THE ARC'S TAKE

In the grand tradition of this show, we watched this out of order in order to celebrate springing forward for Daylight Savings Time so true fans of "Back To The Future," please, be nice in the comments section because we have nothing but love for the genre (yes, "Back To The Future" is a genre unto itself).

We ask whether Back to the Future Part II is even a movie or just a very expensive, very confident first act — all hoverboards and fax machines standing in for the character work it never bothers to do.

EPISODE SUMMARY

On The Arc, three friends watch movies out of order on purpose — this time it's Back to the Future Part II, tackled cold with no rewatch of the original. The verdict: a technical marvel of practical effects and hoverboards that's all plot and no story, functioning less like a movie than an extended, very fun first act. Expect a genuine defense of fax machines, a rant about Jennifer getting treated like a piece of luggage, and an argument about whether wealth is really just a failure of imagination. You don't need to have seen either Back to the Future film to enjoy this one — though it helps.

WHERE TO WATCH

Streaming availability as of 2026-07-05.

• Peacock (streaming with subscription)
• Amazon Prime Video (rent or buy)
• Apple TV (rent or buy)
• Fandango at Home (rent or buy)

All three trilogy entries live together on Peacock, which tracks — Back to the Future, Back to the Future Part II, and Back to the Future Part III are currently available to stream via Peacock, so anyone inspired to finally watch the movies in order has no excuse.

New To The Show?

New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning to get to know the show and find your new favorite film to pretend you've watched.

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Start from Episode 01: The Princess Bride

A Long Summary

Back to the Future Part II is the 1989 middle child of Robert Zemeckis's trilogy — the one that picks up in the exact garage where the first movie left off, launches Marty McFly into a 2015 of hoverboards and self-lacing shoes and, apparently, multiple household fax machines, then folds back on itself into the 1955 of the original film. It was a technical marvel when it arrived, and, watching it in 2025 — a year that has now come and gone without the flying cars — it's become a document of what 1989 hoped and feared: that Japan would economically eat America, that the future would just be the past with more faxes. We came to it the way we come to most things, which is to say backwards and out of order: this is a podcast that started Freakier Friday before Freaky Friday and watched a Marvel movie having seen no other Marvel movies, so of course we began Back to the Future with the second one and have no firm plans to ever watch the first.

What we actually spent the hour on is the gap between plot and story — the thing this movie has a genuine surplus of one and a real shortage of the other. Robby, who was fascinated and on high alert the whole time, kept circling how it's exposition, exposition, exposition until the last three minutes, when a single kite string floating silently down finally delivered the stakes the whole film had been withholding. Cole, who tried to research it as a Film and gave up by the second shot, had the most fun he's had watching a movie in ages and then landed the episode's best idea anyway: that wealth and jealousy and poverty are never absolute, they're measured against whatever your imagination can reach — the future McFlys have seventeen fax machines and a drive-by shooting on the same street. And Jaclynn watched the plot mechanics of two Martys stranded in the same timeline quietly break her brain, while also refusing to let the movie off the hook for how it treats Jennifer, whose unconscious body gets dumped on porches like a prop. We also spend real time on the parts that don't hold up — the Reagan-era anxieties and the ugly caricature of Marty's Japanese boss — without pretending they aren't there.

If you've seen this movie a dozen times and never questioned it, or you've never seen it and are wondering whether it's worth two hours, this is three friends taking a "silly" sequel seriously enough to find both the racism and the accidental philosophy in it — plus a genuine argument that Back to the Future Part II isn't a second act at all, it's act one of a story that doesn't pay off until the third film. Also Dad brags at length about renting a DeLorean for a Broadway musical that never got shot, learns that people get married inside them, and gets caught rolling his eyes at his own pun.

CREATIVES

• Robert Zemeckis — Director — also: Back to the Future (1985), Forrest Gump (1994), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
• Bob Gale — Screenwriter — also: Back to the Future (1985), Back to the Future Part III (1990), 1941 (1979)
• Bob Gale — Producer — also: Back to the Future (1985), Used Cars (1980)
• Neil Canton — Producer — also: Back to the Future (1985), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (1984)
• Steven Spielberg — Executive Producer — also: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Jaws (1975)
• Kathleen Kennedy — Executive Producer — also: Poltergeist (1982), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
• Frank Marshall — Executive Producer — also: Back to the Future (1985), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
• Dean Cundey — Cinematographer — also: Back to the Future (1985), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Romancing the Stone (1984)
• Alan Silvestri — Composer — also: Back to the Future (1985), Back to the Future Part III (1990), Forrest Gump (1994)

CAST

• Michael J. Fox — Marty McFly / Marty McFly Jr. / Marlene McFly — also: Back to the Future (1985), Family Ties (1982), Spin City (1996)
• Christopher Lloyd — Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown — also: Back to the Future (1985), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
• Lea Thompson — Lorraine Baines McFly / Lorraine Tannen — also: Back to the Future (1985), Red Dawn (1984), Howard the Duck (1986)
• Thomas F. Wilson — Biff Tannen / Griff Tannen — also: Back to the Future (1985), Back to the Future Part III (1990)
• Elisabeth Shue — Jennifer Parker — also: The Karate Kid (1984), Adventures in Babysitting (1987), Cocktail (1988)
• Jeffrey Weissman — George McFly — also: Back to the Future Part II (1989)
• Harry Waters Jr. — Marvin Berry — also: Back to the Future (1985)

AWARDS

• Academy Awards (Oscars): Best Visual Effects — NOMINATION It was nominated in 1990 for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects (John Bell, Steve Gawley, Michael Lantieri and Ken Ralston), but lost to The Abyss.
• BAFTA Awards: Best Special Visual Effects — WIN The film won the BAFTA Award for Best Special Visual Effects (Ken Ralston, Michael Lantieri, John Bell and Steve Gawley)

- Saturn Awards (Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films):

- Best Special Effects — WIN The film won the Saturn Award for Best Special Effects (for Ken Ralston, the special effects supervisor)

- Best Science Fiction Film — NOMINATION

- Best Costumes (Joanna Johnston) — NOMINATION

- Best Make-Up — NOMINATION

These last three Saturn nominations are drawn from the film's official awards record.

FUN FACTS / PRODUCTION TRIVIA

Here are five verified, surprising production trivia items about Back to the Future Part II:

Crispin Glover's absence sparked a landmark Hollywood lawsuit. When Crispin Glover declined to return as George McFly, the production reused old footage from the first film and had another actor, Jeffrey Weissman, play George with prosthetics and camera tricks, going so far as to hide his face by having him "wearing sunglasses, from the back, upside-down in an Ortho-lev harness, or out of focus in the background." Glover sued, and the suit led to new clauses in Screen Actors Guild agreements barring producers from reproducing another actor's likeness without permission — a case still cited today as a key precedent in personality rights for actors amid increasing use of special effects and digital techniques. [Source]

The film's opening scene is a shot-for-shot remake necessitated by a real-life family tragedy. Claudia Wells had planned to reprise her role as Jennifer, but she had to drop out to take care of her mother, who had recently been diagnosed with cancer. As a result, after casting Elisabeth Shue as a replacement, the producers re-shot the closing scenes of the first film for the beginning of Part II, in a nearly shot-for-shot match with the original. [Source]

A groundbreaking motion-control camera system let Michael J. Fox act opposite himself — and move the camera while doing it. For the scene with three Fox characters interacting, the effects house used one of its first forays into digital compositing along with the VistaGlide motion control camera system, which for the first time allowed a completely dynamic scene where the camera itself could move while an actor played multiple interacting characters. [Source]

The "future" hoverboards weren't hidden tech — they were simple props, and Zemeckis's joke about them backfired. In behind-the-scenes materials, Robert Zemeckis jokingly claimed the hoverboards used for filming were real and just hadn't been sold to the public over safety concerns, and because it was framed as a factual interview, most people missed the sarcasm and began calling toy stores asking for them to be released. In reality, the hoverboards were simply wooden props attached to the actors' feet, with the actors suspended by cables that were erased in post-production. (https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/back-to-the-future-ii-trivia-quiz/54266336; https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/BackToTheFuturePartII)

The DeLorean was almost a refrigerator, and the climax nearly hinged on a nuclear blast instead of a lightning strike. Early drafts of the script had Marty harnessing the power of a nuclear bomb test explosion to return to the future, but the special effects required were too expensive to realistically pull off, leading the filmmakers to a forgotten courthouse set on the Universal backlot instead — which became the basis for the iconic clock tower climax. [Source]

WHAT THEY DID NEXT

Robert Zemeckis directed Here, a 2024 American drama produced and directed by Zemeckis, co-written with Eric Roth, based on the 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire. The film stars Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, and Kelly Reilly, with digital de-aging via generative AI used to have the cast portray their characters across decades. He's since moved on to directing the Netflix thriller "The Last Mrs. Parrish," starring Jennifer Lopez, with Netflix having landed the rights to Liv Constantine's best-selling book, about a con artist who targets a wealthy couple by befriending the wife and seducing the husband, only to discover the wife's life is more complicated than she imagined.

Bob Gale, meanwhile, has stayed close to home base — he co-wrote the book for Back to the Future: The Musical, which premiered at Manchester Opera House in February 2020 ahead of a Broadway production that opened August 3, 2023. He's also confirmed to be helping franchise star Michael J. Fox write a book about his experience making the trilogy, titled "Future Boy." As for a fourth film, Gale has been blunt: he said he replies "F*** you" when asked about 'Back to the Future 4.'

We haven't covered Here yet — but we probably should.

FAMOUS QUOTES

Based on documented reviews and critic writings, here are confirmed quotes from named critics (not the film's own cast/crew) about Back to the Future Part II:

• "Back to the Future Part II is all manic and wacky." — Pauline Kael, Scraps from the Loft [Source]
• "I've never seen another movie in such a hurry or with so much shouting." — Pauline Kael, Scraps from the Loft [Source]
• "But Future II—which is the middle film of a trilogy—smacks of the assembly line." — Pauline Kael, Scraps from the Loft [Source]
• Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars, criticizing it for lacking the "genuine power of the original" but praising it for its "zaniness" and "screwball jokes."
• Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that the film is "ready for bigger and better things" and later said that it "manages to be giddily and merrily mind-boggling, rather than confusing."
• Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader gave the film a negative review, criticizing Zemeckis and Gale for turning the characters into "strident geeks" and for making the frenetic action formulaic, and believed that it contained "rampant misogyny," because the character of Jennifer Parker "is knocked unconscious early on so she won't interfere with the little-boy games."
• Variety said, "[Director Robert] Zemeckis' fascination with having characters interact at different ages of their lives hurts it visually, and strains credibility past the breaking point, by forcing him to rely on some very cheesy makeup designs."

EXTERNAL RECOMMENDATIONS

Here are a few resources listeners can check out for more on Back to the Future Part II:

Podcast Like It's 1989 — "Back to the Future Part II w/ Emily St. James" (Patreon episode, hosted by Kenny Neibart and Phil Iscove, released August 2, 2021). This episode brings on Vox writer Emily St. James as a guest, and we take the unique opportunity to view the movie in a vacuum, apart from the first and last entries in the series, discussing their nostalgia for the sequel, the relatively small scale of its setpieces, and how despite its imperfections it still feels like a perfect movie.

Box Office Pulp — "Back to the Future Part II Commentary Track" (released March 20, 2019, run time about 2 hours). This is a scene-specific audio commentary track meant to be played alongside the film, and it digs into the production history, the thought process behind breaking the story, why that story is kind of broken, the film's approach to future design, and Zemeckis' push to do things totally unique — good for listeners who want a deep, structural dive to pair directly with a rewatch.

Den of Geek — "Giving Back to the Future Part II Its Due" (essay by Simon Brew). This is a reappraisal essay that's useful counterpoint to the episode's critical take: it acknowledges that many critics have long argued Part II is the most muddled of the trilogy, and even notes that Zemeckis himself has admitted it's the film he's least happy with, given how quickly he had to edit it since Part II and Part III were shot back to back, while still making the case for its ambition — praising its sheer level of ambition, since Zemeckis and Gale had boxed themselves into a corner with the original film's cliffhanger ending, written without any real belief a sequel was coming.

RELATED ARC EPISODES

Back to the Future — This episode is the direct sequel discussion, explicitly building on and comparing itself throughout to our prior coverage of the original Back to the Future.

Or consider starting from the beginning — Episode 01: The Princess Bride is where we became friends.

SOUND DESIGN ATTRIBUTION

Sound design via Freesound.org and Envato.