A young Elijah Wood is one of the two boys Marty teaches to play Wild Gunman.
In the alternate 1985, Al White portrays the patriarch of the family living in the McFly house. Neil Ross provides the voiceover for the Biff Tannen museum while George Buck Flower reprises his role as Red the Bum.
In 1955, Harry Waters Jr. reprises his role as Marvin Berry, Lisa Freeman reprises her role as Babs, Wesley Mann plays a student who mistakes Marty for a thief, and Joe Flaherty plays the Western Union representative who delivers Doc's letter. Charles Fleischer plays Terry, who in 2015 indirectly gives Marty the idea to use time travel to bet on sports, and in 1955 is Biff's mechanic.
Production
Development
Director Robert Zemeckis said that a sequel was not initially planned, but the first film's box office success led to the conception of a second installment. He later agreed to do a sequel, but only if Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd returned as well. With Fox and Lloyd confirmed, Zemeckis met with screenwriting partner Bob Gale to create a story for the sequel. Zemeckis and Gale would later regret that they ended the first one with Jennifer in the car with Marty and Doc Brown, because it required them to come up with a story that would fit her in, rather than a whole new adventure.Gale wrote most of the first draft by himself as Zemeckis was busy making Who Framed Roger Rabbit. At first, the film's third act was to take place in 1967 where Lorraine was a flower child protesting the war and George was a college professor at Berkeley, but Zemeckis later stated that the time paradoxes of it provided a good opportunity to go back to 1955 and see the first film's events in a different light. While most of the original cast agreed to return, a major stumbling block arose when negotiating Crispin Glover's fee for reprising the role of George McFly. When it became clear that he would not return, the role was rewritten so that George is dead when the action takes place in the alternative version of 1985.
The greatest challenge was the creation of the futuristic vision of Marty's hometown in 2015. Production designer Rick Carter wanted to create a very detailed image with a different tone from the film Blade Runner, wishing to get past the smoke and chrome. Carter and his crew spent months plotting, planning, and preparing Hill Valley's transformation into a city of the future. Visual effects art director John Bell said that they had no script to work with, only the indications that the setting would be 30 years into the future featuring "something called hoverboards".
When writing the script for Part II, Gale wanted to push the first film's ideas further for humorous effect. Zemeckis said he was somewhat concerned about portraying the future because of the risk of making wildly inaccurate predictions. According to Gale, they tried to make the future a nice place, "where what's wrong is due to who lives in the future as opposed to the technology" in contrast to the pessimistic, Orwellian future seen in most science fiction. Gale has stated that the characterization of the 1985 Biff took inspiration from Donald Trump. To keep production costs low and take advantage of an extended break Fox had from Family Ties, it was shot back-to-back with sequel Part III.
Filming
Two years were needed to finish building the sets and writing the scripts before shooting could begin. During filming, the creation of the appearance of the aged characters was a well-guarded secret, involving state-of-the-art make-up techniques. Fox described the process as very time-consuming, saying that "it took over four hours, although it could be worse". Principal photography began on February 20, 1989. Fox was pulling double duty, acting in the last season of Family Ties as filming began on the sequel. For a three-week period near the end of the filming, the crew split and, while most remained dedicated to shooting Part III, a few, including Gale, focused on finishing its predecessor. Zemeckis himself slept only a few hours per day, supervising both films, having to fly between Burbank, where it was being finished and other locations in California for Part III.The film was considered one of the most ground-breaking projects for Industrial Light & Magic. It was one of the effects house's first forays into digital compositing, as well as the VistaGlide motion control camera system, which enabled them to shoot one of its most complex sequences, in which Fox played three separate characters, all of whom interacted with each other. Although such scenes were not new, the VistaGlide allowed, for the first time, a completely dynamic scene in which camera movement could finally be incorporated. The technique was also used in scenes where Fox, Thomas F. Wilson, Christopher Lloyd, and Elisabeth Shue's characters encounter and interact with their counterparts. It also includes a brief moment of computer-generated imagery in a holographic shark used to promote a fictional Jaws 19, which wound up unaltered from the first test done by ILM's digital department because effects supervisor Ken Ralston "liked the fact that it was all messed up."
Animation supervisor Wes Takahashi, who then was the head of ILM's animation department, worked heavily on the film's time travel sequences, as he had done in the original film and in Part III. As Part II neared release, sufficient footage of Part III had been shot to allow a trailer to be assembled. It was added to the conclusion of Part II before the closing credits, as a reassurance to moviegoers that there was more to follow.