Reasonable Sequel

Rating: 8/10 (25 August 2008)

As with many blockbuster movie trilogies, the first installment of the Back to the Future series stood perfectly fine on its own. Technically, it did end with a cliffhanger, but it was a joke cliffhangerone final gag in a series of romps. No viewer had any particular reason to expect the story to continue. But there was too much money at stake, and so not one but two sequels were produced. And that mock cliffhanger became a real springboard to further adventures. In a strange way, the plot device of Part IIwherein the craven Biff Tannen steals Marty McFly's idea of using info from the future to make a monetary killingparallels the filmmakers' visit back in time to mine more money from their original box office goldmine. As faithful readers (and other intelligent people) know, sequels are meant to retell the original story while giving the illusion of advancing the original story. This sequel did something quite clever in literally revisiting the original movie and watching the action from a different perspective. (The mixing of old footage and new action presaged what director Robert Zemeckis would later do, more elaborately, in Forrest Gump.) It also paid homage to one of the most homage-paid movies of history, It's a Wonderful Life, by having our hero Marty McFly witness the dire fate of his home town in an alternate reality. The film is rife with in jokes, like when Michael J. Fox is startled by a holographic ad for Jaws 19. Tweaking the films' producer, Steven Spielberg, he mutters, "Shark still looks fake." And, just as the first film ends with a mock cliffhanger, this one ends with a real one. As with the second Star Wars movie, audiences were put on notice that they would have to wait for another movie to be released to find out what happens next.