WELL NOW YOU ARE TALKING!!
Favorite trilogy of all time for me. I know every line and can watch them all back-to-back-to-the-future anytime.
I once did a fan edit that cut them all together at their overlapping end/front points and it came it at a whopping 5hrs 15minutes!
What I love about the trilogy is that says "hey you better have seen the earlier films to know what is going on". All too often people go to Parts II and III of a series and complain they don't know what the story's about. Well, here's a clue: see the first movies! Not only do they fill you in on plot but they set up the characters and the world.
BTTF was one of the few trilogies to do this, though The Godfather also just got on with it, Star Wars was of course a series of films (even though they had a backstory prologue) and Superman II starts with a re-cap of Part I. Peter Jackson (who'd worked with Bob Zemeckis on The Frighteners, also with Michael J Fox) took a leaf out of this book when he made the Lord Of The Rings. Just as you wouldn't start reading a book from a third of the way in, why go and see a sequel to a movie you have not seen? I just don't get people who do that!
In many ways, of course, the first BTTF is the best, simply as it's just such a classic. It never fails to amaze me how fast it steamrolls through. Whenever I get to the scene where George is hanging out the laundry and Marty comes over to go over the plan, it jolts me and I think, "Hey, Enchantment Under The Sea dance and then the end!" - it's a very brisk movie with nothing to trim, and the OTT climax with Doc trying to slot the wires together to make the connection is as comically drawn out as suspence can get!
But for my money you can't beat Part II, perhaps the most subversive piece of mainstream Hollywood filmmaking ever. I mean, GOING BACK TO THE FIRST MOVIE? Having those events seen from different perspectives? Even changing those events AND having them affect what's going on in the new story? That's just genius.
Plus it does what good three-act structures do...it deepens the story. Part II is pretty dark, suggesting what would actually happen if the villain won for a change. That's pretty daring. And then leaving it open with a massive cliffhanger that is SO obvious to sort out when you see the next one...wow, they were firing on all cylinders for these.
Then the effects...coming right at the end of good old proper physical effects and the dawn of motion control and CGI. And these movies had FUN with their effects and never let them lead the story. The first and third films are actually VERY FX light, even though the trilogy is known as this FX laiden thing. Part II is only as heavy as it is with effects really down to the nature of being "in the future" as well as the brilliant way the actors play all of themselves at various ages and incarnations. Again, a phenomenally risky thing to do in such a "dumb Hollywood blockbuster".
I think 2015 was chosen because the first film went back 30 years from 1985 and Doc says in that one that "it's a nice round number". I suspect they wish they'd added another twenty years (at least, how about jumping 100 years from 1955 to 2055?) on to that when they started coming up with their concepts, but the date was set and they had to adhere to that. However, if you're going to have fun with a future setting, you're going to have fun and I'd have hated it if they'd tried to make it a realistic 2015 rather than having all the fun gags (the fact that Jaws 19 is also playing makes a nod that they're not taking things seriously).
Part III also takes some risks, but was basically an excuse for Bob Z to "make a western". But then again, what are the elements you really want to see in a time travel saga? Once you've done the fantastic premisce of going back to your parents' childhood, you're going to need to fill in the two other requirements: a trip to the future, and a trip to somewhere in the past that really contrasts with anything recognisable as our current world, and in American history, that's the old west.
I agree that the train climax is gangbusters and that final shot of Marty just before the Flux Capacitor kicks in really knocks it home that he's not ever going to see Doc again, but at the same time he's happy for him to be where he is. And the build up is staggeringly well played. It's just a great all-round piece of technical filmmaking that doesn't take itself too seriously.
The tunnel, I believe, is the same one (minus the Felix head!). Bob Z remembered it when they needed a "tunnel that went on forever" and uses the same tricks as he did in Roger Rabbit by "extending" it with cutting. Clever and funny.
The Hoverboard story was a publicity stunt, but did you know that they actually "made a Hoverboard"? Essentially, the "stones" in the path that Marty throws the board down onto were really thousands of magnets. On the back of the board are more magnets (the two metallic discs). Switch a magnet around and they don't draw to each other but repel away. Although the board would never hold a person's weight, it was able to be thrown down and appear to hover due to this process. It looked so real in the dailies that Bob Z concocted a story that "Hoverboards really existed but the mother's and safety groups had pressured the toy companies not to make them available". When the press saw the footage of Fox throwing the board down and it staying afloat - for real - it led to the rumor. But it was just a Zemeckis gag!
The real fun thing, over all three films, is the little touches and lines that they put in that most people don't see or pick out. Remember the first one, where Marty gets out of Lorraine's bed to find that she took his pants and put them on her hope chest? Well check it out when Marty awakens 70 earlier in Maggie McFly's 1885 wood cabin. Although it's in the back of the shot, he just takes a little glance down as he gets out of bed to make sure the same thing didn't happen again!
Fantastic stuff, and marred ONLY in that Claudia Wells (now THERE's a crush for ya!) declined to come back as Jennifer, with Elisabeth Shue filling in. Crispin Golver also declined, but they manged with footage from the first and a double who was found working at the Universal theme park! That they didn't have Crispin there only adds to the technical wizardry they pulled off in Part II...not only was it shot four years later, but one of the main actors wasn't even there!
And that, guys and gals, is why I love the Back To The Future trilogy!
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But also because it is extremely well-paced, with lots of 'set-ups' that 'pay off' very well; it is nearly a 'perfect' film in its own right, which really didn't need sequels (though it is nice to have them).
