I have to start by saying Back to the Future is my favorite movie, ever, and I never get tired of watching the trilogy. It’s the kind of thing where I have the movies on DVD but if one of them is playing on TV, I will forget about what I was going to do that day and watch it on TV, commercials and all.
I know there are problems with the plot — things that don’t make sense or aren’t explained — but I don’t like the Back to the Future trilogy because it’s perfect. I like it because those movies are fun to watch.
Keeping that in mind, I realized something that makes all of Back to the Future Part II unnecessary.
Besides plot holes and unexplained things, the thing that bothers a lot of people about the trilogy is that there’s too much going on in Back to the Future Part II. In simplest terms, the movie is laid out like this:
- Part II picks up right after Part I, with Marty back home in 1985.
- Doc shows up and says Marty has to go with him to 2015 to change what happens to Marty’s kids.
- Doc and Marty go to 2015 and stop Marty’s son from getting arrested.
- Biff in 2015 steals the DeLorean and the sports almanac. He travels back to 1955 and gives the sports almanac to his younger self with instructions on how to get rich using it.
- Doc and Marty go back to 1985, but it’s an alternate 1985 where a corrupt Biff runs Hill Valley. Everything is horrible.
- Marty and Doc go back to 1955 to stop Biff from getting the sports almanac and to put the original timeline back in place.
Admittedly, it’s a lot for one film.
But let’s back up. Part I already gave us a way to prevent something bad from happening in the future, and it’s something Doc could have done at the beginning of Part II.
Marty saved Doc with a note in Part I
At the beginning of Back to the Future Part I in 1985, Doc rips off some plutonium from a terrorist group. They come looking for Doc when he and Marty are testing the DeLoren at the mall’s parking lot. The terrorists shoot and kill Doc. Marty jumps in the DeLorean and escapes when the car travels back in time to 1955. Before Marty leaves 1955 to return to 1985, he writes Doc a letter that explains how he dies, so that Doc in 1985 can take “whatever precautions are necessary” to prevent his death. That works — Doc Brown wears a bulletproof vest on that night in 1985, and he survives the shooting.
Writing a note for Marty in 1985 should work
In Back to the Future Part II, Doc travels to the future to see what the world is like and he finds out that there’s trouble with Marty’s kids. So when Doc comes back to 1985 to get Marty, why not just tell Marty what happens to his family, and then Marty can make a plan to fix things?
A plan like that would have been a simpler solution, and it would have avoided the whole mess with Biff using the sports almanac to get rich and ruin Hill Valley. Marty and Doc wouldn’t have had to go to 1955 a second time (and risk disrupting the timeline again) to stop Biff from creating an alternate timeline.
Of course, a simpler solution would have required a different story for the sequel.
An alterate future
I would have liked to see a Back to the Future sequel that’s just a fun adventure in the future. The way Back to the Future Part II pictured 2015 is a lot of fun — Jaws 19, hoverboards, self-tying sneakers, all of it — but focusing on Marty’s children didn’t make a lot of sense. There’s no guarantee that the changes Doc and Marty made will stick since the future is always in flux. The sequel should have told a different story. As Doc says in Part III, “Your future is whatever you make it, so make it a good one.”