Rewatched the entire Back to the Future Trilogy over the weekend. Rewatching them now that I'm older made me understand the plots and a lot of the jokes and layered time travel humor certainly made me appreciate them more. Great Scott!
Back to the Future (1985): I forgot just how good this movie is, the plot is such an original take on the concept of a time machine. You can say that the time travel logic isn't perfect, but at least it establishes rules that actually provide stakes to what they do in the past and remains consistent with it. I love how they escalate the plot from just being a "I have to get back to the present" by getting Marty to accidentally cause some time travel shenanigans that risk his very existence, making the movie loads more entertaining and investing. There's so many jokes and details that flew over my head when I first watched this at like 10 or 11, I love the subtle one with Marty telling his Uncle Joey as a baby to "Get used to these bars, kid". A+, this is just a perfect movie. Robert Zemeckis just has a track record for fantastic movies.
Back to the Future 2 (1989): Not as good as the original, but still a very entertaining movie that's clever in it's callbacks and expansion of the original. Although the time traveling to 2015 is very outdated at this point, as all time traveling to a specific date in the future will eventually be, but it was still entertaining in its weird version of the future. I actually saw this one first when it was played on tv on the specific date they travel to in 2015, but it's much better watching them in order due to how connected they are. I like how this one jumps between 3 different time periods, and how a conflict overlaps with the events of the first movie in 1955. Some of the time travel rules established do get a bit unravelled in this one though, especially in the end when it's already been established that different variants of the future create different time lines, but the movie still manages to work in some interesting time travel elements. I also have to say some of the early CGI happens to be very dated, mostly in the scene when they first get into the future and all the flying cars are coming at them, but that's more of a nitpick (It does benefit in some scenes, particularly the purposefully horrendous Jaws 19 hologram). I do love the 80s diner with the Max Headroom waiters and Wild Gunmen cabinet. Not nearly as good as the original, but still a very good, entertaining movie that utilizes time travel in unique ways. I also think they should have established Marty's hatred towards being called a Chicken in the original movie so it doesn't feel more suddenly established here, but oh well, still a great running gag. They also missed out on the perfect opportunity to have the horribly stylized 80s-90s sequel titles by calling it "Back 2 the Future". B+
Back to the Future 3 (1990): While I do really like the movie, I have to say this has a problem where it completely throws the previous movies' established time travel rules out the window. I'm not going to say this isn't a fun movie, I do really like it. But the continuity errors are a little hard not to notice, especially after watching all of them in order. This one still has some of the great humor of the past 2, particularly Marty naming himself "Clint Eastwood". I don't have too much to say asides for it being terrible at keeping continuity. It isn't amazing, but it's certainly far from being terrible. B-
