Back to the Future Part III
One of the remarkable points about the first two movies in the “Back to the Future” series was their kinetic and breathtaking movement through time. We are subjected to an avalanche of paradoxes that we can no longer comprehend or follow plot development, resulting in us having to abandon any attempts at rationality and just go with the temporal flow.
But this wondrous quality is sadly absent from “Back to the Future Part III.” After making a few gestures in the direction of time travel intricacies, it settles down into being a standard western comedy.
The film was shot back to back with “Back to the Future II,” which you may remember took Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) ahead into a bleak future he had created by messing around with his immediate future. To make amends for his interference, he must travel back in time so that all subsequent futures will be pleasant.
Next up is “Back to The Future Part III,” where Marty receives a century old letter from Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), his old friend who has traveled back to the Old West and is generally happy there, asking Marty not to disturb him though this letter took 100 years for delivery.
However, Doc does reveal where he hid DeLorean the time machine in an abandoned mine near town. McFly conducts some historical research only to discover that Brown was killed just one week after writing; thus he resolves on going back through whatever risks involved rescuing his friend. He searches for it in an old mine and finds it still there, starting after sleeping for a century more than you can say about most cars after a month in any garage! Unfortunately once Marty travels back into history he mostly remains stuck there.
Had “Back To The Future Part III” approximated real life as seen in “McCabe And Mrs Miller,” then perhaps its representation of America’s Wild West might have been interesting. But instead we get something like sitcoms built on studio lots filled with cliches such as Pat Buttram among bar patrons don’t get me wrong: I was thrilled seeing Buttram again (he used be Gene Autry’s sidekick) and even happier hearing his voice still needs oiling but pieces from old films make up this town including shootouts on Main Street!
One aspect of Old West stories is sweetly entertaining: The romance between an eccentric local woman named Clara (Mary Steenburgen) and doc brown who fall instantly love struck but later becomes troubled by thoughts about duty towards future mankind thereby deciding it would be best if he returned home leaving poor clark behind.
This is easier said than done because there was no gas in the past, and McFly has busted the DeLorean fuel line. This prompts Doc Brown to hatch a brilliant plan to push the car up to time-travel speed (88 mph) with a train.
All of this is kind of fun (the film didn’t skimp on money), but it’s too linear somehow. It’s like Robert Zemeckis, who directed, and Bob Gale, who wrote, ran out of time travel plot ideas and settled into a standard Western universe.
The one thing that stays the same in all three Back to the Future films which I particularly love is a bittersweet, elegiac quality about romance and time. In the first movie, McFly went back in history to make sure his parents had their first date. The second involved his own sweetheart. The third concerns Doc Brown and Clara. All these tales recognize that love operates entirely on time. Lovers like to think theirs is eternal.
But do they ever realize it depends entirely on temporal coincidence? If they weren’t alive at the same time then romance wouldn’t be possible at all.
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