What I think about Back to the Future II
Oct. 22nd, 2015 03:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pebblerockerHappy Back to the Future day to people who are living in the past, relative to my position near the international date line! In the second film, October 21, 2015 is the date Marty and Doc arrived in the future - a future of flying cars, hoverboards, the nostalgic Cafe '80s... and keyless entry, mobile eftpos terminals, and Skype business calls.
I hadn't thought I was in the mood to watch the movie last night; I was stressed out after work and felt like anything intended to cheer me up would just make me crankier. But if I missed watching the movie on The Day, I'd regret it forever, wouldn't I - so I did, and before twenty minutes in I was in a greatly improved mood and actually having fun.
You know what though, they missed a big opportunity. The first film ends with Marty and Jennifer getting into the DeLorean with Doc Brown and flying away; then they decided to make a sequel and had to figure out what they could do with that scenario as the starting point. What did they do? They knocked Jennifer out within the first five minutes, and then she got a couple of minutes to overhear conversations from a cupboard before being knocked unconscious again; she spent most of the first half being carried around by Marty and Doc, limp as a sack of spuds, and then disappeared for the rest of the story. We only have the Doc's assurance that the timeline will re-form around her after she was abandoned on the porch in the hellish alternate 1985!
We've found out that Marty and Jennifer are still together, married with two children, thirty years in the future. That drives the whole start of the plot. Wouldn't it be so much better if we could see what it is that makes them work so well together? I think it would be more convincing if we're shown that these teenage sweethearts have what it takes to form a lasting relationship - not just told that, well, that's what they did. Imagine if Marty and Jennifer could have had an adventure in 2015 together, possibly involving both their son, who looks just like his father, AND their daughter, who could in this envisioning look like her mother instead of like Michael J. Fox in a wig. And they're in trouble which only their parents can solve, by impersonating them in a scene perhaps involving hoverboards!
And if anything needed explaining, but Marty shouldn't need to ask because he's an old hand at time travel, Jennifer could ask the Doc what the heck is going on. And when they go to 1955 again, Marty needs to avoid crossing over with himself from the first movie, and Jennifer also needs not to run into past-Marty because he doesn't know she's a time-traveller too, so seeing her would freak him right out unless she was heavily disguised, WHAT ARE GOOD DISGUISES FOR A TEEN GIRL IN 1955? And Jennifer could have a run-in with teenage Biff Tannen and maybe as a liberated 1980s girl she's done karate and she has ways of dealing with his harassment which weren't available to poor Lorraine. And it all gets ever more confusing and they need another walkie-talkie.
I hadn't thought I was in the mood to watch the movie last night; I was stressed out after work and felt like anything intended to cheer me up would just make me crankier. But if I missed watching the movie on The Day, I'd regret it forever, wouldn't I - so I did, and before twenty minutes in I was in a greatly improved mood and actually having fun.
You know what though, they missed a big opportunity. The first film ends with Marty and Jennifer getting into the DeLorean with Doc Brown and flying away; then they decided to make a sequel and had to figure out what they could do with that scenario as the starting point. What did they do? They knocked Jennifer out within the first five minutes, and then she got a couple of minutes to overhear conversations from a cupboard before being knocked unconscious again; she spent most of the first half being carried around by Marty and Doc, limp as a sack of spuds, and then disappeared for the rest of the story. We only have the Doc's assurance that the timeline will re-form around her after she was abandoned on the porch in the hellish alternate 1985!
We've found out that Marty and Jennifer are still together, married with two children, thirty years in the future. That drives the whole start of the plot. Wouldn't it be so much better if we could see what it is that makes them work so well together? I think it would be more convincing if we're shown that these teenage sweethearts have what it takes to form a lasting relationship - not just told that, well, that's what they did. Imagine if Marty and Jennifer could have had an adventure in 2015 together, possibly involving both their son, who looks just like his father, AND their daughter, who could in this envisioning look like her mother instead of like Michael J. Fox in a wig. And they're in trouble which only their parents can solve, by impersonating them in a scene perhaps involving hoverboards!
And if anything needed explaining, but Marty shouldn't need to ask because he's an old hand at time travel, Jennifer could ask the Doc what the heck is going on. And when they go to 1955 again, Marty needs to avoid crossing over with himself from the first movie, and Jennifer also needs not to run into past-Marty because he doesn't know she's a time-traveller too, so seeing her would freak him right out unless she was heavily disguised, WHAT ARE GOOD DISGUISES FOR A TEEN GIRL IN 1955? And Jennifer could have a run-in with teenage Biff Tannen and maybe as a liberated 1980s girl she's done karate and she has ways of dealing with his harassment which weren't available to poor Lorraine. And it all gets ever more confusing and they need another walkie-talkie.
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no subject
Date: 2015-10-22 11:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-22 08:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-23 09:25 am (UTC)I still love, love, love the 1st one and the 3rd comes second because steam-punk!
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Date: 2015-10-24 09:00 am (UTC)Do you think the 2015 they visited was down the same trouser-leg as the scary 1985? And elderly Biff was the future endpoint of fat-cat Biff and not of bullying Biff (from 1985 at the start of 1) or car-waxing Biff (from the end of 1/start of 2)? But how can it be, since Marty and Doc arrived in that 2015 before Biff was able to take the book back to himself?
I think I'm only confusing myself worse. Time travel, eh!
no subject
Date: 2015-10-24 09:44 pm (UTC)Yeah, time stuff is brain-hurty.
IMO the best part of II was the clever insertion of extra action into I.
[uses the closest icon to a timey-wimey one]