I’ve never seen the 2 sequels to Back to the Future. I’ve seen the original and I enjoyed it . I’ve been listening to the Now Playing podcasts and they reviewed all 3 Back to the Future films. They have a very negative opinion of the second film and a mixed opinion on the third.
I never got to see the sequels in the theatre as I was busy in college. I thought I’d rent them since they’ve just been re-released.
Any opinions? I liked the first one as a fun popcorn movie.
I think I’m in the minority, but I enjoyed part 2. Part 3 was okay, but it seemed like a lot of the steam had been let of the trilogy by then.
I loved the original, didn’t care at all for the first sequel, and liked the last one. I liked to see Christopher Lloyd get to do something besides act demented for a change.
The middle one was so mean-spirited and unpleasant that it was a chore to watch.
Number 2 is very clearly meant to connect 1 & 3. The second and third were in fact filmed simultaneously even though one’s set in 2015, 1985 and 1955 and the third is mainly set in 1885.
I’m with the majority in considering 2 the weakest link.
Pardon the hijack but I love thisfrom Cracked.
i liked all three of them. even if 2 is the weakest of the 3, i don’t think it’s weak overall simply by merit of it being a BTTF movie.
They’re not as good as the first and, as other people mentioned, the second is the weak link, but they’re still really fun flicks. If I happen to see one of them is on while flipping through the channels I’ll certainly stop and watch.
I agree with you. I think the second Back to the Future is underrated and is better than the third. I mainly like it because it has a lot of little scenes that you can miss if you’re not paying complete attention (e.g., the front page showing Doc Brown being committed also has a story reporting Richard Nixon’s announcement that he’s running for a fifth term*). However, because it’s a bridge between the first and final movies, the narrative is left unfinished and at the time many people felt let down.
*Yes, I’m aware that Watchman already had as a plot point Nixon being president during the 80s but few people outside of hardcore comic book circles had read Watchman when BTTF 2 came out.
The sequels weren’t that bad. They weren’t that good, either.
The second is the weakest link in the chain, partly because it’s just that- a link between the first and third movie, which carries a lot of exposition. The parts set in 2015 are particularly weak because they don’t play on our nostalgia for the '50s or the Wild West (or, unintentionally, our modern nostalgia for the '80s) but rather are a rather silly picture of 2015, which gets sillier by the year. However, when watching the three movies in sequence as one story, the weak parts of the second are just a weak moment within a larger narrative that’s pretty good.
I think I like part 3 the best because it’s the more focused of the two. There are several time periods involved but not as much jumping around as in part 2. Also, I liked the focus on Doc Brown’s personality.
Part 2 is okay but I think they might have cranked up the “evil psychopathic dick” meter just a little too high on Biff. I never really bought that the dude in Part 1 would have actually had the guts to kill George McFly. Also, the part about him basically forcing Lorraine to marry him and making her get a boob job was pretty horrifying. She really didn’t have any other way to support her kids?
Both are equal to the original in my opinion.
Yep, I love 'em both and think they are amazing. Part 3 is my favorite movie of the series.
I love all three films. I certainly thought BTTF2 was the weaker of the three back when they came out, but when you watch the trilogy all in a row, they are fantastically well-crafted, and a lot of fun.
I think one of the reasons people dislike the sequels is that the first wasn’t really about Time Travel, it was a relationship comedy, but the second one is all about the consequences of time travel, while the third one is back to being about relationships yet the setting is so different that it feels entirely separate.
But I love them, and re-watch them regularly.
I also wasn’t sure what to make of it when 2 was new. Saw it in the theater with my whole family.
Having watched the entire series many times, 2 has some of the best moments. When he runs along himself in the past and we watch him interact with part 1, it’s just great stuff.
I agree with GuanoLad.
Watch all three movies back to back.
Another voice in the choir here. I loved both sequels as much as the original, although having Flea emerge as a rival to Marty was a little bit out of the blue. Watch for a cameo from ZZ Top in part 3.
Funny, because on this side of the ocean, the consensus is more that the 2nd was a very good movie. Pushing the concept of time travel all the way (it was more a plot element than the core of the story in the first). The 3rd is usually considered like just a western retelling of the first flick, with nothing to add.
The sequels were pretty good, but nowhere near as great as the first. In my opinion, this is because the first added the extra spice of a pseudo-Oedipus tale to the basic time travel story. There was nothing comperable in the sequels.
I like it when people agree with me. It happens so rarely.
When I was younger, my preferred order was: 2, 1, then 3.
My recollection is that they initially planned for only one sequel, but they had to break up parts 2 and 3 because it just got too complicated and overstuffed.