Behind The Scenes of ‘Back to the Future Part II’

A sequel that a lot of fans argue to be their favourite in the time-travelling trilogy, we have Back to the Future Part II. This film gave us the ‘80s interpretation of the year 2015, a dystopian wasteland and even revisits our favourite moments from the first instalment.

Given the bigger, more complex story to that of its predecessor, there’s obviously going to be some interesting stories of what went on off-camera. From Lawsuits to a family tragedy that caused a prominent cast member to drop out of the sequel, we’ll be looking at just what went on behind the scenes for Back to the Future Part II.

Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads. *Cue the music*

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Robert Zemeckis And Bob Gale Originally Didn’t Want To Make A Sequel

Looking back now, the transition from where the prequel left off and the sequel begins, is so smooth (even with re-shoots having to be done) it’s hard to think it was originally just going to end after Part I, but that was precisely what almost happened!

Despite how well Back to the Future was doing at the box office, creators Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale were reluctant when approached by universal studios to make a sequel. It was only when they were advised by Sid Sheinberg, head of Universal Studios, that a sequel would be made with or without them, that they eventually yielded, but on one condition, Bob Gale reflects in an interview:

Finally we said, ‘OK, we’ll do a sequel on the following basis: we need to have deals in place for Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd. And as long as those guys are signed, we’ll figure out a sequel.

The rest. . . is history.

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George Mcfly Was Killed Off Because Of Crispin Glover

When Bob Gale (Writer) and Robert Zemeckis (Director) approached all the actors from the first movie regarding returning for a sequel, pretty much everyone was on board. . . . everyone, except Crispin Glover (George McFly).

When Marty returns to an alternate Hill Valley in 1985, viewers may have thought that George McFly’s untimely passing, may have fit in well with the dystopian aesthetic. However, there was a particular reason this had to be written into the sequel, Gale confirms in an interview:

Crispin decided that he should get things that were way out of line for an actor of Crispin’s stature to be asking for at this point in his career.

Things then went back and forth between Gale and Glover’s agent, with Gale wanting to discuss a more reasonable fee for the actor and Glover not wanting to budge, this ultimately led to Glover being dropped from Back to the Future Part II.

Glover has since confirmed that the incident did have to do with money, but not necessarily the same as Gale’s recollection, he told Den of Geek:

It had to do with money, and what the characters were doing with money … I said to Robert Zemeckis [that] I thought it was not a good idea for our characters to have a monetary reward, because it basically makes the moral of the film that money equals happiness.

Either way, when all was said and done, George McFly was changed into a headstone. Although George did make a cameo in the year 2015, this was in fact played by another actor (Jeffrey Weissman) which is why his appearance was obscured and so brief.

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Claudia Wells Was Unable To Return Due To Family Reasons

Originally Claudia Well’s had signed on to reprise her role as Jennifer for both sequels. Unfortunately, it was around the same time that her mother fell ill. This caused Wells to, not just drop out of Back to the Future Part II & III, but drop out of acting entirely, Wells reflects in an interview:

When the time came to shoot the sequels, my mom was dying from breast cancer, so reprising my role was the last thing on my mind. I just wasn’t able to think about my career.

Due to the sequel being set in 2015 and Jennifer being so integral for Marty’s future, production had to recast Elizabeth Shue in the role. They then had to reshoot the ending for Part I beat-for-beat to make the sequel’s transition as seamless as possible. Apparently, when Wells went to see the Part II in theatres, it wasn’t the best experience, she recalls in an interview:

When Elizabeth Shue stepped in and took on Jennifer, it was odd watching her on screen in the role I’d created. It was a sort of like having an out of body experience. I remember just slumping in my seat in the cinema and hiding behind my popcorn!

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The First Draft Was Set In the Vietnam war

In a lot of instances, the first draft for a movie is all about trial and error, finding out what works and what doesn’t.
With Bob Gale’s (writer) first draft of Back to the Future Part II, it still had Marty going back in time to get the almanac from Biff and so on. Only, it originally saw a large portion of the movie set in the 1960s during the Vietnam war, with Lorraine as a flower girl, protesting the war and it even had Doc Brown smoking weed!

After Gale took the first draft to Robert Zemeckis, he liked the overall concept but came up with quite an unprecedented idea, Gale recalls in an interview:

And he [Zemeckis] said, well you know, this is okay, but we can do something that nobodies ever done before. We can actually, with the time machine, go back into the first movie and look at it from a different point of view, wouldn’t that be cool?

And with that, they had their hook and were good go!

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The Future Segment Was Robert Zemeckis’ Least Favourite Part Of The Movie

Going in a different direction (in time anyway) to that of its predecessor, Back to the Future Part II shows Marty and Doc travel thirty years into the future as opposed to the past, showing Hill Valley in the year 2015. A lot of fans cite this movie being their favourite in the franchise for the futuristic segment alone. Director Robert Zemeckis however, doesn’t echo fans sentiments, stating his reasoning in an interview:

I never liked future stories, I never liked alien stories, because they’re just the opinion of the filmmaker. I dunno, it’s like, just stuff that writers can just make up. So, it really isn’t, really, in my opinion, very interesting for me to watch. So, the future stuff out of the ‘Back to the Future’ sequel was the least interesting thing for me to do in the entire making of the three movies.

Despite its inaccuracies, Zemeckis and his team were bang on the money in terms of how much they “predicted” would actually come into fruition. Certain things were added just to make the future look cool such as flying cars and hoverboards. Other things were researched and calculated regarding what the future could actually bring. This resulted in them getting some things right – such as the Cubs winning the world series, Surf Vietnam and video calls – and other things wrong, Zemeckis confirms in an interview:

But it turns out that our future predictions. . . we were about fifty percent right. So, we got fifty percent right and we got fifty percent wrong. . . it’s not bad.

If only the hoverboards, drying jackets and self-lacing shoes were in former!

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Marty Had To Be Made Into More Of A Hot-Head For The Sequel

Marty McFly is renowned as one of the coolest characters in cinematic history. However, over the course of the trilogy, his biggest flaw was always being a bit of a hot-head, especially when being called “chicken”. Although this is a highly remembered trait for Marty, this trope wasn’t used for the character in the first movie.

The reason for this being, the first movie concentrated more on the character arc of George McFly, who ended up stronger from where he started at the beginning of the movie, whereas Marty was pretty much the same person throughout. Due to Marty being the centre focus in the sequels, it was decided something needed to be done, Bob Gale (writer) confirms in an interview:

So, when Bob [Zemeckis] and I were trying to figure out who could have a character arc, we realized we had to do something with Marty. He’s our main character. We had to give Marty a personal problem he’s going to solve.

They then revisited the first movie and realised Marty had a bit of a short fuse when encountering Biff and decided to expand on that, turning up the volume on his hot-headedness so he could grow as a character.

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A State-Of-The-Art Camera Had To Be Built For The Movie

In the age we’re in now, technology has come leaps and bounds in terms of special effects. Back in the ’80s however, achieving even subtle bits of “camera trickery” was easier said than done. Namely, the instances where you’d have an actor playing multiple roles in the same shot (Michael J. Fox as old Marty and his children, old Biff and young Biff etc.).

Even though director Robert Zemeckis didn’t know how he would achieve these shots, he knew they had to be in the movie. He was then advised he would need a “very serious motion-controlled camera” and they ended up creating one from scratch for the production. Bob Gale (writer) praises the results in an interview:

It was fabulous, it worked exactly the way we wanted it to.

Due to everything being done optically back then, this did mean a lot of effort being doubled where set-pieces were concerned. If an actor was playing several roles within the same scene, it would require multiple takes, but this also meant that absolutely nothing could be moved. So, the crew ended up using hot glue to stick down, literally everything in a scene, to avoid it being knocked out of place, glasses, plates, telephones, you name it.

This method was really put to the test on one particular night, Zemeckis reflects in an interview:

Unfortunately, the one night where we locked up the stage and put guards around it so that nothing could be disturbed and of course as fate would have it, we had an earthquake that night.

Luckily it was only a small earthquake, so they were still able to shoot the scenes they hadn’t yet done, and it ended up being seamless in the final product.

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The Second Act Was Inspired By ‘Star Wars’

The second act of the movie sees Marty return to an alternate, somewhat dystopian Hilly Valley in 1985, after his nemesis, Biff changed the course of history. This particular segment of the trilogy definitely stands out for being the darkest in an otherwise fun family adventure.

The idea to include this gritty storyline which makes up a third of the movie, apparently came from a galaxy far, far, away, Steven Spielberg (executive producer) confirms in an interview:

Well, you know, the template for a dark, you know, second act in a trilogy was set by George Lucas when he made the first three Star Wars. The Empire Strikes Back is clearly the darker of the three films and for me, the best of the first three Star Wars episodes, you know, four, five and six. And so, yeah, the second act was the dark act, but you have to go into a kind of abyss before you can climb out and become a hero in the spotlight.

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‘Part II & III’ Were Originally One Movie

When Bob Gale (writer) and Robert Zemeckis (director) had (more or less) finished their final draft, it totalled to roughly 185 pages. This script pretty much had everything that was seen in Part II, the only difference being. . . it included the old west segment from Part III!

Although franchising is all the rage now, when making a movie back then, you didn’t necessarily make it with the intent of having a sequel. So, when Zemeckis had the brainchild of including an old west addition to their movie, it was originally to be included in Part II. When the script eventually got in front of executive producer, Steven Spielberg, he loved the script, but had an idea on how to keep everything in, without cutting it down, Spielberg recalls in an interview:

This was a very complicated plot and it existed not only in the future but in an alternate present, that we affectionately called Biff-Horrific. And then it went into the old west, and it just seemed like two movies. . .

It was at this stage Gale and Zemeckis began to remember their love for Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers and how those movies were shot back-to-back. This ended up being their inspiration for what came next, Gale reflects in an interview:

We said that’s what we should do, we just keep shooting, let’s just keep shooting. And thankfully, we had the best crew that you could ever imagine, we were eleven months of shooting those two movies and everyone was still on speaking terms at the end.

A huge bonus of doing it this way allowed them to maintain a lot of consistency in terms of cast and crew that wasn’t necessarily as straightforward between Part I & II.

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Crispin Glover Sued The Filmmakers For Using His Likeness

After apparently requesting too much to reprise his role, Crispin Glover was ultimately let go and didn’t return to play George McFly. Although this led the writers to incorporate an unfortunate passing for the character in Hill Valley’s alternate 1985, McFly still makes a very brief appearance in the first act whilst Doc and Marty are in the future.

Unlike Jennifer, who was simply replaced by another actress, the filmmakers implemented a few things so that audiences wouldn’t notice a different actor (Jeffrey Weissman) was playing George. This included hanging him upside, not focusing for too long on the character and using actual moulds of Crispin Glover’s face!

When Glover eventually got wind of this, he pursued legal action, not because someone else was playing the role, but because they were intent on making the character look like him specifically, Glover confirms in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter:

Had they only hired another actor, which is kind of what I thought had happened, that would have been totally legal, and I would have been completely fine with it.

A settlement was eventually reached out of court with Universal studios for a reported $760’000. Glover has since gone on to change Screen Actors Guild rules when it comes to the illicit use of actors, however, the SAG has advised they can neither confirm nor deny Glover’s statement.

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