Movies: BTTF I, II & III

A week or so ago I happened across a documentary on Netflix called "Back in Time," about how the "Back to the Future" movies have developed cult followings. I didn't realize this, but there are BTTF conventions, there are fans who modify Deloreans, there are props and costumes all over the internet. I'd seen the movies, they didn't seem like great art to me but I remembered enjoying them.

But the documentary was great. It made me really start to re-evaluate the movies. There ARE a lot of lines which have become iconic, there are some very funny situations and of course it has Christopher Lloyd.

So I checked online, and a there was a deluxe three-disc Blue Ray with all three movies, oodles of extras, commentaries, all for a very cheap price. I had to take the plunge.

First movie was fun, and it's a WONDERFUL print. It'll take MONTHS to get through all "The Making of" documentaries. As a Blue Ray it has Blue Ray Online features, with stuff available on the Internet (yet to be explored).

Fun fun fun.

I thought the first of the trilogy was very amusing; the others not so much.

And of course the "future" they go to in Episode II is October 26, 2015.

I can't wait!

It's true the second movie's plot is a little screwy, and the shock of the first movie had worn off by then.  But you have to remember a few things to appreciate the sequels.

1.  Two (and Three) were done five years after One.  They had to reassemble the same cast (all except George McFly, who wanted too much money so he was written out), recreate the sets, and...

2.  They had to integrate Two into the storyline of One, recreating many of the original scenes but from different angles.  These were not out takes from the original movie -- they actually created them all over again!  This had never been done before, revisiting a movie that had wrapped five years before.  Nowadays they'd put hooks into the original movies (Star Trek, Indiana Jones) to pay off in the sequels, but at the time of BTTF1, sequels were not commonplace and no hooks had been set.  Except possibly for the open-ended ending which fed right into a sequel plot.

3.  Age-progression make-up was in its infancy in 1989, and it was pretty crudely done.  That was true in the first movie as well.

4.  In the scenes where age-progressed actors played in the same shots as their young selves, this was all done with split-screens in-camera.  Nowadays they would be composited digitally but in 1989 this was cutting edge stuff.  It looks fairly unremarkable now, because since BTTF2 was such a big success everybody started doing it.  But before this movie, it was not common.

5.  Many of the scenes of 2015, thirty years in the future, they were wildly off.  There are no flying cars (Zamekis says he knew there wouldn't be), but he has gas at $6/gal, he has hoverboards, he has weird fashions with computers built into the clothes.  He has a future where an ugly extremely rich guy, who builds casinos and motels and puts his name in lights on the sides of them, runs the town.  He has electronic newspapers, and handheld tablet computers.  The scenes of destroyed Hill Valley, when Marty goes back to a ruined 1985, look remarkably like 2015 New Orleans.

In all, the filmmakers say in the featurette, they got about 50% right -- which isn't bad at all.

Huh, watched a little bit of the director's commentary, and I hadn't even noticed the actress who plays Marty McFly's girlfriend (a minor speaking role) is different from One to Two. They look a lot alike.

They recreated the scenes at the end on One that lead into the beginning of Two, but they recreated them with the new actress. I didn't even catch that.