On October 21st, 2015, I witnessed Back to the Future for the first time in my life. The fact I’d never seen the film for so long baffled many of my close friends. But I’m a pop culture addict, and I thought I’d absorbed Back to the Future through references. I could’ve told you the plot before I even saw the film. Seeing it for the first time, it made immediate sense why I already knew every beat. It’s an incredible film, perfectly paced with quotable and recreatable scenes.
But the reason I saw that film on the day I did had little to do with Back to the Future, but rather Back to the Future: Part II – in which protagonist Marty McFly visits a neon-colored interpretation of October 21, 2015. Going into the sequel, I had a similar confidence I already knew the story. Hoverboards, Pepsi Perfect, and Jaws 19 had been all over social media thanks to the special date. Just as the original was a nostalgic journey through the culture and society of 1955, I assumed Part II would be a similar adventure through the future.
Yet as it turns out, pop culture has lied to me for my entire life about the second Back to the Future movie. Only the film’s first act takes place in 2015, with a short detour into a ruined version of 1985. The vast majority is Marty skirting through the background of the original film, attempting to grab a Sports Almanac from villain Biff Tannen without destroying the work of his past self. As a movie, it’s not as good as the original, but it serves as a solid sequel. It’s a clever next step for a series about time travel – which raises the question: why doesn’t anybody ever talk about it?
People aren’t nostalgic for Back to the Future: Part II – just the first thirty minutes of it. It’s not merely because the future sequences are most pertinent to life in 2015. This movie has been talked up for years, and elements of the alternate 1985 also get brought up in conversation. But the bulk of this movie has been forgotten in time, selectively recalled as something it isn’t.
This isn’t to say Part II isn’t worth watching. As mentioned, it’s a clever expansion to the first film that has some inventive takes on our now-contemporary society. It’s also interesting to watch director Robert Zemeckis develop as a filmmaker. Much of Part II was shot on greenscreen, superimposing new footage on top of scenes from the first. It’s clearly ahead of its time. That same motivation clearly drove the same man to make movies like The Polar Express and Beowulf, where he pushed motion-capture technology a bit beyond its abilities to fit his artistic vision. Even the blatant cliffhanger at the end of the film (immediately followed by a full trailer for Part III) feels oddly prophetic of the after-credits stinger at the end of every Marvel movie. Auto-lacing Nikes and dehydrated Pizza Hut may still be ages off, but Part II managed to predict the future all the same.