Friday, May 16, 2008
My brother had, somehow, never seen the final installment of the Back to the Future trilogy. The original is pretty much my favorite movie of all time, so once I found this out I insisted that we watch it right away.
I think most folks would agree with me that this is the worst of the series (except for Shenan, who inexplicably thinks it's the best), but it's still funny, entertaining and even recaptures some of the magic and wonder of the original (albiet to a much lesser degree). Hell, I'll even cop to getting a little misty-eyed during Doc's farewell at the end, and then the train flying off into the air is pretty magical and goosebump-inducing.
The main fault here is that I just don't think the western gimmick sustains the entire running time. It's fun to see all the recurring BTTF jokes show up in a wild west context, but the joke gets a little stale after a while. The genius of Part 2 is that it was basically two films in one; one about Marty travelling to the future, and one about Marty travelling back to the events of the original. Both are great ideas, but neither could probably carry an entire film on their own. The pairing of ideas makes the movie seem filled to the brim with invention. Part 3 could have benefited from a similar structure.
Still, like I said, there's a lot to like here, and enough goodwill saved up from the earlier movies to help gloss over some of the faults. Zemeckis' work is characteristically great here, but I've always got the sense that the BTTF sequels weren't really a passion project for him and Bob Gale, that they more did it for the money/because of the demand. They brought their A-game and made the sequels better than sequels often have any right to be, but maybe there's a little less soul in them than in the original, or in something like Roger Rabbit or Forrest Gump or Contact where you feel like the movie is more personal or intimate.
7 comments:
Hey Dan, as a much-recognized BACK TO THE FUTURE worshipper, I wondered if you'd ever noticed this little detail. Further evidence of the awesome attention to detail in the BttF series...
http://i.imgur.com/IG8gR.jpg
Joseph,
Honest to God, that's one of the reasons, as a child, I went from passively enjoying the film to actively loving it. As a tyke, I had seen the movie many times on VHS, and one day I noticed that at the end the name of the mall was different. So I rewatched the film again and, sure enough, noticed the whole bit with Marty destroying one of the twin pines.
I bet I couldn't have been older than 8 or so at the time, and it completely blew my mind and made me wonder about the possibilities of film, etc etc, and I think is partly responsible for why I'm still infatuated with films today.
Want me to really blow your mind? Can you spot someone in the background at the beginning when the terrorists shoot Doc? Could that be Marty McFly returning 10 minutes early at the end of the film, witnessing this? That was in Starlog magazine. It's just a gawker who slipped through to watch filming, but man, it could be future Marty.
BTTF III always makes me sad. It just has none of the possibility the first two had. It's very purely only what it is, a western love story reference etc. I and II sugggest that so much is possible. Maybe I just didn't want a whole movie in the west. I also think it's really terrible how much they have to explain to make anything happen in the plot. I and II just flow, but this is nonsense. I want it to make me fulfilled, I really do.
Yeah, but it wouldn't really make sense if future Marty showed up, because we're clearly in the Lone Pine Mall, George McFly is a loser, Doc Brown gets shot to death un-tampered-with original reality.
BTTF 3 is easily my least favorite of the trilogy, but I've grown to love it over the years. I agree that its disappointing that they stick to one gimmick (the wild west), especially after the mind-bending time travel playfulness of part 2, but it's still fun, funny and exciting in the same ways the previous 2 movies are.
I want to feel that way, just to accept it, but it's soooo boring. It takes so much explanation to even set up the basic plot. Doc has to explain everything to Marty to get him back, including Brown family lineage, and once there he has to get attacked by a bear to blow the gas tank... Just no fun. Then you realize it's all designed so Zemeckis can show off that camera effect with two Michael J Foxes in front of a moving background (which looks way better than CGI). But I think I'd be sad about any conclusion, because I don't want that series to end. Are the cartoons any good?
By the way, I saw this sign at Saturday's rally and had to assume it was yours....
http://i.imgur.com/khK8y.jpg
That is delightful.
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