While Robert Zemeckis’ original Back to the Future from 1985 is praised as one of the greatest movies ever made and widely recognized as a timeless classic, its two sequels haven’t fared so well. Shot back-to-back and released a year apart, Back to the Future Part II and Part III haven’t been completely forgotten, but they aren’t held in nearly the same high regard as their iconic predecessor.
The second and third Back to the Future movies might not come close to matching the greatness of the original, but they’re both much better than their reputation would suggest. The second one takes a surprisingly dark turn in the alternate 1985, then revisits the original movie with an interesting twist, and the third one is a full-blown western as Marty travels back to frontier times to rescue the Doc, complete with a climactic gunfight and a train robbery.
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What made Back to the Future so much fun in the first place was the insurmountable odds stacked against Marty. The story is so engaging because it’s clearly established that there’s a million-to-one chance he’ll be able to ensure his own conception and return to his own time, and he’s constantly faced with more obstacles and setbacks on top of all that. The sequels retained this element – especially Part II, which shows audiences around the nightmarish dystopia that America will become if Marty fails to get the almanac away from Biff in 1955. Not only does he have to hide from Biff; since he’s ended up on the same day from the original movie, he also has to hide from himself trying to get his mom and dad together. In Part III, not only could Doc and Marty find themselves stranded a century before their own time; they could be shot dead by the fearsome Tannen gang, making the whole thing moot.
In most sci-fi westerns, the western tropes feel tagged-on, like the arbitrary train robbery in Solo: A Star Wars Story, and they fail to deliver on their promise as a western. Back to the Future Part III isn’t just a sci-fi western in name only. Robert Zemeckis and his team had a great affinity for classic westerns and made the time-traveling threequel as a full-on western. Back to the Future Part III fits the sci-fi elements around the western elements as opposed to the other way around.
When Doc and Marty hijack a train in the movie’s climactic set piece, it’s because a train is the only vehicle in the Old West that can get the DeLorean up to 88mph. The stakes are established and it actually makes sense within the story world to rob a train – they’re not just robbing a train because it’s an homage to westerns and that’s what people do in westerns. The movie also has a shootout in the middle of dusty old-timey Hill Valley inspired by A Fistful of Dollars that pays off the alternate Biff watching the Sergio Leone classic in his hot tub in Part II.
The writing of the sequels isn’t quite as sharp as the first movie – which is admittedly a high benchmark to hold the sequels to, given that it’s basically a perfect screenplay – but the follow-ups did retain what really made the original movie work so well: Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd’s on-screen chemistry as Doc and Marty. Their dynamic is as much of a joy to watch in the sequels as it is in the original movie, and the actors never phoned in any of their scenes together.
Unlike most comedy sequels, the Back to the Future sequels justify their existence. The first movie ended on a cliffhanger that the sequel wraps up in the opening act. Thanks to the almanac, one of the most memorable MacGuffins of all time, this opening sequence creates new conflicts that threaten to undo the happy ending of the original movie. Part II culminates in its own cliffhanger ending, with the Doc disappearing out of the sky and a decades-old letter written in 1885 being delivered to Marty in the rain.
All in all, the Back to the Future trilogy holds up as a complete story. Cliffhanger ending aside, the first Back to the Future movie could’ve easily been left on its own and enjoyed the same legacy as a standalone classic. But the sequels did enough to flesh out the characters and their world and continue their stories to feel like a necessary part of Doc and Marty’s journey.
Sticking the landing with a film trilogy is much easier said than done, as The Matrix Revolutions and the Star Wars sequels have demonstrated. By shaking things up with the Old West setting but keeping the story focused on the characters we’ve come to know and love and getting them to a happy place, Back to the Future Part III is one of the most satisfying threequels ever made.
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