Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 336: Back to the Future Part II

Episode Date: November 9, 2020

We're going back to the Back to the Future trilogy for a podcast discussion about what could be the most interesting sequel of all time! When Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale put together the original Back to the Future in 1985, they had no idea they would have such a massive hit on their hands—or that their joke ending would set the second movie's plot in stone. But by working against adversity, the two crafted a highly satisfying sequel that doubled down on time travel antics, and even added alternate universes into the mix. (And might have even predicted the future with 1985-A...) On this episode, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Henry Gilbert, and Dave Rudden as the crew talks so much about Back to the Future Part II they have to save the video game discussion for the next episode. So listen now—unless you're chicken! Retronauts is a completely fan-funded operation. To support the show, and get exclusive episodes every month, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon.

This week on Retronauts, we dine on dehydrated Pizza Hut and Pepsi Perfect. Hello, everybody. Welcome again to another episode of Retro! I'm your host for this one, Bob Macky. And today's episode is all about the movie Back to the Future Part 2 and also the three games based on this 1989 movie. Before I begin, who is here with me in the same room? Hey, it's Henry Gilbert. MetShark still looks fake.

I agree. And who is the founder of Retronauts that is on the line coming in from North Carolina? Great. Scott, it's Jeremy Parrish. And we have flown in electronically. The biggest Back to the Future fan I know who. even puts me to shame, who else is our final guest in the show? I'm Dave Rudden, and nobody calls me chicken.

Nobody. We will be saying the C word on this podcast, by the way, so parental advisory on this one. But yes, Dave, I do want to say, spoiler, Dave is actually on an episode of What a Cartoon from last month. Before we recorded that, there was not the 35th anniversary edition announced yet, but Dave, you can confirm you now have reserved the 35th anniversary edition of this trilogy, correct? It was a long and arduous process. I had to figure out which pre-order bonus I wanted the most. And wait with a steel book, you know, understated. Does one of them come with a fun cop pop?

One of those of the mini hoverboard. Okay. I'm like, I have many regular size, you know, I have a regular side of hoverboard. I think I have like another somewhere else. And I'm just, I don't need a mini hoverboard, you know. I've got enough, that's feature crap on my desk anyway. So many. Are these like ultra HK, 8K, HD super versions or something?

Or are they just like. U.H.D. So that's 4K. You know, in another five years when we're doing the 40th anniversary podcast, then I'll get my 8K sets. I need to see where... I'm sure to be virtual reality by then. Yeah. I need to see like the 8 or 16,000K version.

You have to see where like the latex ends on the masks and the skins begins on the old age makeup. I do need to see that. You can't read what on those laser discs in that one scene in the alley. Oh yeah. But yes, we're continuing our look at the Back to the Future trilogy with look at the second movie. Obviously, we're doing one of these for each of the movie. movies. And if you want to check out our look at the first movie, that came out back in June. It's episode 304. That is a Patreon exclusive. So you need to be on the $5 tier to hear that. But this one

is going out to the free feed for everybody. And you might be listening to it on it now. And Dave, we all talked about our history with the movies earlier on that first podcast. Where did you enter the world of Back to the Future? So I, actually my story event, like watching Back to Future, they all kind of really tied together very quickly because I was, I think, eight or nine when I'd first seen Back to the Future and when I really got into the movie was basically like every other summer

when I was like from elementary school up until high school since a majority of my mom's family is in Ireland we would just take trips to Ireland and the house that we would stay at was literally a block from a video store so I must have rented over the course of once summer, uh, which was like, we're probably out there for two months. I probably rented back to

future for at least 25 to 30 of those days. Uh, so it was only like a pound back then. So it was not that expensive. I could probably scrounge it for my mom or like find it in couches. And I would just go and rent like, you know, it was kind of a Leshky kid even in Ireland. I would just walk over there, get it and then come back. So like it was yeah, 89 or 90. But so I rented that movie, you know, dozens of times. And then by the end of the summer, uh, back to future part two was coming out on VHS in Ireland so I rented that but so at the at around that same time

back to future part three had already come out in America so I remember talking to my brother who didn't come with us to Ireland about the movie and like trying to find out everything about it without out having it spoiled it was very weird time but like basically I

I've probably watched part one over 50 times at this one maybe probably in the triple digits but the other two I've probably watched dozens of times as well so but they all they all really tied in that one summer of 1990 where I kind of got introduced to the first and then the second and third very fast succession so Dave I do want to ask everybody this but Dave were you in theaters for part two did you see that one in theaters I watched it on VHS in Ireland and like the I remember

the clerk telling me like we're getting it we're getting it we're getting it I'm like give it to me first because I've literally been through the whole summer and yeah and then when I got to back to America after the summer, you know, this was back when movies would still play for months on end after. So I was able to watch it in theaters in America when I got back from my vacation in Ireland. Yeah, like I was, I was three when the first movie came out. So if I was taken to it, I don't remember. But I was interested in movies when this came out and I did see it in theaters. And I'm sure all I took away from this movie was the future stuff because I had not even seen the first movie. So I'm sure I know I enjoyed it. I don't even know if I followed the

second 2x, but I know I was there. I know I had one of the sets of Pizza Hut future glasses. But yeah, like me and a lot of other kids, we were just signing up for the, this is like the wackier second sequel of the, you know, the 80s had that tradition and I was just on board

immediately from the beginning just for the future stuff, just barely knowing what this movie was. But Jeremy, you were a bit older when this movie came out, older than us at least. You were an epic teen, an aging teen in the 80s. I was. I was. I was in junior high when this came out. And I went to see this movie with several friends at the

theater and also my first girlfriend. It was not a, it was, it was, you know, a junior high kind of relationship. So we were not still together when Back to the Future Three came out to see it together. But I do remember all of us were like buzzing with excitement when the movie ended because, whoa, there's a third one coming in six months. That's crazy. I'm glad you gave us your account of that because I remember seeing that and being excited having never seen a preview having not even seen Star Wars yet not knowing movies could do this.

Not having not seen Empire Strikes Back but the story that the history tells about this movie is that because this movie was marketed as part two, not part two of a three part series, the people who were seeing this movie were down on it because they thought they were being ripped off.

Really? It's like on-disc DLC kind of reaction. Yeah, yeah. It's like I got a page. No, it's like, it's the middle section of a trilogy. Clearly, they're going to wrap it up next time and there's like cowboys and stuff. That's bonkers. They're traveling in time. I love it.

Yeah, having watched it again, probably for like the 20th time, I'm like, how could anyone be disappointed? I just like, what's going to happen? And there's cowboy stuff and oh, man, Doc Brown falls in love. Like, how could you walk out of this movie feeling bad? Henry, you were also seven years old when this movie came out. Were you in theaters with me? Not with me, but spiritually. Actually, no.

I'm deconstructing it now, the timeline of events, and I think I must have liked the idea of Back to the Future, but I don't recall seeing the first one first. The second one is what I saw first, but I actually saw it on VHS, but it was, I now recall, and I guess when we do the third one of these, I'll continue this story, but I saw the second one on VHS when it was a relatively new VHS because at the end of it there was the thing of like hey this is in theaters now like it I feel like it came out before the second movie was out of theaters because after seeing this on VHS and being so excited for it and the promise of the next movie I convinced my mom to take me to the only place showing part three which was like a dollar theater so it was like

months old at that point I bet I think we were the only people in the theater but it's because of the trailer at the end of this excited me so much and I think I yeah this has so many like hijinks and crazy special effects that it is why

when I saw Back to the Future 1 for the first time after as a child it did feel lacking at first to me because this has all the bells and whistles and all the cool stuff in it I could be missing a few things but I think the only effects in that first movie are just DeLorean related, like drawing the

cartoon lightning around it, making it disappear, things like that, but the rest of the movie, it's just bookended by these two nice special effects and just like straight character action and drama and comedy. Yeah, and I will say that, you know, as someone who saw all three movies in their theatrical releases,

it felt like it had been forever since Back to the Future one had come out. And, you know, it ends with to be continued, but was it really going to be continued? We waited so long. like five years oh my god for a sequel and it just felt like you know it was never going to happen so when the sequel finally happened it was fantastic but then there was going to be a third one immediately after was very satisfying it was like whoa they're going to they're going to really

wrap this thing up it's going to end and you know we're not going to have to wait five more years for another story yeah i'm glad you pointed that at jeremy because i think a lot of the context of this movie and when it was released was depending on its audience to have seen the first movie a lot because at that point it was on video it was definitely on HBO and at that point I'd definitely been on broadcast TV so you walking into this movie with knowledge of the first movie it's not 100% necessary but it makes it a much more satisfying experience because of what happens and that was much harder to do in 1980s now you can just like download it or get the Blu-ray or the DVD but it was harder to do back then and I guess you know in 1989 if you were a

very informed person in the industry I'm sure if you read in variety you knew it was going to be two parts or you'd probably see like you know on Ebert, Siskel on Ebert I bet they would have said and yes as we all know it's two parts and blah blah blah

so I'm sure some people knew but it was very different than now of like you can just Google information or like you know the next eight Marvel films that are planned because they tell you about them like five years in advance. But if you're like Johnny, if you're Johnny Lunch Pale and you show up to the movies, like, what

I'm going to get? Oh, they made another one of those Back to the Futures. I sure like that. You might be less informed. Exactly. I mean, I went into it knowing in some capacity that there was going to be a third movie and that they were, you know, filming them simultaneously or something, because I had seen that on maybe entertainment tonight. Um, you know, so, so that was knowledge. But just like having that knowledge abstractly is different than going to a thesis. theater and seeing look here are finished shots from the next movie here is enough for like a two minute teaser of the movie that's coming in six months that's that's a very different proposition

it's not it's not like a potential thing at that point it's like this is going to happen and you're going to go see it yeah this exists and in fact the movie was in the can when they had a release pack of the feature too completely i can see why audiences might have felt a little uh annoyed at the just because the ending is such a cliffhanger like i know one wasn't made with the intention of that being a sequel but it's just the the fact like you're going to save your kids is low key like you know that marty and jennifer are okay and his family and his parents are okay this one it's like oh doc has literally been like struck by lightning and has disappeared and now i've got to wait six months to figure out how i mean obviously that little clip at the end

shows you that he gets back in time and meets doc but like you you really feel for a second especially before you see that you know coming soon back to future part three thing where you literally think Doug might be dead or not dead but you like the whole the the the cliffhanger is way crazier yeah if you want to see you know fulfilled very very quickly if not dead then just lost in time and unable to uh you know reunite with Marty well 195 doc is just catatonic he could have hit his head pretty hard at the end of that movie Let's talk about the production info, which I found, like, super interesting. Again, I recommend you go out and get the, the Blu-rays.

They come out every five years. Please pay 50 bucks every five years for the same commentaries, but they're really good. And the way the story goes is like, you know, the obvious thing is like, Back to the Future. One is a huge hit. It was never designed to be a franchise. The ending, we got to do something about your kids, of course, is a big joke, you know? Like, we're just going to go off on another adventure. We'll see you later, moviegoers.

And then they're going to work on Roger Rabbit or something else. But of course, Universal is like, hey, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, we want you to do a sequel. And both of those guys agreed, directors of Emacchis and writer Gail as long as they can get Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd back. And that happened. They got them back. So in negotiating for this movie The executive that they were working with Sin Scheidberg also gets them a third movie

But really they were like Let's work on the second movie first It's cool that we can do a third one That's awesome We love working with these guys We love the sci-fi technology And writing this time travel stuff But let's focus on

Just writing the second movie for now So the way this came together And having heard this and then watch it I thought it was very clever Is that when they decided To sit down and write the sequel And plan it out They were like okay

sequels are very hard to do right. So what is the best sequel? Like, what are the best sequels? From the creator's perspective, they felt the best sequels were ones that directly continued events from the first movie, like in The Godfather. But when they sat down and asked, like, what

do audience goers want from sequels? They felt like audience goers want sequels to be like, you know, episodes of TV, like a James Bond movie, where it's the same characters, but they have new adventures and there's no continuity. So this movie kind of has both ways in which, you have a new future adventure with Doc and Marty

but you also see all of your favorite characters as they existed in the first movie in fact you actually just go back to the first movie it is like even further exaggeration of like seeing my old friends again we're like we're seeing the same scenes again in the same third act position as well just the third act it's not all the stuff from before the Under the Sea Dance uh enchantment under the sea dance it's just the third act of the movie plays out again as the third act

Exactly. It's all the payoffs of the first movie with none of the setup because you've seen all the setup before and different angles of those payoffs too. But yeah, so there are some omissions from this movie, from this sequel. So we talked about it in the first podcast and that Crispin Glover did not come back. He was hard to work with. He wanted the same deal as Michael J. Fox in terms of the money he was making. And also he didn't like the philosophy of the movies, the very 80s morality of the movies that I think this movie is a lot more self-aware about, given who.

the villain is and who they're parodying with that villain. Yeah, I mean, Crispin Glover's a weird dude so that I understand that. I do think though, I mean, he is the co-star of the first movie like he, well, okay, in importance he's below Doc Brown,

but just below Doc Brown, like it but I can see why they didn't want to work with specifically difficult 80s Kristen Crispin Glover who were used to the more chilled out 2000s onward Crispin Glover, but Yeah, so I understand why there was a breakdown there.

And also, Claudia Wells, who was Jennifer in the first movie, really just a prize for Marty to win and to smooch. She's replaced by Elizabeth Shoe because Claudia Wells, her mother was suffering from stage four lymphoma and she did not want to leave her to make a movie. And they give Elizabeth Shue a lot more to do in this movie, even though she is like an unconscious body for most of it. They give her like comedic scenes. Yeah. Her, like, basically, these two movies are her lying down on different things. Yes. Her being stowed places, presumably safely.

Like, just leave her there, Mardi. She's fine. I do think she's a better counterpart for, uh, for Michael J. Fox. I mean, she's just a little bit more wittier and, uh, you know, and also I think people were used to seeing Elizabeth's shoe in a lot of the things like Adventures and Babysitting. So it was kind of a neat thing to see. I mean, if you were going to, if you had to replace the actress, like Elizabeth, she was a great, a great choice. She brings more star power to it.

Yeah. I do, you know, one reason I wish Crispin Glover was in this is because I think it would make more poetic sense if Crispin played Marty Jr. That if, you know, especially them meeting in the cafe 80s would have a lot more, you know, reverberations through history. But then I guess it wouldn't have let Roberts Emacus fall in love with his, you know, Paddy Duke technology. This movie's all duked out. It's true. But, yeah, so they're making the sequel. They don't have Kristen Gulliver, so they replace him with an upside down man who's, well, he's either upside down in archival footage or just, like, obscured by like, you know, shot or he's out of focus. So, yeah, like this guy, I think his name is Jeffrey Weiss, but.

I follow the Back to the Future Facebook page just because it will put back to the future products in my feed I can look at and not buy but he and Claudia Wells still both appear at like sci-fi and horror convention so you can meet upside down Crispin Glover at horror conventions. I think there was precedent for the way

they treated Crispin Glover in this or treated the George McFly character in this. If you look at one of those sequels they referenced The Godfather Part 2, you never really see Brando he's always kind of off stage and you know like you're aware of his presence but you don't see Marlon Brando he's just kind of like the shadowy figure who kind of relies on your knowledge and familiarity with the first movie to know like oh you know that's Don Corleone in you know like his older self yeah so they they kind of took the same approach with this that

they did for the godfather part two I would say yeah the last The last scene in Godfather part two is like, oh, the Corleone's, the Don's about to enter the room, and then it ends. Like, no, the Jimmy Kahn is there. He's the Leah Thompson of that film because he showed up and dressed all the same. That is true. Yeah. So we're making this movie, they were kind of screwed in from the beginning in that their joke ending set up a premise that they couldn't escape from, where the ending of the first movie is, you know, Marty comes back, his family is fixed. he gets all these new prizes like he just wanted a game show

but then Doc shows up saying we gotta do something about your kids and they fly off where we're going we don't need roads the car flies off and then you know the end but that sets them up for this premise they were not ready for because they were like we have to make this movie about Marty's kids characters we haven't met why would the audience care about them so this entire first act is just a bunch of jokes to set up a complication that has to be undone it's kind of weird to think

of how essentially in this movie nothing happens because this entire movie is about Marty correcting something a mistake he made in the first act. So this movie is just like a very convoluted wheel spinning in place. Yeah.

And literally we saw in the first movie that the way you solve something that happens in sort of the future is write a note. Like literally that's how Doc was saved at the end of the first movie. And he writes a note for Marty says, don't open this until, you know, 2015

or maybe a little bit earlier if you want to get a head start on making sure your son doesn't do what the bully said. Yeah, I mean, honestly, Doc should have been like, you've got to go to therapy, Marty. Yeah. You got to work on yourself.

I'm just saying. I mean, you say nothing happens, but I mean, that's like the conflict here is all kind of, it's almost internal. It's, you know, like the character makes mistakes and then has to figure out how to undo those mistakes. And it really kind of gets to the entire premise of time travel, which is, you know, like Doc says kind of from the very beginning, like it's dangerous and you can't take it lightly, like it has to be used responsibly. And this really underscores that. Like,

what happens when, you know, you don't make a, an honest mistake when it's not like a, you know, a genuine error like, whoa, we didn't expect that to happen. But when you, you know, try to, try to outthink yourself, you know, you try to get clever and scheme and use time travel for, you know, less pure purposes and, you know, the fallout from that. So it is kind of a I guess an exploration of what happens when, you know, the heroes aren't necessarily perfect when they make a mistake. You know, you have to get over that. And I think that's a story that you don't really see explored in the Hollywood blockbusters that often.

So it makes it kind of interesting. And I guess you, you know, I can see the, the criticism that it's wheel spinning. But it's, it's really more of a morality play and kind of an exploration of like what happens when the hero is fallible. Yeah, it's an exploration of that. and just like having as much fun with time travel mechanics as possible. It's really an exploration of that. But yeah, I do think it does undercut in a fun way,

the ending of the first movie where it's just like, here are all your prizes. And then even though Doc Brown's morality involving time travel is very arbitrary and suspect at times, I think it boils down to like these small scale changes to your own life are okay, but you can't become like a billionaire tyrant. That is unethical.

But if you want to fix your family a little, that's cool. We can do that. But you can't become, the little king overlord of this enclosed hill valley snow globe world where nothing else exist outside of it yeah yeah the well i think they had just been thinking about uh all of the things they could do with time travel that the budget wouldn't allow for in the first one so they just like can uh go money crazy with this one i mean uh though i the budget i doubt is comparable to

like a marvel movie budget now but but still pretty big budget movie for the time even in the in the first movie, Marty wasn't out to make his family better. He stumbled into something, you know, completely sort of outside of his own power and just wanted to put things right. And the fact that his family ended up better and, you know, his father had more of a spine versus Biff Tannen and so forth. Like that was incidental. That wasn't his, his intent. He didn't go there thinking like, I'm going to, I'm going to stick it to Biff. That just kind of unfolded naturally as a result of him just trying to put things right. So, you know, I think when you at time travel that way. Like, you know, if you're trying to change time and history for your

own benefit, like that, that introduces danger. And, you know, if you're, if that happens naturally as the result of just, you know, trying to do the right thing, well, that's something else. There's also the, like, the, you know, the whole impet is for this, you know, the, the second and third act, uh, like literally a conversation between Doc and Marty where he says, look, you're, you're going to be in the future. You're going to see things. that you might be able to take back in time with you or just think about and use to your advantage don't do it because it'll screw things up

but you know that conversation would be weird in a movie like this but in it like if back to the future was real Doc would probably warn him at some point not to do this. Yeah I mean we know like in terms of morality it's okay to use time travel to prevent your own death or to extend your life that's perfectly fine but gambling don't you dare I do want to talk about some of the other movies that they, sorry, the other ideas they were kicking around for this movie.

So like when deciding upon the first movie what they wanted to do, they had the idea of like, well, what if Marty does something in the 1950s that changes the 1980s? But they're like, well, we don't have the money for that and we found the character-based approach was a lot more interesting. So that's why they kind of really stuck with that idea in this movie, just seeing the effects of time travel and the morality of time travel more of that explored. one of the ideas they thought of was that instead of giving himself the almanac in 1955, Biff gives himself the almanac in 1967 and in trying to get that back Marty endangers his own conception

when, because Marty was born in 1968. Okay. Yeah, so. That's not a bad idea. And you get 60s signifiers instead of the, you know, the 50s ones. Right. And, but they thought ultimately that's what the first movie was about anyways,

like Marty getting these people together. So they're like, well, that's too close. So their original script for this movie, it sounded crazy at the time, but now it's like, well, that's a Marvel movie. So their entire script for this movie originally was a three-hour epic that also contained the events of what would be the third film. So the third film in this movie was the last hour. It was like a weird fourth act that felt kind of unnatural. So they deliver this to their producer and the producer's response is like, we are not going to make the most expensive movie ever for the sequel. We're not going to do that.

And so what happened was the writer Bob Gale took this script, expanded it as much as possible. And in the process of doing that, realized that they had a potential two sequels on their hands for this one script, making into two different movies. So what they did was they pitched a crazy idea at the time where they're like, this one script is two movies and it'll be a two-part movie in which we release the first part in Christmas of 89 and the second part of summer of 90. wanted a summer of 89 movie but Zemeckis was too busy at the time and and actually the filming of this movie would not have made that possible so to make it up to them and to make this entire huge script of reality they're like we're going to do a two-parter with the Christmas of 89 release and a summer of 90 release and although the studio was like that is a crazy idea they were able to get their way when they convinced universal look at we can make

one 65 million dollar movie or two 35 million dollar movies we're going to make a lot more money with the latter option. And it's, I mean, it's also such a smart move you think about now because, like, you know, Michael J. Fox is looking less like a teenager every day in 1989. So, I mean, what, if they wait until 1992 or three to film another movie with him, is he, he still has to play a 17-year-old. Yeah, I think Michael J. Fox is now becoming, he's like the world's oldest teenager in this movie.

He's like almost 30. He's getting a little puffier because he's not, doesn't have the teenage metabolism. them anymore. A teenager from a 70s movie, basically. It's true, yeah. But yeah. But yeah. 35. I think this movie would have been a disaster, not a disaster, but I don't think it would have fared as well if it had come out in the summer

of 89 because there were, you know, that there was that whole Batman thing to go up against. That really kind of sucked all the oxygen out of the out of the room for theatrical releases that summer. So I think, you know, pushing it back to the holiday season was a good idea. It definitely killed

UHF, although I think last crusade was also summer of 89 and it escaped unscathed. That's true, but I think that came out before Batman, didn't it? But Spielberg, I guess, keeps him from hurting his friend there. But those types of productions were not unheard of before this. The two I could think of were the

producers of the Superman movies, Christopher Reeve's Superman movies. They did a Three Musketeers, they filmed both movies back to back to save money. Yeah. And they wanted to do the same with Superman 1 and 2.

And they filmed like Superman 1 and a half and then fired Donner and they basically had to just film it all over again for the real sequel. But there had been plans for that, those kind of, ultimately a money saving production if you plan to do a sequel in the first place.

But now this is entirely normal. Like the Matrix did it. The Lord of the Rings films. Hobbit and like most Marvel films, the Infinity War stuff was filmed back to back with Endgame, which also just Endgame is back to the future too as well. Actually, yeah, that's that Three Musketeers thing you're talking about, Henry. That is what inspired Zemeckis and Gil to have a preview for the next movie because that Three Musketeers movie had a preview for the Four Musketeers at the end.

Oh, that's cool. Yeah, but, oh, go ahead, Dave. I was just wondering if there's ever been an instance where they did the back-to-back you know, filming situations where it's ever been the first of the two movies ended up being a flop. I mean, it's, usually these are like the second and third movies, like with The Matrix or an established franchise like Marvel movies. But like if Bectinger 2 had just tanked for some reason,

I wonder how that would have affected three. You know, it's in the can, but like, you know, they're not going to put the promotion. Do they cut back on certain things? They cut parts out of the movie. I think they would just cut their loss. At this point, they just cut their losses and release it. I don't know.

In this point in history, they might just put it on like Disney Plus or something. Yeah. But there was no other option back then. Even direct-to-video was sort of a rarity in 90. I guess in 1990 you pull back all your ads for it. Yeah. Less than the impact as much as possible. But yeah, we mentioned things like Star Wars and The Matrix as other movies that have a similar, you know, trilogy heat to them.

And like those movies, this one is the one who had to create sequels not knowing with the first movie there would be more of a story. So, like, Matrix, Back to the Future, and Star Warriors were like, yeah, that's one story. Presumably, these people could do other things, but now we need to extrapolate. And I honestly feel like this is the best version of that. Like, they were the most successful with this trilogy. I don't know if anyone agrees with me. It's definitely successful. I don't know if it's the most successful.

But I think, you know, the kind of writing hook, the prompt that the end of the first movie provides, even though that does limit them in a sense, it also gives them a direction. it says basically like hey you're now you're going to see the future so everything kind of you know emerges from that that little hook that you have at the end whereas at the end of star wars it's like hey everyone gets medals except chewy and we won hooray and darth vater still alive but now what the sequel's going to be the search for chewy's metal right yeah with yeah with star wars star trek movie with star wars and matrix they end uh with a happy enough ending but both make it clear of like you the ultimate evil has not been defeated and you have hope that they can now do it but you can still look forward to that but back to the future there there was no giant villain like the closest thing to a villain in the first one is biff and he's just like an asshole you know and he's so neutered at the end of the first one he's basically a friend that it is kind of shocking to see him become this ultimate evil in the hill valley universe um but yeah i think that the also, you mentioned it before, but the whole, just the movie being called back to the future, even if they didn't have that little code at the end of the first movie, I think a lot of people would have been upset if they never actually went to the future. Yeah, that's true. It's not an afterthought in the movie, but it is not as much as you would have expected it to be.

But I think even as a kid, like wanting the future so badly, just the amount that they give you here feels like enough. yeah I guess as a kid like I honestly took the title of the first movie literally which is why I thought it wasn't very good I was like wait they don't go to the future they go to 1985 but yeah that is the future if you're in 195 but I like how at the end of this movie Marty says I'm back from the future that would have been an awesome title for this like back to the future too back from the future well you know in the Marvel while the Disney way of naming movies now you wouldn't have a number on it you would call it back from the future or back to the future continues or Marty's revenge or bitch Revenge. That's what you call it. Like numbers in sequels. Biff rising. Yes, yeah. Numbers and sequels don't happen anymore. And this is a classy sequel. It's got part two in Roman numerals, not just the big tacky two at the end of this title. I also, when I looked at the filmography of Zemeckis with this, I did, I kind of see this as this inflection point where Zemeckis heads towards the making the types of movies. I like less than back to the future because he always loved special effects and this wasn't like his first special effects

movie but the amount of tinkering you can do with like a small number of actors this really opens the door for like all of the all the stuff he does in forest gump with and death becomes her which tools around with like oh we've got one actor but we can keep changing them and put him in different places all these special effects and that snowball keeps rolling down the hill until then she's like just everyone's green screen. It's object to 17 people in Polar Express. And Beowulf is this, like, in that Marwin movie, all these things like he got too

into how special effects could make an actor be 17 characters. I totally agree with you. And I don't want to be a crank that's like, well, all CGI is bad. And, you know, people have to work very hard to make CGI good. It's not just like the computer figures it out.

But I feel like when I'm watching the special effects in this movie, as shaky as they can be when you're looking very closely at the screen, these are all like optical effects some are computer assisted but they're all like done in camera or like on film there is like a physical element to all of them which makes the hard work that went into them even more interesting and can be appreciated more i know you know computer stuff is very hard to do too but something about the physical element of all of these effects makes them more impressive just the hard how hard they had to work yeah well comparatively an end game when all of the scenes of them meeting themselves in the first event Avengers movie happen like it I guess it does feel less good cool to me because I'm like well I know even before I watch the behind the scenes features of like how did Captain America mean Captain America it's like well they just moved to the head of Chris Evans onto a stunt guy like yeah when I find stuff out like that I mean I know like there's special effects but I feel

betrayed almost where it's just like wait they weren't even in the same scene together like no no no yeah this actor's too busy for that yeah it's like well Tom Holland was filming another movie so we just had uh you know star lord hold a guy and then they just put in tom holland's head later So let's talk about the actual movie. So this opened on November 22nd, 1989. It made $336 million on a $40 million budget, so coming in slightly over budget, but still very impressive. I want to go over like the, you know, the mechanics of the movie, but I do have some like upfront stuff I want to talk about. And I do think that the first movie and the third movie have a lot of hearts.

but I feel like this movie has zero heart in a very charming way in that I talked about it before in that this movie is really about like the mechanics of time travel and having fun with that in undoing an act in the first act and I feel like the characters don't grow because this is just like the rising action of the three part trilogy like all the resolution and Marty's resolution

and Doc's resolution all happens in the third movie so this movie does feel empty, but I think they lean into it when it's like, no, this movie's all about the mechanics and cause and effect, and we're going to be moving so fast you won't notice that the characters are kind of not really changing yet. That's all for the third movie. And when the third movie is going to take away time travel, like time travel happens, well, I guess if you count the train flying away at the end, then it happens like four times in that movie, but really, plot-wise, it only happens twice for Marty to go to the Old West and then to come back from

the Old West. It's just like the first movie, yeah. Yeah, so since they're going to have almost no time travel there that they need to time travel to four separate locations in this movie to make it as crazy as possible to really play with it. This is the only time that time travel is there's no barrier to

it. In the first and third movie something has inhibited the DeLorean that keeps it from being able to serve its purpose. This they can, you know, they decide to go somewhere and they go somewhere multiple times. Yeah, it does. It makes it a way harder story to tell, I think,

if you can just like, well, then the guy's getting their time machine and go somewhere. There, there's the problem it's all. Thankfully, Mr. Fusion has taken care of all of that. Yeah. Yeah, but I mean, a big part of the conflict comes from the fact that, you know, the time travel is so open and that people are using it or someone is using it without their awareness and changing history behind their backs. Yeah.

So that's a very clever way to kind of, you know, make the most of that. Yeah. Though the kind of thing that you have to keep out of your head is the fact that since they can time travel at will they almost have unlimited chances to solve this like if you know

the whole thing happens at the Enchantment Hundred Steedance and he's not able to get the the magazine back or the the almanac back he can just time travel again and try to find another route to get it but that would be

complicate the movie way too much by the end of this plan there are like 13 Marties in 195 all helping each other yeah or Marty just shrugs like well, I guess I'll try again on November 13th and get it from Biff, you know. I'm glad they overlooked that. Biff has to sleep at some point.

So how about we time travel when Biff falls asleep and then we'll just get it? I think you have to overlook that fact. Like, oh, we could just do this as many times as we want, then there's really no stakes. But yeah, so like in the first movie, Marty is the audience vessel character. So he doesn't really need a personality. He's like, the cool suburban team. We all want to be. And everything needs to be explained to him.

So that is his role in the first movie, just to be. shouted at and explain things. Things explained to him. But in this movie, he knows how time travel works, so he needs to be more than just that character. So they do add an element to him that will pay off in the third movie where he has some serious pride issues. And at first, I thought, well, yeah, this comes out of nowhere, doesn't it? And even the writer admits, like, yeah, we needed to give him something to do. So that's what we gave him. But now, watching it again, my own, like, head cannon is, like, doing this time travel thing in the first movie gave him this overwhelming sense of pride about his abilities and like playing God and

he needs to be humbled and that is what gave him the chicken complex as I call it in this movie yeah to this movie's credit as many times as I had watched the first movie the first time probably the first few times I watched this movie and the third movie I never realized that the chicken thing was confined to these two movies it was only after you know a couple years worth of watching this movie and having it probably once I got it on like DVD that I realized oh yeah that whole chicken thing was not in the first I mean

he's still hotheaded in the first and getting into fights with Biff when he shouldn't but the whole like cementing it with the fact that he's being called chicken it's it is it seems subtle enough that I didn't see like I didn't notice it that much back in the day yeah me neither I'll say that I

definitely it stood out to me after I went back and watched the first movie again Like, that was one of my first, the first times I can remember, like, looking at something and saying, oh, you know, this is, this is kind of a story contrivance that they came up with. And, you know, invented just for the sake of conflict here. It didn't really exist before. But, you know, it doesn't take me out of the movie. It's just, it's a little conspicuous, I think. Especially in the third movie, I would say. But we're not really talking about that here. Yeah, like, I do like how they decided upon the word chicken because it's so hilariously innocent. This, this is the year in 1989. They could have pulled a Bill and Ted. And they could have called Marty someone. something much worse. Yeah. They could have gotten away within a family movie.

Yeah. Or even just, you know, a pussy or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. You could have gotten that. But like chicken,

I guess, you know, what really... That's more of a family friendly movie than that. What works with chicken, too, is it is kind of timeless. If you hear a guy in 1955 or a guy in 1885 or a guy in 1885 call somebody a chicken,

it maybe that isn't truly period correct, but it does not sound anachronistic to your ear. Still happening in 2015. One of my favorite scenes is old Lorraine explaining how the view screen repairman came, a guy came, and he ended up calling Marty McFly a chicken, and then he left. It's like, what is the context of your repairman calling you a coward? Oh, you couldn't pay for the insurance on this? What, were you chicken?

Oh, man. Yeah, I like that chicken is so ubiquitous in the year 2015 that someone has a soundboard that they carry around with them to play sound effects of a chicken whenever they insult someone. He's a real, like, shock jock that Biff assistant. If it was real 2015, morning crew.

You'd have to see that guy pull out his cell phone to quickly download chicken sound app and then play it off of his phone. But, yeah, that comes out of nowhere, but I do like, they have to give Marty something. He's such an empty character in the first movie, but it's fine because he doesn't need to have a character. The movie's about the mechanics.

And the movie, the character stuff is all about George and Lorraine. And Marty is just like plot mechanics pushing them together for the most part. Well, yeah, he's supposed to be everyday kid of 1985. There's not, if you add too much to him, then he's not just like this cipher of like, well, no, he's your typical 85 kid. He likes hard, he likes hard rock and roll and he wants to make out with his girlfriend, you know? That's just, it he, all he wants is a Pepsi free. That's it. And I will say watching this again, the movie has so much respect for its world and characters that I love how the scenes.

that they sprinkle around scenes that have already existed, they all work. They could all conceivably be part of the huge continuity when they could have easily cheated. People would have been mad but they could have been like, you know what? Screw you. At the end of the movie, Doc Brown says we're going to outer space or something. We're going to change

things up. But no, like from the very beginning, they let you know what they're doing because the car takes off what we saw at the end of the first movie and then we see old middle-aged Biff go, what the hell? And then, you know, that's when we get our title screen. And that could have been in the first movie.

There's no reason that couldn't have been in the first movie. So, like, everything they do in this movie has such respect for the characters in the world that they built. They don't do anything that's a huge cheat. And then when they go back to the first movie again, the scenes they add could all fit into the timeline of those events. Yeah, it shows also, too, what a gigantic risk Doc Brown was taking in that moment of landing and flying away. Like it's, and it's why they have to write Doc pretty crazy in some parts of this because they're like, but then why did you do that? He's like, yeah, you know, I had to. He has so many crazy explanations that just go by so quickly.

And because it's, it's Chris Lloyd doing it, you totally buy it. Yeah. Well, this, uh, rewatching this one, this was when it really hit me like, okay, this is Rick Sanchez. Part two is Doc Brown is the most Rick Sanchez-y of all his characters. the way like especially he'd be drinking in the scene but Rick Sanchez would have done the exact same thing of hearing Jennifer go like oh my God can I see my wedding and he'd be like shut up and he just makes her fall asleep knocks her out yeah she's asking too many questions Marty you know what it is Marty it's like well you hear the doc doc like that has to explain so much of this movie where Marty just goes like well you're the doc I trust you doc you invited my girlfriend just to knock her out But, so I will say, like, so Kristen Glover is gone.

So, like, basically what they do to replace that weird energy is Tom Wilson becomes the MVP playing four different BIFs in this movie and also a Griff. So he's playing 1955 Biff, who we saw before. He's playing 1985 Biff very briefly in the beginning. He's playing 1985 A Biff, who is Donald Trump. We'll get more into that later. And also 2015 Biff, who is the Crotchty Biff, who is the Crotchdy Biff. But rather, like, he's gotten over his rage. I love how, like, old Biff has finally got it figured out.

And then, and then Griff, who has got to be, like, some kind of weird, like, future drug addicts. This film is cyberpunk. Like, he has cybernetic adjustments to him that have driven him crazy. No, Tom Wilson's the greatest, yeah. I do wonder if Michael J. Fox had seen, even just in Back to the Future Bart one, where Tom Wilson gets to play 85 and 55 Biff and, you know, thought, like, I want to get down on this action. because Michael J. Fox does a lot of the same sort of thing playing multiple characters. And I think part of that, yeah, as you mentioned before, is because Crispin Glover didn't want to do this movie. But over the course of these two movies, he kind of does that same sort of Tom Wilson.

I would argue not to the not to quite as good an extent. But he does get to play multiple versions of himself. Yeah, Michael J. Fox, they don't give him a lot to do with these different variants of Marty. But I do, I do. Actually, I walked away from this movie with a greater appreciation for like pathetic. sweaty, middle-aged Marty. He feels now like a Tim Heidecker character almost. He does, yeah.

Like this awful, like Willie Lohman type, this is just horrible loser, just sweaty loser. But I think Tom Wilson's like, he's the best part of this movie, I think, and he's the, I think this is what truly made him hyper-type cast as Biff. Like, he's so good as Biff in the first one, but here when he shows you four flavors of Biff,

and if you count the grandma, Five flavors of Bitt because he's her too. That it makes you only associate him with a tannin. You don't think of Tom Wilson as anything else. And if you see him in anything after this, you're just like, oh, hey, it's Biff. Good old Biff. And for a while he hated that, but he eventually got over. Thank God.

He sang that song enough times that he freed himself up. This is Super Nintendo. You know I don't like Dr. Mariel. I think he's a frog back-alley doctor. Am I very happy to be here? With the help of a doula, you can do anything in the tub. You're looking at the Nintendo knitting machine. Do you feel that I abused you by making you play a night track?

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Matt, I've got a great idea for a podcast. You and me, we watch movies, right? And some of them are kind of bad, and so we make fun of them. But maybe some of them are good. Chris, that's a great idea. Let's do it. and eat snacks movie fighters an original idea on the greenlit podcast network video death loop is a podcast where we watch a short video clip on loop until we just can't take it anymore along the way

we'll try our best to make each other laugh and to hold out longer than the other guy you can jump in on any episode no need to worry about continuity check out video death loop on the greenlit podcast network with new episodes every friday Thank you. So let's talk about the events of the movie and like the setting and stuff. So, you know, every, so the movie's a little messy, but they do manage to clean everything up by the end. But I do like how every, every act is a different time period. So there's 2015, 1985, and 1955.

It's a very clean cut between these three acts. But of course, like, the main attraction, it comes first, and that is 2015. And Robert Zemeckis was like, I never wanted to make a movie about the future because you're always wrong. and we knew we'd be wrong so quit pointing it out how all the ways were wrong but the way he got over that was like let's make the future fun

not like a Blade Runner thing let's make it fun and also because we don't know what'll happen this will be the most like gag intensive part of the movie and what I really love about this part is especially on like a 4K Blu-ray

or even on DVD if you look at the production design it is amazing you will catch new signs new gags new people in the background every time that are telling all of these stories that are unaddressed by the characters,

but they really painted a depiction of a world that they don't explore further outside of this first act. It is amazing. Honestly, like, I... This is the first time I've watched part two in full probably in, like, 10 years. Henry, we were in the same theater in 2016. But I pressed pause over and over again

just to be like, my God, the set... It's Zemeckis and Gale, their vision is great, but also, like, they must have employed some of the best, like, prop designers and set designers in the world at the time because it is so rich in physical stuff like that's also

I feel like I'm now just complaining about Marvel movies but when everything is a green screen that you're walking around you can tinker with that stuff right up to the last minute but when they decide what a Texaco is going to look like in 2015 they got to build it and it's there and they're like well wouldn't there be posters

in this alley what's on the posters oh people have hoverboards why aren't people walking around with other boards like all these things that inform the world that if you pause it and you think like oh what led to this moment just a million little things that I just love every moment of and just like Jaws 19 is directed by Max Spielberg the real son of Stephen Spielberg stuff like that god I think it helps a lot that this movie is not color graded the way movies are now so everything is kind of natural looking in addition to you know just having actual physical sets and props you know it is like this is the actual colors of the world the sky the grass the water etc people you know it's not orange and blue or you know desaturated or whatever and you know they kind of lean into that really by uh by making kind of the the overall aesthetic of the future like the future of the late 80s where it's all like neons and rainbow colors and like you know hyper colors and uh change color changing like it's just a rainbow of just eye popping color uh but at the same time you know aside from from the hoverboards

and the uh the emphasis on neon they don't really go like super crazy you know flying cars okay they don't go super crazy with the technology of the future i don't know maybe they do actually yeah as i'm thinking about it it's it's kind of dumb uh But like the overall world, aside from like the technological stuff, it still is, you know, Hill Valley. It's still the city. It's recognizable. I guess that's what I'm talking about here is that, you know, they don't like make it some, you know, megalithic skyscraper-filled hellhole or something. It's still just like the city, but neon and with flying cars.

I mean, the kind of an unsung star of the first movie was that one lot in Universal, what they were able to completely renovate to change to 1955. The fact that it was still, you know, in the same sort of condition, you know, three, four years later when they were recording this movie and able to redo it for 2015,

I mean, that goes a long way. Like, you're so used to, especially if you've been watching part one over and over in the four years between these movies, that same lot just done up to the future. And also because it's a lot, you know, you don't have to worry about something erroneous being

in the background, it's like a close set that they can make to 2015. I mean, I don't think that's the same lot, obviously, in 1885, but to look ahead a little bit, but just the fact that yeah, that this one place

you've seen it before so many times if you watch that first movie that you realize like, oh, this is kind of that same framework, but everything's futuristic and there's nothing that they can, you know, that you have to have a pretty crappy set that

something got through and I've watched us enough times that I I there aren't that many uh you know no one's wearing the wrong watch at any time or no there's never the wrong car in the background which you would see in other old movies uh other movies that were set in the past but this that's you know it's because it's that close set

they were able to you know cater everything everything about the background to work perfectly the continuity is great and they actually had to film all the 55 stuff first so they could just tear it all down and then build the future city on that set and yeah like the way they like the continuity is great even in 55 stuff they're like okay for our 55 world we can't have every car be a 1955 model it's got to be that year and earlier because presumably people have older cars too so they were like paying such close attention

to detail to like every element of this world and i i well yeah this the the future world too there's so many just like great throwaway lines by the dock i i just had this i laugh so hard when he talks about like, sorry for the disguise. I replaced all my blood and blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I didn't think, I didn't think you'd recognize me. Yeah. And then when he takes it off, he looks exactly the same. And Marty just goes like, yeah.

It's all because, like, I totally forgot Christopher Lloyd is in his, like, 40s in these movies. And I was like, oh, right, he wasn't, he wasn't an old man in the first movie. He just didn't want to wear, like, slightly rinklier makeup for this entire movie. It's basically, you get to watch Christopher Lloyd remove his. makeup that he wore in the first movie in the past in 2015. And another thing I love about the 2015 they imagine is add logos are on every single thing.

Like it's everything is the AT&T thing. Everything is like Pizza Hut logos are on everything. And that's, that predicted a lot about the future. We can put a logo on a banana if it'll help things sell. But yeah, a big, a big quote unquote joke in this episode. is the idea, the very idea that 80s nostalgia would exist. Like, that was, that was very cheeky at the time. And now we are on a, like, basically 80s nostalgia podcast for the past 16 years.

So, yes. I mean, I don't think it was a joke that 80s nostalgia would exist because, you know, the whole first movie was predicated on 50s nostalgia. I think it was specifically the things that we would be nostalgic for were meant to be the jokes. Like, like, who now cares about Ronald Reagan? versus the Ayatollah Khomeini. Like, who cares about New Coke? I mean, those are kind of footnotes in history. Those aren't the things that were nostalgic for.

In fact, I would say 80s nostalgia now is for things that didn't actually exist. Like, you know, the super neon colors, you know, vapor wave type stuff. Like, that wasn't really a thing outside of, you know, Miami Vice cover, album covers or something. Yeah. So, yeah. So I think the joke there was like, here's the weird things that people are going to care about in the future, which of course no actually we don't we don't care this being filmed in 1989 like they were able to say okay these are early to mid 80s things that that we know people will recognize as being a little bit older like beat it or you know even at that point ronald ragan wasn't president anymore and like early nes games that i mean maybe to me that was like you know in this being a video game podcast i'm like oh well i could recognize that as a you know a first generation i know jeremy you know exactly the order that wild gunman is but i recognize even Even then in, you know, 89, 90, I'm like, oh, that's a really early NES game.

Yeah. That's in the arcade for some reason. Yes. Yeah. I, oh, yeah, we talked about it on the Western podcast, didn't we? On our Cowboys' this podcast. There's a whole story there. Yeah, but they, they CGI'd that NES game up to make it look even goofier and prettier.

But, yeah, in 1989, they're buying products from 84 to put in, like, a window dressing, including a Roger Rabbit. That was pretty great to see. Yeah. And the, hey, Jaws NES game. It's only going up in value. It's worth like 12 bucks now. That, yeah, the 2015 is just a bunch of jokes, but I am sad. We are now beyond that time.

Yeah, it was a dark day when you can no longer post the meme. Today was the day Marty McFly went to the future. But yeah, like all of the crazy stuff in the background, just like pause every frame. Like I caught something new for the first time every time I watch this movie. One of the ones was like when, when Marty Jr. is like, like first revealed through, like, the monoculars, he's distracted by two women with enormous breasts. And I was just like, what is why?

But then I paused the screen and they were coming out of a breast augmentation clinic. I missed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then like breast implants are like a big thing, like an undercurrent in the future. You see like an ad for it on like the giant TV that Marty Jr. has. Yeah.

Yeah. I guess, you know, breast augmentation had become pretty popular by the late 80s in general. So I guess they were extrapolating with 30 years in the future. It's like an hour-long procedure and you just walk out with wonderful breaths. It's like getting a filling or something. But yeah, another thing I think they successfully predicted was if you look at Marty Jr. I think that's his name. Is his name Marty Jr.?

Yeah, Marty Jr. If you look at what a just technology and obsessed distraction he is in the world, like he is like a parody of like the late millennial early Zoomer where it's just like he's watching eight screens at once and then when he has to come to dinner he puts on his glasses if they knew about iPhones he'd be looking at an iPad while a dinner but yeah like the idea of children just being so inundated with screens I think they definitely saw that coming for sure yeah and also a drone walking a dog you know I think that I just happens now and every taxi driver has a parrot I'm into that another one more subtle joke I really love in there is

when we all remember the guy telling him, like, put some money on the cubbies. But the first thing he does is ask for a couple hundred bucks to fix the thing. That's a joke about inflation that he's asking for, he's just on the street. Like, could you just give me $200? Like, come on, just $200. That's so good.

I love that joke. And they didn't predict Go fund me. And just to go back to that self-walking dog, I guess I was going to say they didn't predict the gig. economy but i think one of the kind of unsung elements and also i have the back to the future part two novelization um i think that part of the undercurrent when in that um the cafe 80s is the people who are riding the bicycles i think they're powering the place in some way and that's how they're paying for their food oh interesting i i have to go back and revisit that there are

They just tell them to get back on their bikes, yeah. Yeah, I could see that being just something that's happening in the background where it just seems like set dressing, but there's actually like a lore reason for it to happen. Yeah, though the one thing that really sticks in my head about the novelization is they actually go into a page or two about the police women who pick up Jennifer and bring her back to the house. Did they mention what a zip head is? Yeah, yeah, well, that's sort of stuff where it's like, oh, they were so tired of the beat and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I don't, you are overestimating how much I care about these particular characters. But that's what novelizations are all about where it's like, well, we fill in the blanks because the movie's already out.

And people are only going to read it if they're super into the movie and want to know these things are happening in the margins. That guy had a page count. Yeah. Before this post, I'll go and I'll read up and see if those are actually, if they were paying for their food by riding the bikes to keep the place powered up. I love hearing about future drugs in any kind of speculative fiction. And, like, the way they talk about her, like, she seems pretty tranked up. And then, like, Marty Jr. when that car was, it's like, what do you, trankhead? Or, like, it's every, nobody's drunk in 2015.

They just are constantly tranquilized in some way. I think we're going to actually get to the games in our last podcast in the series is because we're only an act of one of this movie just to let you guys know. So we'll talk about those in the next podcast, I believe. But the first act is just so much fun, so much stuff is happening. So many things to look at, especially like in the background of like the Mcfly house, the rundown future rundown Mcfly. house. I love the pizza looks so good. I love just like, I mean, because Marty McFly gets fired by a

Japanese boss, there's just like, well, yes, Japan has taken us over, but also at dinner, they're drinking like green tea and stuff. So like the Japanese influence is very much like lightly sprinkled throughout their household and throughout this world. And Griff has a futuristic, diverse cyberpunk gang of like, you know, you got one white guy, you got a girl and a Japanese guy. Because at least I'm guessing he is of some. some Japanese ethnicity because he has a rising sun hoverboard And that's a man who's word

The way he says power It has stayed in my head Since I saw it 30 years ago And of course hoverboard's not real But Zemeckis put out the lie that they were And it made the screenwriter very mad Because he still gets asked about that all the time I just like no

But I found out in a very boring way You can make a hoverboard But it must run along a magnetic track So it's very, very boring. That's lame. So in the future, maybe there's just magnets under everything except for water. Yeah, just like magnet railways going under everything. I do wonder if he had just copped to it when the movie came out and said, no, those were fake.

If we wouldn't have the last, you know, 35 years of people trying to make close enough replications of the hoverboard. Because I feel like a lot of people just have tried to make hoverboard technology because they were so taken in by that. by the lie in 1989. I think so, yeah. In a way, Zemeckis controlled science by controlling the dreams of the dreamers in that way. What, all the great stuff they could have invented if those dorks hadn't been focused on trying to make a fake coverboard. They could have, we could be living in a true flying car shanglerland. Could be on Mars right now.

I also love that the flying cars, you see the flying cars like, oh, how cool. And then a little bit in there, Doc goes like, nah, traffic's terrible. It's like, even when everything can fly, there's still traffic. as as president's group said even in the future nothing works from space balls yeah and also like how he says well yeah they can have the weather timed to the minute but the post office still sucks but one final thing in this act is like something i got slightly wrong in the first podcast where there's deleted scene and there's not many deleted scenes in this movie but when biff returns the delorean to 2015 old biff after he gives himself the almanac he seemingly dies in

in the finished movie, but in the deleted scene, he fades away. And that's because in their headcanon, Zemeckis and Gale, they're like, well, Lorraine murdered Biff in the 90s. And because it's 2015, he no longer exists. So that's the reason why. But in order to understand that, you have to have seen the entire movie. So test audiences were confused. Like, why is this old Biff fading away?

Why we watched the old man die after he just came back? Yeah. Oh, I assumed he died just because he had erased that version of himself from history. by changing the past. I guess that's not how it works, is it? No, yeah, it does. That is how it works, yeah. That does make more sense, Jeremy,

and that was my theory. But according to the screenwriter and Zemeckis, it's like, well, Lorraine shot Biff in the 90s. Way darker. Well, I mean, that deleted scene is sort of hinted at because when Biff returns, he's all like, you know, he's in a bad way when he returns. And watching that the deleted scene, like,

it's sort of a heart attack. Like, you don't know exactly what's happening. does disappear, but it's like, well, is he, like, short of breath and seemingly, like, the way that he dies is, is weird, because he should just disappear and, like, the, his death throws shouldn't be a part of it, but it was, it was very confusing, even just seeing that scene when he gets back and he's all, like, befuddled and in a bad way. I guess we saw when Marty played Earth Angel, that it has a physical effect you're disappearing. like it's you don't just disappear while you feel fine you also are like almost passing out you have time poisoning and yeah and marty is a healthy young teen and meanwhile biff is like an 85 year old who's lived who's had a lot of uh no like 70 78 i think yeah yeah yeah you yeah actually you're right because when he's playing that song and he's starting like he's not just disappearing he's disappearing but also kind of dying it's a weird thing that they never really explain that like

Why is a side effect of disappearing also, like, becoming physically ill? Yeah, Biff doesn't get, like, the fading photo or anything. He just automatically disappears. And also, you know, in the future one, I think they got right. Japanese bosses still like fax machines. Several of them, yeah. I love, another great moment of a very, like, pitiful Willie Lohman kind of thing where he's just like, it's a joke, mom, it's a joke. Like, she's like, what is this mean?

And then sitting down with his broken hand trying to play power of love. Oh, what a sad, sad, man. And I love, I also, a great cover for that family eating together scene is, you know, they're so showing off of like, look, Marty, like Michael J. Fox is pouring a drink for Michael J. Fox and he drinks it. But by having the two other Michael J. Foxes where eye concealing glasses, they avoid any eyeline problems. Like, you don't get that uncanny valley. that in roger rabbit they could just fix that of like well yeah any valiant's looking here but roger shouldn't be here oh let's draw roger on his tiptoes like that's a famous story of how they fixed it i never thought of that okay perfect it's uh i that's how i deconstructed it is but the

technology of it yeah in the deleted scenes there's like a master shot of all of them doing different things at the table together it's like such a show-offy thing but ultimately it means nothing and they cut it out and the special effects guys were so mad because it's three months Michael J. Fox is each coexisting and moving around and it just didn't really do anything for the movie. Yeah. Another bit of novelization that kind

of expounds a little bit of these scenes that has stuck with me for the last 30 years or 25 years or whatever since I've read that book is that Lorraine is a little bit ashamed that they have a crappier model

rehydrator. That it takes 15 seconds to rehydrate their pizza. She is disappointed that you don't have a rehydrator that works faster. Wow, that's hilarious. I definitely have to... It shows that they're not quite, you know, high class to McFly's. But it also predicted

like smart homes. Like, I want to open my door and like, welcome. Lord of the Manor, king of the castle. And you can do voice command lights in your house now. If you want to have Jeff Bezos listen to you at all times, you can do you... He knows what I want to buy. I want

that. Also, I love another great set design thing is just that Statue of Liberty torch lamp that Marty walks by old Marty walks by I love that yeah and then there's gonna be so much more for Elizabeth Shue she does good with just the you know hiding around the house type thing but then they just

they knock her out again that's a great like Prattfall though the I'm young I'm old kind of thing with both versions of her and not one of the funniest lines in the movie is Doc's speech about like how the world the entire universe

cadet and he's like well you know that's just a worst case scenario maybe just this galaxy just go away it's a mouthful frame well we have to move on though to 1985 a the middle act of the movie where uh the characters don't really it's more about learning about what happened and taking in the horror of this new world now i have to say this podcast is launching on an interpitude time uh for the patreon folks it's a day before election day uh for the non-patrium folks it's a week six days after election day so uh i apologize if the wound is still fresh, but Biff Tannen in this movie completely modeled after Donald Trump. This dark reality version of him, he was a prominent public figure in 1989 if you weren't alive or old enough at

the time to be aware. And when I saw this again, for the most recent time in 2016, he was running for president. And I was like, well, yeah, even as a seven-year-old, I was like, I've seen Donald Trump in Mad magazine. I know what parody is. It's supposed to be him. And then watching in 2016, I didn't know a lot about Trump outside of, you know, what you learned about him running for president. I was like, well, yeah, he clearly he's a, he's a, you know, a braggard, he's got the goofy hair, he's the real estate guy. But upon watching it this time, did I realize, like, oh, my God, it is so much more than just the superficial qualities. Like, this is a savage parody of Donald Trump when he was only in his 40s.

Uh, man, it's painful to watch now. Yeah. Just how correct it was. Like, yeah. Even down to his, like, racist landlord policies. Like, when you, when you, when Marty returns to a There's a black family living in his house He gets chased out And the father's like We're not going to sell to you We're not selling we're not leaving

And you see the entire neighborhood It's like all blacked out And there's like a Biff realty sign in every line Yeah he's trying to get out the black families And like I'm also really glad They had that line at the end there Because at first It's teased like

That this is a mix up That the father just thinks That Marty McFly is a person Who broke into his daughter's room for nefarious purposes and I was you know you could be fearful that that you're going to have to see jokes

about that or not jokes but like that situation to then make it about like oh you're just trying to scare us off our property I was like oh thank God we're talking about racist real estate scandals instead of sexual assault here also that Martin everything has to be explained to Mari the fact that like I think

he points out when they put when they do as they do with Elizabeth's Jew in this movie and make her lie down somewhere he notices oh there are bars on the window which at that point he should realize like well if that's how that house is and my house I can't get into perhaps I don't live in my house anymore

but he doesn't realize that until he literally lands on somebody inside the house I want to know how this struck us all upon seeing this recently because again we have lived through four years of Donald Trump and it is so surreal to see like the villain of this 80s movie has been our president for four years

yeah I think it really hit me when Doc Brown said well you know, this, it may as well be hell, basically. I'm like, yeah, I'm feeling that. I'm starting to feel like we are living in 1985, A. God, no, yeah. Yeah, the people driving around in the big trucks shooting guns is very 2020. Yeah, Trump loves his big, beautiful bikers and all the boaters, too.

Probably there were boats here, but I guess Hill Valley's landlock, so we're not going to see any boaters. Yeah, and especially in the last year, a kid I own the police is a, that's a darker line, too. That too, that stuck out to me, too, which is like, you never. see cops in these movies to begin with which is a problem but then you realize like oh yeah marty can't go to the cops and like man tom wilson as this character you should just be another buffoon he is a murderer he is like such an intimidating villain in this form despite being a buffoon with ridiculous hair and like a fat suit and everything like he is like such a fearsome villain in the third act you you know there's moments where you see him decide like i'm not just going

to be a bully, I will try to murder this person. And it shows that it just takes a tiny little push to get him, just the promise of being rich, gets teen Biff to go from regular bully to killer. And this Biff has been rich for decades. So he is, he's done everything he wants to do over and over again. Like, yeah. I just got to say one thing. God bless America. I love, that line is perfect. Yeah. I love to that he, like he got so. smart that in the in the very helpful video that explains how biff got rich which i think there's an extended version of that on the ride oh yeah when you ride the ride well when you used to be able to ride the right yes yeah that oh yeah the but the in the biff video that he even waited to his

21st birthday because it's like well if he makes a million dollars in one day illegally when he's not of age then that screws up his whole plan so he has to do it on his 21st birthday that's true it was a good touch yeah and and also in those you know you pause the headlines on the newspaper you see like he bought a toxic waste place they are approving to put toxic waste all over this is why hill valley is looks so bad because he's literally poisoned to the ground around it not just filled it with illegal gambling and controlling the cops but like he has salted the earth basically yeah and blotted out the skies as well yeah it's a yeah and a deleted scene you do see the burn down school it's a really cool shots. Oh, that's great. Yeah. Oh, God. Seeing

the principal with his shotgun into like bandolier there. That's great. Jeremy, any thoughts on the Biff-Trump connection? I mean, it was explicit. Like, even so Lorraine is like a different kind of functional alcoholic in this 1985 in which appearance-wise she is based on Tammy Fay Baker, the wife of the famous, you know, scam lord preacher, who eventually recanted and it became a good person. But it's perfect that it's like Trump. Maybe Faye did, not her husband now. But it's perfect that we have a Trump caricature and a Tammy Faye character as like the tackiest 80s power couple together. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't really have much to add. I think we've kind of covered it pretty thoroughly. But, you know, I do think this was by far the most on point and merciless rendition of Trump in media at the time.

And he was very ripe for satire. I mean, you know, even the Bloom County comic put his brain inside a dead vomiting cat. That's true, yes. And turned him into the president. But, you know, that was ridiculous, whereas this is like, oh, yep, here's the future. Like, they actually saw 2016, not 15. I do like how they show that 1985 A. Biff has diversified his interests. Because something that always stuck into my head when I watched this was like, at some point, him betting on all of these sports events

will change sports. Like when he's making millions, is that changing how the teams play? And does the book change along with it? Or does the book become useless at some point? That always, I didn't quite understand how, you know, becoming a billionaire on sports betting at some point as to, maybe do they change legislation on how you?

I think actually they did point out that he just changed legislation. He legalized it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And this is the most like, it's a wonderful life part of the movie. Like he comes back to Pottersville. and this is totally like inspired by the capra the capra movie yeah the way marty's walking around

confused by it is the same he should if he only grabbed someone by the lapels and say like well you talk straight to me uh yeah there's some kind of game uh i i think it's one of the things you threw out there dave is that we've seen that a newspaper or a matchbook or a photo if you bring a thing from the future to the past with you information changing on it as the future changes. So I definitely think his almanac, like if he bet on the World Series and kept winning it,

wouldn't the teams even notice like, oh, he bet on us? Okay, then let's change how he play. He would have been killed by the mafia. Yes, that I guess it's because he got rich in a small place like Hill Valley. There was no mafia to kill him. Yeah. And he never left. Yeah. And I will say, like, I love the scene

in this second act where, you know, Marty discovers his father is dead. And then that's when Doc appears. He's like, I'm going to tell you how big you fucked up. And then he's like, he's breaking it down. And I love like, and this has happened to me! It's like, you fucked over your best friend too, buddy,

with this gambling trick. And I love, it's, in any other movie it would be so hokey and too expository, but I love the blackboard scene. Yeah. And like, now we've internalized all this time travel mechanics, but it was so necessary for

this 89 audience, but it works. It works so well. I really think it was essential for them to lay out the idea of time paradoxes and split timelines in a very simple, visible fashion like this, because it was something you didn't really see a lot in media at that point. So, yeah, I think it works really well. A teacher with a chalkboard pointing at lines. Like, no, see, he underlines 1985A. No, that doesn't work. And this taught people, I said this in our last one about these.

this taught people as film viewers the rules of time travel that they have to explicitly say in Avengers Endgame Back to the Future doesn't count here that's not right

like they have to which by the way if you enjoy the Avengers films and Back to the Future the Russo brothers and the two writers of Infinity War and End Game they did an hour long interview

with Bob Gale about Back to the Future and they are like fawning fans who are like we made me movies because of you. Thank you, Bob Gale. And Bob Gail's like, oh, you kids. I think this movie in particular, and then the third

one, both kind of of, you know, saw into the future of like IMDB and people nitpicking movies because there's so many times in this movie and in the third one, they say like, oh, well, why don't we just do this? And then Doc literally explains, we can't do that because or we can't go back to 2015 because 2015 changed. And by the end of the movie, we can't land on

Biff because our car would get crushed, not his. And then in the third, explaining all the ways that you can't get a 1885 DeLorean up to 88 miles per hour. I just thought it was, you know, like we're nitpicking it. But even then, like they nitpick their own movie. That's why the whole series holds up so well is because they thought, you know, over like these things multiple times and explain why you can't do certain things. Doc Brown is there to make the movie pet improve as much as possible. Because the mechis and Gale, they grew up the nerds of. sci-fi B horror movies and

comic books and they were the pedants themselves who would be mad if Dr. Frankenstein went somewhere he couldn't have or whatever like that's not the rules for Dracula. They knew those things and so now they could finally

fix them and have a character like Doc be the official scientist of the movie like oh my God when he explains like well you have to go back to November 12th, 1855 maybe he's the nexus of all things ever happened or it's a giant coincidence yeah and like all time travel games rely on this mechanic where it's like it's one event that everything hinges on you need to fix that event and

then the timeline will be fixed yeah which somehow biff seeing a flying car and all of these other things that doesn't change the future that's all the same just if you get rid of that almanac which i guess you just have to say like well biff was pretty brain damaged all that night and that that explains it but uh god his and then the way they layer in just the little bit of stuff for part three not only with like the doc saying like once i'm basically saying if he doesn't obsess about time travel anymore he could finally get a girlfriend yeah and the shot of plenice would and then the flickering of the uh the 1885 on the delorians time read out he's like i gotta get the fix someday marty yeah and and you see they mentioned tannins 1885 of uh guy too god

yeah one one final thing in act two before we speak through act three is that like i did notice that the rest of them, like the McFly The McFly family doesn't matter anymore, but we do get mentions of Linda, Dave McFly, and Jill Bird Joey, who we never see, except as an infant in the first movie, but there was the deleted scene

with Dave McFly in which he is a wino that Marty stumbles into on the steps of Biff's Pleasure Mansion. And that scene only exists for Marty to know that his mother is up there. But they didn't need that information. So Dave, they cut out a vital Dave from this movie, and I hope you're okay with that.

And I was angry, believe me. but I think I actually another reason they didn't include that scene is because the actress who played Linda I believe was pregnant at the time or was unable to appear in the movie so or actually they may have filmed her because she was pregnant and that was her reflection is that she was pregnant but they basically yeah because they couldn't have the parallel of showing what happened to the sister they didn't want to show what happened to the brother so they just kind of alluded to it during that conversation between between Biff and Lorraine. I like that they're not completely forgotten. Like, you know, Dave, he was a model burking employee. We all remember him from that. And yeah, the end of act two of Marty confronting Biff with that information.

Like, I like too that Marty, Marty underestimates Biff when he's like, oh, if I confront him, Biff will just tell me everything. And then Biff then reveals to him like, yeah, but I was also told if an old man or a young kid ask about this, I should murder them right now, and I'm going to... A crazy-eyed old man. Yeah. Wild hair. Never thought it'd be you.

So act three, we'll go over this in like 10, 15 minutes. But so when I was a kid and watching this movie and not having an appreciation for the full story, act one was the highlight, right? It was like, oh, the cool future stuff. Now for me, this is the highlight, is going back to the first movie and interacting with scenes from the first movie and also trying to not fuck up what Marty does in the first movie. It's so cool. And it's also what I like about it is that it is a love letter to itself. Marty McFly is a fan of his own movie There's a scene in this movie where he's like

Oh God I got to watch this scene I got to watch the scene of George knocking out Biff It's great So like even Marty likes the movie Just like you I love that It's so self-indulgent but it's cute Yeah and I think it's a benefit of this being Filmed multiple years later

That people had watched that first movie so much They knew all of these scenes so well And the you know the producers and the writers And everyone who worked on this movie knew that people had analyzed every scene that they don't try to do anything they don't try to cheat it's all everything that happens here

it happens in the background and not in a way that it would ever interrupt what's happening in that movie the one thing I think of is the principle like had he been in once like one scene or like he's not in so many of the scenes by the time the dance comes around that you can have that little side thing where he steals the magazine

and Marty has to go follow him because yeah he was not in those scenes so that that works completely perfectly and just, yeah, being able to have all these things happen in the background that it's, it's, like, yeah, it is a love letter to the first movie and it never betrays any of the continuity of it. And they have such great excuses about how they royally fuck up being in November 12th because Marty gets stuck in a garage for like four hours.

You can't do anything else. And he leaves it to Doc, and Doc's like, oh, I can do it. And it takes them hours to buy a bicycle and a costume. And find Biff's house. He's like looking at a map when he's like Shakley riding his bike. It's because he's like, well,

I can't just drive around in a DeLorean or fly in the daytime. I'm sorry. They work very hard to be like, no, this resolution has to happen during the dance. It has to happen then. Yeah.

Yeah. I know the part of me that always thought like they have multiple attempts. I would, if I was Doc, I would have just called him Oligan at that point. Like, okay, you're in the garage.

Look, that's really going to screw things over. Let's just do this again. And then maybe leave a note for yourself. in the garage to like they just head home there's another two versions of us that got this instead

it helps that they are separated as well because if Marty wasn't stuck in the car that drives away with Biff if they could have talked to each other and just stood like okay what do we do now then they might have come up with that but Marty's stuck in the car with Biff so

he can't really leave anywhere and he can't even talk to him on the Wokie Taki because he goes through a bridge or through the tunnel This entire act is like a stealth mission for Marty And I love watching the first movie thinking Well of course Marty is up in those rafters And of course Marty sneaking around the school

Oh he's in the principal's office now Like you could watch the first movie thinking like Well back to the future two Marty is here He's just off screen and he's doing stuff When I remember You know Lorraine says to Biff when he shows up in one Like you're drunk

You see when Biff arrives It meets with Billy Zane and the other two guys They give him alcohol They're spiking the punch and he is getting drunk. You're seeing it happen. And we also see like additional scenes of him dealing with the repairs of his car, which makes me even more murderous towards Calvin Klein. He always said to Calvin Klein in the first movie,

he says to him like, this cost me $300. And you then get to see earlier when he's like, $300. And he's arguing with Roger Rabbit again about that. Charles Fleischer just wanted to play a human being. Jeremy, I really want to know like I didn't get a full appreciation for this until like my 20s when I watched all the movies back to bed. and like to me still like this could be like one of the coolest ideas ever in a movie to just go back to the first movie not just for the cynical nature of showing you what you already love but just for like the sheer fuckery of it all like what was it like to be there witnessing this happen I mean it was yeah like someone said you know I had seen this movie quite a few times by the time this came out so there was this appreciation for like the fact that hey it's that thing that we recognize but it's all so seamless and they do a really good job of linking scenes together.

Like, you know, Skinner in his office looking through the book that he swipes from Biff and then kind of catching, you know, like something catches his attention and he heads out of the office and then has to go, you know, deal with stuff. Like, there's a lot of things that really clearly tie like continuity together for events of the first movie. And it's, uh, it's really effective and really thoughtful. So I think it works that way, even though it's kind of conspicuous, you know, like Marty's creeping along up in the rafters of, or whatever it's called, the gantry, the rigging of the stage. Like, you know, you're not seeing him in the original sequence, but I don't know, it all does work.

And yeah, it was, it was very cool and impressive. And I don't think, I don't think we'd really seen anything like that in a movie before. It was definitely great use of special effects and split screen, but also just really thoughtful staging and scene construction so that all of this worked. And, you know, it didn't undermine the first movie. You like you can say, you know, all the stuff that I saw, it still happened. It still worked. I think that's really impressive.

I think the one major change that happens visibly to the timeline is that Marvin Berry has to take a step around a ladder to call his cousin chuck that's like the one major change what and i even appreciate the fake out where marty thinks he's gotten the almanac and it's actually not oh la la la yeah it's a it's a great fake out because you think oh he he did it but no biff is super sleazy so of course of course he still has the almanac himself and he got his porn magazine taken and they set up that dust jacket in the first act the lady explains what a dust jacket is so perfect I will say like because this is a middle movie, the resolution is not amazing. Like I do like the action set piece that ends the movie.

It was something that came in late. They realized they didn't really have a set piece, like a big set piece. So Biff and Marty's showdown like hoverboard versus Ford in this tunnel. It's fun. It's cool. But like the first movie's climax and the third movie's climax are very similar. But they're both very, very exciting and tense. this one is a little lacking

but I understand that because it is just the middle connective tissue between one and three like it doesn't need it I feel like the climax of Act 2 is more exciting with Biff

you know trapping Marty out on the rooftop and Marty just you know apparently leaping to his death which is a gimmick that has been used time and again in media like the you know the game Mega Man Legends starts with that in the prolog

like people people love doing that like blind jump Oh, my flying vehicle was here to save me. And I noticed another thing. So, like, I always noticed something new with these movies when I watch it. One of the things I noticed was it's what seems like a throwaway line. When Marty comes back to the Biff Tower to confront Biff in the hot tub, the first thing he says, like, how did you get past security on the first floor? It's like, well, the DeLorean dropped them off at a higher level. And so, yeah.

And so it's established somehow in our minds that the DeLorean is there waiting. So Doc was backing him up the whole time. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't just a blind, like, oh, Doc showed up out of nowhere. That's great. Yeah, the, well, and, like, the little thing of, they need a rope for Marty to grab for the big exit from the action scene. But they don't, like, Doc doesn't just have a rope in his time machine.

So he has to fuck up driving his flying car and grab onto a bunch of tassel or, I guess, like a streamer or whatever? Yeah, it's for the housing development that they're going to live in. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. And that that ends up saving him. And also that like another little bit I really like is how that the joke that of Marty saying in the first movie. And you know, if you ever have a kid when he's eight and he lights the carpet on fire, that thing, it works again because you think the scene is over if you forgot that joke because you're seeing through the window, Marty talking to Lorraine and George. I love how it goes out of focus as not George turns his head towards the camera. It's perfect. So you think that Marty's coming through the door then, but his speech about the carpet gives just enough time for the chicken thing to happen and then interrupt when he opens the door to actually leave. It's so perfect. And again, think about that in the first movie when you're watching it.

He just knocked himself out. Yes, yeah. Oh, in the line, he says like, oh, God, it feels like I was here just yesterday. And Doc's like, yeah, it was yesterday. You were here yesterday. I just love trap up really quick here. We're going to be ending this podcast soon by. I just love how much this movie still gives your brain to chew on.

Just like when Marty is abandoned by Doc by accident at the end of the movie, when Doc disappears in the sky, suddenly the car pulls up and you think about like, oh, like Doc knew exactly where Marty would be. So that letter has been aging in time waiting to be delivered to Marty seconds after he sees Doc leave. Like stuff like that still makes my brain like catch on fire. And then, like, thinking about the second Doc sends Marty back to 85, another Marty runs up to him. And that's how the movie ends. Just thinking about, boy, what, like, what if that's how the first movie ended? You wouldn't need a second movie. The scene stopped for Doc Brown, but you didn't see it.

Yeah, well, and getting Count Floyd to play that guy is perfect. Are you, Marty McFly? Because he arrives so menacingly, he's, you know, like a noir film heavy who's like, well, then I got this for you. I think he's coming to kill him, but Marty doesn't know what's going on. And then his description of like, yeah, we've had this for, you know, 70 years. And now, well, I got a bet going if a person will actually be here in 70 years. And it is also, it's an ad for Western Union that you can, but that's great too because Western Union would exist in 1885. So it is a business he could give it to.

The only weird thing at the end of the movie, suddenly, party starts calling him the doc and I'm like is this a script problem or the doc's alive it's just like the doc he's in the past but he's alive you okay son yeah and also that he needs that information because if you're a viewer of the movie you're also like well how the how's marty's trapped in 1955 now what's gonna happen I do love that Joe Flaherty and Tom Wilson in the 80s they were playing on 1950s nostalgia and then in the 2000s they would be both be on freaks and geeks which created off media nostalgia yeah wow you are so right I guess

there was one big plot hole the one cinema sin I'll I joke fuck cinemasons anyway but the one cinema sin I will complain about here is how when Marty's in the they were going back

to 55 and they're talking about changing 85 back to how was he's like but what about I and what about I and Jennifer no everything will change around them they'll be fine like really the poor girl's doomed yeah uh i guess uh died some final thoughts here before we wrap up again uh uh there are three games to talk about for part two and one game to talk about for part three and we'll do that in the third movie podcast because that movie is

great i think it's underappreciated but there's less mechanically to talk about so that discussion won't be shorter than this one but i will say my final thoughts are like the first movie is still the best movie like with the perfect scripts and so much love and heart this movie doesn't have those qualities to that extent, but I still think it moves so fast and has so many ideas that it is just as entertaining, maybe not as satisfying, but still like a perfect setup for the finale. Final thoughts, Dave, as the resident's biggest back to the future fan, future owner of the 40th anniversary edition and the 45th anniversary edition and so on. Let us know, what do you think about this movie after watching it again? Well, I remember as a kid, this was my favorite just because

they did so much time traveling and then I remember for a while I would you know I still do prefer the original back to the future but this is such a close second and you know free's not terrible but it like these two are just they exist on such a high level um yeah and and something I wanted to to quickly touch on was that like yeah this is a confined world it's just hill valley but they do kind of show you that the stakes kind of extend outwards and as a time travel geek I love seeing you know the first movie it was just that picture um this one that they have that whole newspaper and it's a it's a fun thing to pause and see all the other things like nixon nixon's fourth term and yeah i i i i i it i it pays such good homage to the the first movie and the

concept of time travel three kind of moves away from that but uh it's fun in its own way but i really love that this is it treats the first movie so well and it doesn't betray any of the ideals and it's a movie that knows that it was recorded it was filmed years later so uh it has to do its homework and it totally did and uh there's a reason that the the back to the future method of time travel is the one that sticks in people's head so much and has to be explained in Avengers because they did their homework and this movie is the one that did the homework like obviously there was a lot of rules made the first one, but this one, they really established the rules. And basically time travel movies have had to, you know, either exist within the same framework

or do a lot more homework to explain their own version of it just because of this movie, which is astonishing. Jeremy, what are your thoughts on this one? Yeah, I've really warmed up to this one over the years. You know, we were, like I said, excited about the possibility of a very immediate sequel to this one. but you know there was there was this kind of lingering i guess uncertainty about what this movie was i mean i think at this point we were kind of expecting sequels second movies in a series to be darker to be more complex to be more challenging to be more downbeat you know but the

question was is this a more complex movie in the sense of empire strikes back where it's good, or is it a darker movie in the sense of Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom where it's actually bad? And so I think we needed to see, you know, the third movie and then get some distance to finally be able to say like, oh, yeah, this is interesting and this really does a lot of heavy lifting, a lot of work to lay down a finale for the franchise for the series and really wrap up the story. But this is where everything escalates and becomes more complex to give the third movie, something to resolve for us. So yeah, I think it's a very successful movie. And even though, of course, the future stuff is very silly and not at all like the future that we

recognize in most senses, there are some parts that are, you know, in the dystopian era that resonate a little too much. So it kind of balances out. It's true. Henry, how about you? final thoughts on this one i appreciate this even more each time i watch it like i i'm still repeating what i felt in the first podcast too that i do think the first movie is like the best one but the complexity of this one and how it plays with all the toys and the bigger budget and all of these options they have available and also when they know they have a third movie the extra stuff they can layer in to pay off you know in back to the future one they could have a thing they say that's just seemingly a nothing line in act one and pay that off in act three but

now they can do it six months apart and a whole film apart they can just keep paying those things off the the wild gunman scene has no reason to exist in here other than just like to have kids say current video games are boring to them in the future but it pays off of like that's why marty can even shoot a gun and be accurate like uh so little things like that i just appreciate so much and when you know the effort that went into everything they design in it like by giving you a future to imagine and and thinking it through as well as they did like and it also the last thing he gave me more appreciation for watching it now was i had thought that the institute of future technology that was at Universal Studios, the building for the show.

I thought it looked kind of lame. And I was like, well, it's just like a warehouse with like a points in it. But that exact style of building is right next to the clock tower in 2015. Oh, okay. Like that type of architecture actually fits for the future. Now it doesn't fit as a show building for Krusty, the Clown's Krustyland. But that's a whole other story. So it even gave me more appreciation.

for one of the few flaws I saw in the Back to the Future ride which is one of my favorite rides ever. So thanks again for joining us for another episode of Retron's a fun topic as we straddle a historically interesting election, let's say. And yes, so thanks for joining us. If we are located on Twitter as Retronauts,

if you want to support the show and get some cool bonuses, please go to patreon.com slash Retronauts. Sign up there for three bucks a month to get access to all these podcasts one week at a time, ad free, at a higher bit rate. And then if you sign up for five bucks a month, you'll get two bonus podcasts every month.

Those are full-length podcasts. We've been doing this for all of 2020 so far. We're doing it in the future as well. So if you have not been part of that tier, we have probably done over, I will say, 20 podcasts at this point that you haven't heard. They're all full length, and that includes the original Back to the Future podcast. And again, that is located at patreon.com slash retronauts. And also at that tier, we have a weekly column by Diamond Fight. And a mini podcast they put online every week as well.

So that's another bonus you get on top of your bonus. this podcast as well at patreon.com slash retronauts that's what supports the show and we couldn't do any of this without you so thank you so much for considering supporting retronauts uh jeremy please let everyone know where to find you and what you're working on yeah you can find me on twitter as game spite and all over the place on the internet uh you know doing limited run games stuff and also you can find me doing youtube stuff on youtube talking about video games i do a lot of that old video games that's right i'm on brand all the time so that's where you can find me on the internet and dave how about you uh i'm at dave rudden on twitter and uh yeah i i would just

love to chat more with people about this when this episode comes out so you know just hit me up there um and and try to needle me about reading it at a novelization because i need to do my homework on that i want your your full audiobook version uh well we'll pay you to make that an extra retronauts you have to do all the voices for all the biffs though or else uh no money's in Henry, I think you podcast, right? Oh, I've been known to. Yes. Yeah, so if you don't know yet, you really should.

Me and Bob also host two weekly podcasts Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon. Me and Bob talk about a different animated series each week on What a Cartoon. And important for this one, you should hear me and Bob talk about the Back to the Future animated series with Dave Rudden on that very podcast. It's pretty recent at the time you're hearing this, so check that out on our What a Cartoon podcast feed. And of course, I'm sure you love The Simpsons. Don't you? Don't you want to hear me and Bob talk about every episode of The Simpsons

in chronological order while you can on the Talking Simpsons podcast. And those are both supported on a Patreon to help me and Bob do it full time. That is at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Sign up now or else in the future you'll be saying, I wish I could go back in time and put some money on that Patreon Put some money on the Mackeys Yes, as for me

You can find me on Twitter As Bob Servo And thanks again for listening To another episode of Retronauts We'll see you in the future Thank you. Thank you.