Back to the Future Part II

Back to the Future Part II
Directed by	Robert Zemeckis
Produced by	Bob Gale Neil Canton
Screenplay by	Bob Gale
Story by	Robert Zemeckis Bob Gale
Starring	Michael J. Fox Christopher Lloyd Lea Thompson Thomas F. Wilson Elisabeth Shue Jeffrey Weissman
Music by	Alan Silvestri
Cinematography	Dean Cundey
Editing by	Arthur Schmidt Harry Keramidas
Production company(s)	Amblin Entertainment
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Running time	108 mins.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$40 million
Preceded by	Dad (1989) Back to the Future (1985)
Followed by	Always (1989) Back to the Future Part III (1990)

Back to the Future Part II is a 1989 American comic science fiction film and the second installment of the Back to the Future trilogy. It was directed by Robert Zemeckis from a screenplay written by Bob Gale, and stars Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Thomas F. Wilson and Lea Thompson. The plot picks up immediately where the original film left off. After repairing the damage to history done by his previous time travel adventures, Marty McFly (Fox) and his friend Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown (Lloyd) travel to 2015 to prevent McFly's future son from ending up imprisoned. However, their presence allows Biff Tannen (Wilson) to steal Doc's DeLorean time machine and travel to 1955, where he alters history by making his younger self wealthy.

The film was produced on a $40 million budget and was filmed back-to-back with its sequel, Part III. Filming began in February 1989 after two years were spent building the sets and writing the script. Two actors from the first film, Crispin Glover and Claudia Wells, did not return for the final two. Glover's character, George McFly, was not only minimized in the plot, but was obscured and recreated with another actor. Glover successfully sued both Zemeckis and producer Bob Gale, changing how producers can deal with the departure and replacement of actors in a role. Back to the Future Part II was also a ground-breaking project for effects studio Industrial Light & Magic (ILM); in addition to digital compositing, ILM used the VistaGlide motion control camera system, which allowed an actor to portray multiple characters simultaneously on-screen without sacrificing camera movement.

Back to the Future Part II was released by Universal Pictures on November 22, 1989. It received generally favorable reviews, although not as strong as the first one, with criticism on the plot's predictability and implausibility, but praise for the visual effects, acting and humor. A commercial success, it grossed over $331 million worldwide, making it the third-highest-grossing film of 1989.

Trivia

• According to Michael J. Fox, he found out there was going to be a sequel to Back to the Future (1985) when he watched the VHS version and the words "To be continued" were added at the end. He immediately called his agent to make sure he was going to be in the sequel.
• The plot line of George McFly being dead in 1985-A was based entirely on Crispin Glover's refusal to do the sequel.
• Multiple theaters screened the movie on October 21, 2015, the exact date Doc, Marty and Jennifer travel to in the movie.
• First film appearance by Elijah Wood. He plays one of the two video game boys to whom Marty speaks in the Cafe 80's near the start of the film.
• In the DVD extras of Back to the Future Part II (1989), Robert Zemeckis had said that he really did not want the movie to take place in the future. That is because he felt that every time that a movie takes place in the future, it is mis-predicted.
• The ledge on the clock tower that Doc broke in Back to the Future (1985) is still broken in 2015.
• Filmed at the same time as Back to the Future Part III (1990). It was claimed at the time that in the four years since Back to the Future (1985) was made, Michael J. Fox had forgotten how to ride a skateboard. However, motor skills are not so easily lost (as in riding a bicycle), and Michael J. Fox has since stated that this was an early symptom of his Parkinson's Disease, although the medical diagnosis was not made until 1991.
• Griff's "Pit Bull" Hoverboard was originally to be called "Mad Dog", to foreshadow his ancestor set to appear in Back to the Future Part III (1990).
• Crispin Glover sued the filmmakers, as he had not granted permission to use his likeness in Part II. Crispin's suit named John Doe 1-100 as defendants, where he did not have to name all of the individuals he was suing. Crispin ended up dropping the lawsuit after the case was settled out of court for $765,000 by Universal's insurance company, who decided it would be cheaper to pay Crispin than to go to trial. The Screen Actors Guild subsequently introduced new rules about illicit use of actors.
• After Biff gets his cane stuck in the DeLorean upon returning to 2015, he starts to thrash around in pain, apparently having a hard time from the exertion. Robert Zemeckis has stated that Biff was experiencing the same thing Marty did at the dance in the first movie: fading out of history. The idea was that, by going back in time to give the sports almanac to his younger self, Biff had somehow altered his own future so that he no longer existed in the year 2015. According to script drafts, Biff's wife (Marty's mother) had shot and killed the abusive Biff in 1996. A deleted scene in the DVD extras makes this much clearer as we actually see Biff vanish.
• The biggest effect the picture employs is a camera system called the VistaGlide. There are four scenes that use the effect of the same actor interacting with themselves. The four scenes that were shot were Griff and 2015 Biff in the Cafe 80's, the dinner sequence in 2015, 1955 Biff talking to 2015 Biff in the garage, and 1955 Doc talking with 1985 Doc. In order to create the dinner sequence with VistaGlide, the camera had to be divided into thirds and Michael had to come in three different times to play his older self, Marty Jr., and his daughter Marlene. This is the first film to accomplish interaction between the same actor on the screen twice as two different characters. If you watch closely, you'll see that 2015 Biff's hand disappears during the scene in the garage.
• To commemorate the film on October 21, 2015, USA Today changed their masthead to the futuristic logo featured in the film, and reissued the front page featuring Marty Jr. getting arrested. Nike developed real-world versions of the self-tying sneakers (called Mag) and sold them with the proceeds going to Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's research foundation. Pepsico made the Pepsi Perfect bottles and sold them for $20.15 rather than the $45 Marty paid for one at the Cafe 80's.
• Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale have admitted on the DVD commentary that they were originally not interested in doing a sequel to their success hit Back to the Future (1985), and that the open ending of the first movie was simply meant as a final joke. However, when plans for a sequel were made by the studio, they chose to remain involved in the continuation of their creation, and even extended it to two sequels. Zemeckis has claimed that if he knew that he was going to make a sequel, he would have made sure that Marty's girlfriend Jennifer wasn't in the car at the end of the first film. Since the movie would concentrate on Marty, there was not much for her to do, and she would even get in his way. This is why Jennifer is knocked out by Doc and left behind so early in the movie.
• When 1985 Jennifer discovers herself in her 2015 house, her daughter Marlene (played by Michael J. Fox) appears at the top of the stairs, saying, "Mom? Mom, is that you?" This is the same exact line spoken by Marty (also played by Michael J. Fox) in each film of the trilogy when he is knocked out and wakes up in an unfamiliar place.
• Just before Marty and Doc leave 2015, there is a shot of the time machine's control panel showing the "Last Time Departed" as Oct 05 1955 06:38 PM. If they had noticed this, they would have known someone had used the time machine without them.
• Elisabeth Shue was cast as Jennifer and all the closing shots of Back to the Future (1985) were re-shot for the beginning of this film. Claudia Wells (Jennifer in the first film) was unable to reprise her role, as she had stopped acting because her mother had been diagnosed with cancer. She returned to acting for the independent film Still Waters Burn (2008). An interesting point was that during the years between the first and second film people had forgotten what Jennifer looked like and when the unknown Shue replaced her virtually no one noticed the change. For the anniversary in 2015 a fan film was made with a zoom chat featuring all the main cast except for Thomas Wilson, and with both "Jennifers". By this time, Wells was running a very successful high-end used clothing store in Los Angeles.
• This movie was the most advanced film of its time for using "every trick in the book", according to Robert Zemeckis. It was in the late 1980s when the concept of CGI was starting. However, in the film, very few CGI effects were actually needed.
• Astrophysicist Carl Sagan considered this the greatest time travel movie ever made. He praised the accuracy in handling the multiple time lines as what would really happen if time travel were possible. In Back to the Future: The Game, Carl Sagan is the alias used by Doc Brown when visiting Hill Valley in 1931.
• The principal actors and actresses had committed to the sequels before any scripts were written. However, there was a stumbling block in negotiations with Crispin Glover (George McFly in Back to the Future (1985)), who stated that he was offered a monetary amount less than half of what Lea Thompson and Tom Wilson were being paid to return. Glover believed this was due to producer Bob Gale taking exception to his voicing his disapproval of the original ending of the first film (where the McFlys viewed money and material possessions as rewards), causing a script change. During sequel negotiations, his agent expressed to producers that Glover wanted fair compensation, in addition to a script approval clause in his contract. [Bob Gale] refused to give in to either of these requests, instead offering a lower salary amount than the first offer. After Glover turned down the low-ball offer of $125,000, Gale re-wrote the sequel script to lessen George McFly's screen time. Jeffrey Weissman was cast as George and, using molds of Glover made on the set of the first film, was dressed in facial prosthetics to look like him, so that they could incorporate excerpts from the original movie. All shots of Weissman either show him from behind, at a distance, upside down or with sunglasses, in effect fooling audiences into believing that Glover had taken part in the sequel.
• Both this film and Back to the Future Part III (1990) were filmed back-to-back. After filming the scene where Doc and Marty return from the future to "1985A" and drop Jennifer off on her front porch swing. After this, the cast and crew waited for daylight and filmed the scene in Part III where she is awakened.
• When "Hill Valley" was created for Back to the Future (1985), they built the town in the pristine 1955 condition, and shot the middle of the movie, then damaged it for the 1985 town, and shot the beginning and end of the movie. When they decided to shoot Back to the Future Part II (1989), they had to clean the set up and restore it to the same condition it was in 1955. It cost more to rebuild than it cost to build it from scratch.
• In promotional material, such as Back to the Future Part II Behind-the-Scenes Special Presentation (1989), director Robert Zemeckis explained that "hoverboards float on magnetic energy". He also added, "they've been around for years, it's just that parent groups haven't let toy manufacturers make them. But we got our hands on some and put them in the movie." He was only joking, of course, but interestingly enough, Mattel (whose logo appeared on the hoverboard props) soon found themselves overwhelmed with callers asking where they could buy one. Although they looked pretty convincing in the movie, the hoverboards were simply wooden props attached to the actors and actresses feet. To make the boards fly, the actors were suspended by cables, which were then erased during post-production.
• Doc mentions to Marty that he visited a rejuvenation clinic in the future to make him appear younger. This was written so that Christopher Lloyd would not have to constantly wear old-age make-up for the two sequels, since he would primarily be portraying the 1985 incarnation of Doc.
• The tagline for Jaws 19 is "This time it's really, REALLY personal". On the marquee is the name of the director, "Max Spielberg", executive producer Steven Spielberg's son. Max was born in June of 1985, the same year the first film in the franchise was released. Spielberg also came up with Marty's response to seeing the hologram, "The shark still looks fake", referring to Spielberg's frustration and doubts about "Bruce", the mechanical shark in Jaws (1975).
• In this movie a disguised "1985 Doc Brown" holds a conversation with his 1955 counterpart. 1985 Doc is wearing a brown trench coat and hat. If you look carefully in Back to the Future (1985), you can see a man dressed exactly like this (and therefore, presumably Doc) walking away shortly before the clock tower scene. In the DVD commentary, it is explained that this was not intentional, as the script for Back to the Future Part II (1989) hadn't even been written at the time that they filmed the first one.
• The football scores Biff hears on the radio while driving are all actual scores from November 12, 1955, and the UCLA and Washington game he and old Biff listen to did end with UCLA kicker Jim Decker hitting a last second field goal to win.
• An earthquake struck during filming of the cut sequence where the 2015 McFly family gathers around the table, and the crew was afraid the props may have moved around too much to edit the scene seamlessly. To their surprise, everything was exactly where it was supposed to be for the sequence.
• Director Robert Zemeckis stated that the high school dance scene from 1955 had to have the same costumes because it would be shot from a different angle. The production was nearly delayed because Lorraine's (Lea Thompson) dress couldn't be found even though they had three versions of it made in 1985. Lea Thompson then revealed to Zemeckis that she still had one of the original dresses and had to drive back home to get it.
• Very few of the original costumes from the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance were used for production of the sequel. Lea Thompson was the only actress present wearing her dress from the original movie.
• The date on the 2015 USA Today newspaper is October 22. This is Christopher Lloyd's birthday.
• The soda menu at the Cafe 80's lists four types of Pepsi products: Original, Diet, Max, and Perfect. Pepsi Max did become an actual flavor by 1993 in Europe. The American version was introduced in 2007.
• Many shows from the 1980s are featured on the televisions inside the Cafe 80's, including Family Ties (1982) and Taxi (1978), which originally starred Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd, respectively.
• In front of the entrance to the Biff Tannen Museum, there is a sign that reads "Smoking Required".
• Robert Zemeckis was very unhappy about the way that Universal marketed the film. He wanted it to be made quite clear that this film was ultimately a set-up to Back to the Future Part III (1990) but Universal wanted to advertise it as its own independent movie. This ultimately backfired as Back to the Future Part II (1989) ends with a 'To Be Concluded" title that frustrated many audiences, resulting in bad word of mouth and a dramatic fall-off in the film's box office receipts in its second week.
• Production of this film and Back to the Future Part III (1990) was delayed for three years because Robert Zemeckis was busy making Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988).
• The third highest-grossing film of 1989.
• The original theatrical and premium cable television versions of the film end with the phrase "To Be Concluded", and a teaser for Back to the Future Part III (1990). Russ Meyer and Richard Lester are the only other filmmakers to have ended a movie with a trailer before this release. (Recent 2009 premium cable television versions have dropped the teaser.)
• Bob Gale wrote the first draft of the screenplay on his own, because Robert Zemeckis was busy filming Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) at the time.
• The song that is heard at the Café '80s is "Beat It" by Michael Jackson.