My favourite is 1, and though I love 2 and 3, they definitely don’t live up to the original. Not sure how popular or unpopular that opinion is, haha.
Would love to hear your thoughts, too!
-Baleaf
IMO:
The original is great. The second is probably the weakest (though still enjoyable), and the third is really good (though not as good as the original).
I think all three are great. The first one really is the best, although I have a soft spot for #2, because I always like those sorts of time-travel shenanigans.
I have a little theory that part of the reason #1 works so well is the structure they chose for the story. The story is cleanly separated: first there’s the 1985 portion, then 1955, then back to “new” 1985. There aren’t any flashbacks between eras or anything like that. This means the storytelling has to be really tight - they had to get all the 1985 setups in place efficiently in order to get to the time travel without boring the audience. If you watch the start of the film with this in mind, you can see how fast the setups are done, and how just about every little thing that happens has a payoff later.
Good summary. Back to the Future gets a 10 from me and is one of my top 100 movies. II I barely bother to rewatch. III sucks me in and is pretty damn good. I guess a 9 in my book. II might be a 6.
I love all of them. Saw II and III in the theater when I was 11 and 12. Great experience!
Classic feelgood films. A solid trilogy and when they happen to appear as I flick through the channels I’ll always pass some happy time with them.
1 is best, then 3 then 2 but all of them hang well together as a whole.
The first was a solidly enjoyable movie for me. Nothing classic or exceptional about it but it hits the predictable right notes. Part of the issue for me is that I’ve never considered M.J. Fox to be all that interesting as an actor. IMHO, he never brought anything special to any performance I’ve ever seen.
Two and three are basically unwatchable for me.
I love all of them.
I recently watched a documentary about the making of Back to the Future and the fan culture that has grown up around it that mentioned something that is in retrospect obvious but I had never thought of it before: Marty has no character arc in the first movie.
The protagonist in a movie almost always has a character arc. They have a flaw that leads them down a thorny path, then they overcome it and become a better person. But Marty is just an awesome 80s dude trapped in a lame-o family that keeps him from fulfilling his awesome 80s dreams until he gets stuck back in time and, in the process of making his way back, shows everyone in the 50s how awesome they can be.
Also interesting is that they tried to retrofit a flaw into him for the 2nd and 3rd movies (“nobody calls me chicken!”) and it’s both unnecessary and kinda the dumbest and most ham-handed part of those movies.
II is objectively the worst of the three movies by a lot but is my personal favorite.
I think that the first one is a good movie, and the three of them are a good trilogy, but the second and third ones can’t really stand on their own like the first one can.
BTTF 2 @ 3 are 2 of the least standaloney movies ever made.
I speculated that the first Back to the Future movie is the movie I have watched the most. Mainly because the reruns used to be on a lot and I would flip channels, stop and watch for a few minutes.
The first movie is in my top 20, the third one is in my top 100. The second one is just okay for me.
I don’t know how many people got the change in the name of the mall. For those that don’t know…
At the beginning the name of the mall was Twin Pines Mall. He goes back in time and takes out a pine tree. At the end he goes back to the mall and the sign has Lone Pine Mall.
Minority opinion: I will never watch 2 and 3. I’m afraid the sequels will mess up a near-perfect movie and I won’t risk it.
I do not trust that the movies are good.
And before anyone says “watch it and see”, I have a few words: Star Trek 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. I wish I had never seen them
The first one was good when it came, but I saw agai a couple of years ago and it was nothing to me. Ditto for the others.
I still think he should’ve picked another song. Johnny B. Goode is a classic, but it was going to be released in a year or so anyway. Play some EVH, Marty, or at least some Clapton!
One of the reasons the first one is the best is that it’s not a science fiction movie, it’s a caper comedy. The second one is all about the science fiction time travel shenanigans, and the third is another caper but in a genre that has largely lost its mainstream popularity.
I love the trilogy as a whole (I often list them as some of my favourite movies), but I agree on the general ranking. They’re close, though. They work really well together, despite not being conceived as a trilogy. They managed to hide the disjointed continuity incredibly successfully.
I like all 3 movies. 3 is my favorite. It would be 1 but as a kid I went on a summer long vacation with my grandparents across country in their RV and 1 was the only movie we had and me and my brother watched it practically ever day si I got burnt out on it.
3 is also the only western movie I like.
I enjoy the whole trilogy and the first is the best, but I seem to be the only one who likes the third one the least. The time jumping in 2 and the interweaving with the events of the first movie were far more interesting to me than the whole “Marty in the Wild West” thing which was basically a reboot of the first film (“Marty spends the entire film in a past time period trying to fix what he changed to avoid dying/not existing”).
Yeah, I can see that. When you’ve got a hit movie about time travel to the past, the obvious follow-on is a movie about time travel to the future. And then you follow on from that with… another movie about time travel to the past? Been then, done that.
But then again, it does give a love interest for Dr. Brown, which I appreciated.
To spice things up a bit, is there any scene in film history more (unintentionally?) racist than the bit where Chuck Berry learns rhythm and blues from a white teenager? In retrospect, it’s very, very cringey.
I have chosen to believe that the implication is that Berry learns that particular song from Marty. But it’s still pretty cringeworthy if you think about it, and I sometimes wish they’d used a different song.