Greatest sequel of all time?

Once described as having an overstuffed plot’, Back to the Future 2’ is now up there with the second Terminator’ and Godfather’. Geoffrey Macnab goes back to see what changed

- Geoffrey Macnab

A sequel to Back to the Future was inevitable – a cinematic certainty from the moment the Universal studio bosses did their bean-counting and found their 1985 time-travelling comedy had made $388.8m (£299m) on a shoestring budget of $19m. Call it Hollywood pragmatism or Hollywood greed, either way they never would’ve let a money-maker like this die.

“Back to the Future became this giant hit – a piece of corporate real estate,” director Robert Zemeckis told Jonathan Ross in 2019, explaining how he and co-writer Bob Gale were pressganged into making a follow-up. “We were sat down by the heads of the studio, and they said, ‘Look fellas, we’re going to make a sequel, and you can either be part of it or not.’”

Back to the Future Part II, then, which saw the return of both Michael J Fox’s Marty McFly and Christopher Lloyd’s mad scientist, was far from a passion project. Zemeckis was too busy finishing Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) to devote much attention to the sequel early on, with most of the initial work being done by Gale instead. And Fox was only available to shoot in the evenings and at weekends – contracted to finish the final season of Family Ties during the day.

To its detractors, this was theme park filmmaking at its worst – less a film than it was a brazen attempt to cash in on some lucrative IP. (Sure enough, Back to the Future rides were soon after introduced at various Universal amusement parks). Critics were similarly cynical, with reviews initially very equivocal about the second film, made back-to-back with a third instalment (which didn’t help the cash grab accusations). “Strains credibility,” complained Variety, though that’s arguably an unfair criticism of a film dealing with time travel. Elsewhere, it was called a “rushed job”.