I asked question in another thread and never got a response, so I will ask it here.
Powers said this in another thread:
I responded like this:
Who is right? Wasn’t the joke that Doc looked identical after he peeled the face-peel off?
I haven’t seen the film in a while, but I remember the joke being exactly as you say, that it’s funny because he looks the same.
Yes, my wife thinks so as well. I was 11 when we saw this movie in the theater and I remember my parents and brother laughing and my Dad chuckling and saying, “He looks the same!”
It’s how I thought everyone took the joke.
It was both. They put him in make-up in the first BTTF 1985, but it barely registered on screen, and in the end was recognised as a waste of time. They decided to both remove the need for it and explain it away in BTTF Part II with a joke that was almost self-referential. “We’re removing it because we didn’t need it and nobody noticed anyway. But just in case, let’s address it and justify it in-story”.
When I last watched, I could have sworn his face looked smoother after the mask removal. Though I was watching in HD on a screen close to my face. It might not be visible on standard definition TV.
Again, I saw it in the theater on the big screen and we all thought the joke was that he looked identical.
I do get that it very well was likely a meta-joke about how that whole make-up attempt in the first movie was irrelevant. Hardly anyone thinks of Doc looking all that different in 1955 vs 1985. He did, but it was not a major part of it, unlike Biff and his parents.
I agree the gag is he looked the same. If they intended it to be subtle it’s no longer funny.