So, Dustin and I both had it in our heads that Back to the Future Part II was the best Back to the Future movie. I don't know when those opinions were formed for either of us, but it had to be a very long time ago. Like before we had eyeballs. Or brains. Or any sense of what makes a good movie.
So, you may wonder why we started with Part II. So, Dustin had it ranked at number 3 on his flickchart. I said that was ridiculous, because it was ranked above all of the Indiana Jones movies and all of the Star Wars movies. I, on the other hand, have Raiders of the Lost Ark ranked very high on my list. I said that it was heresy to rank even the best Back to the Future movie above the best Indiana Jones movie. Dustin disagreed. So, we decided we had to watch Part II and then watch Raiders to see who was right.
It didn't take long for Dustin to completely disavow his previous position. Back to the Future II isn't just the worst of the Back to the Future movies, it is just flat out a TERRIBLE movie. It obviously doesn't benefit from the fact that the future scenes are supposed to be six years from now, but that hasn't been a fatal problem for other movies, like 12 Monkeys or even Demolition Man. But it's also just a terrible movie. It copies ninety percent of the plot and dialogue from the original. I know that's supposed to be funny or whatever, but it's just lame.
So, as soon as it was over, we decided we had to watch Part II, which we both previously thought was the worst of the three movies. We're only about a half hour in right now, but it's already better than Part II by a LOT, and I don't think it would be possible for it to get so bad that it would be worse than Part II.
I don't have much else to say. I just wanted to impeach Dustin's taste in movies.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
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In the second to last paragraph, are you talking about BTTF 3?
ReplyDeleteFirst, I have to say that I completely disagree with your Indiana Jones/BTTF ranking. The first BTTF for me is better than all three IJ movies combined. Maybe it's because I never saw IJ when I was a kid, for some reason, but I've never understood the appeal. Raiders of the Lost Ark is, you know, pretty good. Enjoyable, but not great.
The first BTTF, though, is a masterpiece. Probably top 10 or 15 for me all time. Great narrative, editing, music...just everything.
Now, I agree that BTTF2 has its problems, but I don't think it's THAT bad. Sure, the future bits are a bit hokey, and those special effects have NOT aged well. But it's a great story. The last third of the movie, with the two Docs, two Martys....that's good stuff! I can't believe you don't like it. It's especially amazing when you consider that a) they didn't have CGI that could just copy/paste characters as seamlessly as they can now, and b) that movie was filmed four years after BTTF1! I think they did really well at integrating the two in a believable, consistent way.
Maybe I just have a bias toward cool time travel movies. Especially time travel movies that are internally consistent and play by the rules. I really really love Doc's blackboard explanation in the alternate 1985.
BTTF3 is hard for me, but I think I like it pretty well. Lot of good jokes, LOTS of callbacks to the earlier movies (which I'm a huge fan of), and the train sequence at the end is pretty exciting (in 1885, not the weird flying train thing at the very end.) Slows down quite a bit during all the lame romance parts, but I like the role reversal between Doc and Marty.
Yeah, sorry, I definitely meant BTTF 3 in that last paragraph.
ReplyDeleteAnd what are you talking about with cool time travel movies that are consistent and play by the rules?!! That is one of the main problems with BTTF 2. I mean, the rules of their reality is that when you time travel, you change things. That's my LEAST favorite version of time travel, but whatever. I'm cool with it IF it's done consistently.
The proposition in both BTTF 3 and BTTF 2 that if you go back again you can some how change it BACK to the way it was before you ever time traveled at all is completely ridiculous!! If you are travelling back and changing things then it's going to be different than it was if you'd never time traveled at all. Doc's blackboard explanation starts to make it okay, by showing that when you go back in time, you create alternate realities. I'm okay with that concept, but the idea that somehow by time travelling, you can change BACK to the alternate reality that existed before you went time travelling is not possible. It makes no sense at all.
I LOVE time travel movies. Actually, watching this after watching 12 Monkeys was such a let down, because 12 Monkeys handles it so much better. Because in 12 Monkeys it is clear that the time travelling people were already there in the past, and you can't go back and change things. Because whatever you did when you went back in time already happened.
Okay, but on to problems with time travel in BTTF 2 & 3. Doc also claims that Jennifer is fine on the porch in the 1985 where Biff had control of everything, because when the reality changes, it will just change around her. THAT IS UTTER NONSENSE! It it's alternate realities, as Doc claims, and draws on the blackboard, then she is stuck in the 1985 reality where Biff used the Almanac to get famous and that's not just going to change around her. If, on the other hand, they aren't alternate realities, but you just always change the future by going into the past, then it's fine if the world changes around her, but there is NO WAY to change it back to the way it would have been if you hadn't time travelled in the first place. For me one of the reasons I can never love BTTF as much as other people do is that it is NOT internally consistent with how it treats time travel. And even if they had been consistent with how time travel worked in part one, it would still be the least plausible version of how time travel would operate if it actually existed.
I couldn't fit this all in one comment, so here I am still going. So, as for BTTF 2. It doesn't just call back to the first movie, it uses WAY to much of the first movie in it. However, I do agree that once they get back to 1955, it gets significantly better. When Marty shows up in the hat and sunglasses, I was like, "Oh yeah, now it gets better." But it still doesn't get good enough to make up for all of the crap in the rest of the movie.
ReplyDeleteWhereas BTTF 3 has just a few great callbacks, and they are different enough from the other two that it doesn't feel as much like pure copycat - the scene where he wakes up thinking he'd had a bad dream, the scene in the diner/saloon w/whatever version of Biff is timely - in Parts I and II, they are just too similar. In II, because they are so far removed in time, they are different enough to be funny. Plus, Mary Steenbergen elevates the movie a lot. I never would have said that until I just watched Parts II and III back to back, but when she shows up it's like the movie just gets new life.
Last point. I still love BTTF Part I. It's a great movie and I will always love it. However, it is not even in the same universe as Raiders of the Lost Ark. A friend once said to me that there is no such thing as a perfect movie, but that the closest we've gotten so far are Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Empire Strikes Back. I thought about that for a long time, and I re-watched those movies and others, with that statement in mind. I'm still not sure I agree with him, but at the time he made the statement, I thought it was kind of ridiculous and I don't think it's ridiculous anymore.
I don't know when the last time you watched BTTF 2 was, but in total honesty, I think if you watched it today, you'd feel like it doesn't live up. It wasn't THAT long ago that I watched it and thought it was my favorite of the BTTF trilogy. But it just doesn't stand up when you watch it right after watching other amazing movies. The original stands up somewhat, though I was never as partial to it as some people, but Part II just doesn't cut it.
I just verbalized most of this to Dustin and he said I sounded like an A-hole. Apologies if this came across rude. I just am also a big fan of awesome, internally consistent time travel movies, but I just don't think the BTTF franchise falls into that category.
ReplyDeleteOkay, I'll begin by conceding that the whole "Jennifer on the couch" thing is pretty lame. I think I read an interview with Zemeckis where he said "Yeah, it was dumb to give Marty a girlfriend, because then we didn't have anything to do with her."
ReplyDeleteBut I'm not sure I understand your argument about why the principles of BTTF time travel don't work (I'll say at the outset that I realize that arguing about time travel is a little silly. Haha.)
Okay, so there are three 1985s:
1985-1: Beginning of BTTF 1. Lorraine is an alcoholic and George is dominated by Biff.
1985-2: End of BTTF 1. Great life.
1985-3: Middle of BTTF 2. Biff has a casino.
Now in 2015, Biff goes back and gives young Biff the almanac in 1955. That creates 1985-3. Now, if you accept the blackboard explanation of alternate timelines, I'm not sure why you think they can't go back to the point in time immediately before the skew and prevent the skew (from 2 to 3) from happening.
You said: "The proposition in both BTTF 3 and BTTF 2 that if you go back again you can some how change it BACK to the way it was before you ever time traveled at all." But that's not what happened. In BTTF2, they restored 1985-2, not 1985-1.
If Marty-2 had gone back one week earlier, and had conked Marty-1 on the head when he was parking the Delorean and before he ever went into town (and subsequently met his father and ended up in his mother's home), then it is surely the case that there would have been no skew and the timeline would have been restored to what it was like "pre-time travel." That is, 1985-1. Right?
Yeah, lots of great callbacks in BTTF3. One of my favorites is that the guy running the horse stables is Joe Statler Sr. The Statler family would go on to run the Toyota dealership that Marty's truck comes from. :-)
As for Raiders being an almost perfect movie, I've gotta say I don't get that at all. Raiders doesn't crack my top hundred, and Empire, while clearly the best Star Wars movie, should probably be in the 60s-70s, for me. (It's stuck up in the 20s now, but that's Flickchart's fault.) It's great, and I like it a lot. But calling it perfect is definitely not something I'm on board with. And, I think it'd definitely possible to make a perfect movie. Not only that, I'd say it's been done several times.
Okay, so two things. First of all, my issue with the blackboard and alternate realities, in terms of internal consistency is that BTTF-1 did not establish that we were dealing with an alternate reality-type time travel movie. If it were alternate realities, the photo that Marty brought with him from the future would not have changed, because the future in which that photo was taken would still exist as an alternate reality - and it would still be the reality of Marty's childhood, Marty's past, in which that photo was taken. So, the photo wouldn't change. Instead of alternate realities, what BTTF-1 suggests is that you actually change the future. That there is only one future and that instead of splitting off alternate realities, what you are doing is writing over the future as it existed before you travel back in time - hence the changing photograph. Imagine that instead of splitting off, like Doc's blackboard drawing, you have only one line, with the future Marty comes from, then when he goes back, that line gets erased and drawn again, but maybe it's like a different color now, or something. So, that's why I think that calling them alternate realities and claiming that they fork off, as in Doc's blackboard explanation, is not consistent with how time travel is actually treated in the movies.
ReplyDeleteSecond, in response to this question:
"If Marty-2 had gone back one week earlier, and had conked Marty-1 on the head when he was parking the Delorean and before he ever went into town (and subsequently met his father and ended up in his mother's home), then it is surely the case that there would have been no skew and the timeline would have been restored to what it was like "pre-time travel." That is, 1985-1. Right?"
I don't think that is right. Instead of restoring 1985-1, they would be creating 1985-4. Because in the REAL 1985-1, neither Marty-1 nor Marty-2 had been in 1955. I mean, if you want to go with the proposition that by sending Marty-2 back to conk Marty-1, they would avoid any major changes so that things would turn out exactly as they did in 1985-1, that's cool, but it still wouldn't BE 1985-1, at least not if we are talking about alternate realities.
Now, if we're not talking about alternate realities, if it's just that you rewrite the ONLY future each time you go back, then the movie is more internally consistent, with the exception of Doc's explanation. My problem with this is that it's just not a version of time travel theory that I like or think is interesting, plus it causes the whole paradox problem of "If the future in which you were born never happened, then how did you come back here, etc., etc., etc."
One final comment. The whole thing becomes more cohesive if you are willing to accept that there is no butterfly effect. The BTTF universe seems to pretty much not buy into the butterfly effect, because Marty-2 going back to 1955 and then 1885 doesn't change 1985-2. If there were a butterfly effect, it wouldn't matter that he was going back to change the past for the purpose of getting 1985-2 back; just by going back at all, he would change things so that you could never get 1985-2 back again. So, basically, the version of time travel that BTTF uses is one where the future is overwritten each time you travel back in time, BUT that there is no butterfly effect, so if you go back, but have no contact with anyone, or don't do anything major, you won't change the future enough for it to matter. IF that's the version of time travel they are trying to convey, then it is, at least (again, with the exception of Doc's alternate reality explanation) internally consistent. It's just that it's not an interesting concept, IMO.
As for Raiders, we're never going to agree, obviously. I don't think there's much else to say. Though I will say that I disagree about perfect movies. There's no movie that is so perfect that there isn't at least one thing that I wish was a little different, and I don't think there ever will be.
Okay, first of all, I totally didn't get an asshole vibe from you. I know that I can come across that way as well, especially when I'm discussing something as vitally important as time travel in BTTF, so I apologize if I did as well. In my mind, we're just two people having a geeky, spirited argument. :-)
ReplyDeleteI think I see your point about the inconsistency between BTTF-1's photo and BTTF-2's blackboard. Interesting. I think, though, that maybe there's not an inconsistency. I don't think Doc ever said that the horizontal line on the blackboard (representing 1985-1, or the "normal" timeline) keeps going in some kind of alternate universe. I think the "skew" he talks about is a curve, it's not a branch. He just drew it that way. I think you're right, it is like drawing a new line in a different color. Doc says it's an "alternate reality" for Doc, Marty and Einstein, but the same for everybody else. So it would have been more accurate to draw over the line in a different color, or to erase the original line after the tangent occurs. But despite the blackboard illustration inaccuracy, I don't think they're positing multiple alternate universes.
As for your second point, you're right, they would be creating 1985-4. I just don't think 1985-4 and 1985-1 would be any different.
Two points about the butterfly effect (on the understanding that I know very little about high-level math and that most of my understanding of the butterfly effect comes from Dr. Ian Malcolm.)
One, I don't think the butterfly effect implies a necessarily vastly different future. For example, suppose there are two different universes. In one, I finish writing this post, I play a video game, and then I go to bed. In the other, I finish writing this post, I watch a movie, and then I go to bed. In both universes, I'm still going to get up in the morning and go to class. Assuming that the movie is as unremarkable as my video game and I don't talk about it with anybody, my day tomorrow is going to go along in the same way in both universes.
So sure, in 1885-1 Seamus and Maggie never allowed a stranger to stay in their house, and in 1885-2, they did. But maybe in 1885-2, after Marty-2 left, they just sort of forgot about the whole thing and went along with their lives. Marty-2's presence does not necessarily implicate a vastly different future. (I think.)
Second, the more weasely answer is to say that in 1985-2 (or, more accurately 1985-4) all we really see is Marty's house, and the street in Hill Valley where he avoids the drag race with Needles. For all we know, Huey Lewis could be president in 1985-4 as a result of Marty and Doc monkeying around in 1885-2.
You're right, maybe it's not as interesting as something like "The Butterfly Effect," where tiny changes lead to huge changes in the current present. I just don't think that's really the point of the movie. We want Marty to succeed, to get back to the present and to have a good life. It would be confusing to accurately portray butterfly effects. And I think that a major theme of the movie is that no matter what, there are certain things that are always going to stay the same. (The Tannens are always going to be bad at using idioms, the Statlers are always going to be in the transportation business, the Stricklands are always going to be disciplinarians.) It would ruin that idea, which I think is fun, to strictly and accurately portray potential butterfly effects.
So, to sum up, I do think it's internally consistent (I concede I've always thought the disappearing photo in BTTF-1 was a little hokey) and I don't require it to be serious because it's a fun movie. There are other movies, of course, that maybe take the ideas a little more seriously.
Raiders does deserve another viewing from me. I haven't seen it in a while. That's interesting, that you don't think there can be a perfect movie. Can you imagine monkeying with Casablanca?
Agreed on the tone of our converstion. Glad I'm only an A-hole in person. ;o)
ReplyDeleteI'm still not 100% on board with it being internally consistent or it being a plausible version of time travel, but I think it's getting too confusing to continue in a blog post. Maybe we can hash it in person sometime.
I do agree 100% that it's a really fun movie and I love the idea that some things never change, like the families you referred to. However, if we're talking top movies of all time here, it would be higher on my list if it was not only fun, but also presented a version of time travel that I found interesting and plausible. Obviously, the purpose of BTTF is not to explore the theories of time travel, and I wouldn't want it to be. It's just that time travel is a major part of the series and it's impossible for me to watch them without my brain going a mile a minute thinking, "Now, how is this working?" or "Why would it happen that way?" For me, the movie just doesn't provide satisfactory answers. They are satisfactory for an awesomely fun, sci-fi adventure movie. Just not for a best movie of all time movie. Which isn't to say that some of my favorite movies don't have consistency or plausibility problems - I'm sure they do. It's just that for me, this one is too central to the story for me to get past it to the point where I can say it's one of my favorite movies ever.
As for this:
"Can you imagine monkeying with Casablanca?"
Of course, it wouldn't be me doing the monkeying, but I don't think it's a perfect movie. I mean, I wasn't completely engaged for every moment of that movie.
Despite my above comments, re: Empire and Raiders, the closest thing to a perfect movie for me is Children of Men. There is nothing missing from that movie. But I still won't go so far as to say it's perfect. I couldn't tell you why it's not perfect, right now, but I'm sure it's not.
Children of Men. Holy cripes do I love that movie.
ReplyDeleteI want to print this all out and have it silk screened on a t-shirt.
ReplyDeleteI have not seen any of the BBTF movies in at least five years and have virtually no idea what you guys are talking about, but I laughed until I teared up.
the ending of Children of Men doesn't quite deliver on the awesomeness of the rest of the movie. That's what you could change.
ReplyDeleteBut it is the closest to a perfect movie I've seen.
That, and the first 15 minutes or so of Magnolia. Maybe only the first 5 minutes with the Ricky Jay voiceover.
BTW, just to kick the horse once more, there wouldn't be a need to debate all the details of BttF's time travel if II had actually been a good movie. I want to know what you folks think when you actually watch it again. I promise it doesn't stand up.
Which part of the ending? I hope you're just talking about the last scene, because the last ten-fifteen minutes are amazing for me.
ReplyDeleteI'm totally with you on Ricky Jay. I love that man.
Oh, he's only talking about the very last scene. We're all on board that the large portion of the end of that movie is phenomenal.
ReplyDeleteOh, okay, good. :-)
ReplyDeleteYeah, the last scene is pretty enigmatic. I know it's been a sticking point for a few people I've shown the movie to. I kind of like it though.