SPOILERS DOWN THE PATH; THE DISCUSSION BELOW WILL NOT BE COMPREHENSIVE WITHOUT IT.
TREAD CAREFULLY. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.
THIS MOTION PICTURE IS OFFICIALLY AN AFFILIATE OF THE FILMMAKING PARAGONS.
Back to the Future II picks right up where we left off the prequel. While the actress playing Marty's (Michael J. Fox) girlfriend has been recast, everything else is pretty much the same! Just when our protagonist's ready to hang out with his partner, comes Doc Brown (Christopher Llyod) with the DeLorean. Something's up with Marty's future 30 years from now and they have to erase that from happening while they can!
It's 2015 and Hill Valley looks extremely futuristic! Power laces, flying cars, size-adjusting fit jacket, self-dog walker, fresh fruit lawn growing above dinner table, Spielberg's Jaws 19 parody you name it. Too bad we know none of this came true speaking from 2021! As exciting as it sounds and although it's fun to see the recreation of events such as Biff's grandson Griff (both Thomas F. Wilson) bullying Marty's son just like in the past, hoverboard escape mirroring the car chase in the first part and "say hello to your grandma for me", this future sequence of the series is by far its lowest point. Since everything looks too unreal, the proceedings play out like a parody with abundant of slapstick comedy. The performances during this section are exaggerated as well, taking you out of the enjoyment. However, meeting Marty's future family is hella fun, with the actor playing the daughter and son being hilarious!
But there's a crucial idea here that Robert Zemeckis managed to explore that gives birth to one of the greatest conflicts in the series as well! Marty gets hold of a sports magazine in the future that has information on all the winning football teams over the years. Worse, old Biff eavesdrops all of this which leads him to take the DeLorean back into the past and pass the sports magazine to his younger self. A new past has been created which now Doc Brown and Marty has to go back further into 1955 to fix it all once again!
Once the feature is back to the present timeline meaning 1985, the falseness and artificiality that dampened the first section is immediately gone! The changed history in 1985 is a gloomy and tragic apocalypse! Biff is the greatest, wealthiest and most powerful tycoon on the planet. He's killed Marty's father and married his mother. While there isn't a concrete reason for Biff to tell the truth about the Almanac, what follows overshadow this questionable flaw. In order to overturn this disastrous present fact, a voyage to the past has to be made. Precisely 1955. Specifically, to the time when the prequel events took place! With double Marty present at the same time and place with the hero struggling to steal the Almanac, this marks the best sequence exhibit in the entire picture!
Just like Part I's climax and the writing as a whole, the writers know how to squeeze out every drop of tension juice they can out of the minutes that you couldn't think of writing this script any otherwise! Present-day Marty using a hoverboard from the future in the past is the ultimate culmination of this series! Even during the final moments, just when you think everything has been solved, arrives a new problem that sends Doc Brown 70 years into the past. Marty receives a letter from the past and we go segueing into the imminent sequel!