Back to the Future Part III1990

Zemeckis-fest “Your future is whatever you make it. So make it a good one!” With this and the opening of Romancing the Stone, it really feels like Zemeckis wanted to make a western, hell even the big action sequence at the end of Used Cars had a western feel, so it’s interesting he never made one. Maybe this satisfied that feeling for him.  Overall, more satisfying than the second one with its focus on one major setting. I think if the second film spent the majority of its runtime in the future, it would probably play better. I mean, this is a pretty straight western for the majority of its runtime, which makes it pretty fun. There are some payoffs to some things from the second movie, like the Clint Eastwood bulletproof vest reference. But maybe not enough to make that movie work better in retrospect.  Also, Marty is a little dumber, so he can serve as the audience surrogate even though he’s dealt with time travel shenanigans for like two weeks straight now and driven and been in the DeLorean multiple times, so he really should have a fair grasp of what’s going on and how it works at least more than he presents in this film. Also, I’m pretty sure in the first movie, Doc says the DeLorean runs on electricity, but then all of a sudden in this movie, it runs on gas? Maybe that was just the time travel mechanism or maybe I missed something. But those are nitpicks and don’t affect my enjoyment.  This is just a really great time and a fun finale. I don’t think any of these can or could top the first, and I knew that coming in, but they’re still worth watching, and it’s a great trilogy. Marty and Doc are two of the greatest characters, and the DeLorean is so iconic.  It’s clear Zemeckis has a real eye for the adventure comedy, and it’s something he more or less perfected with Back to the Future. So I’m curious where he will go from here.