Retour vers le futur III

"If you don't come out in ten seconds, everyone will know that Clint Eastwood is the most cowardly piece of shit in the entire West!" It really isn't usual for third installments, especially third installments that are filmed concurrently with the previous installment, to have any major character development of established characters. Yet this happened with the third installment of Back to the Future, and my suspicion is that it was done in order to create some new framework for the story, where the tropes already used in the previous episodes would not be repeated over and over again. You can tell then how Spielberg and Zemeckis thought of the characters as action figures on a road carpet, and sometimes they just had to get a character out of it. I think I like the third installment the best. It's the most compact, the most far-reaching in terms of execution and gimmickry, and the instrumental country version of Doubleback by ZZ Top is a terrible blast. Except that Doc in his western clothes looks unduly creepy to me, because he looks like a combination of Klaus Kinski from Fitzcarraldo and my cobbler. And the fact that the gravedigger wasn't a Tim Curry cameo took a bit of wind out of me, too. (31/05/2021)

I'm ignoring the comments in the reviews about this being the weakest part of the series, because I have always considered the Back to the Future series as one cohesive story. It's hard to believe that Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale didn't originally plan for a trilogy and initially left the open ending of the first film only as a space for the audience's imagination, because other screenwriters struggle their entire careers to come up with as many ideas and plot points as they put into these three movies. (01/05/2006)

After watching the whole Robert Zemeckis trilogy, I can say that I found all parts comparable in quality and each one managed to win me over in some way. After the ground-breaking first and the time-layered second came the third part, which, although almost entirely set in the Wild West of 1885, still managed to entertain and thrill me just as much as its two predecessors, which played with the time planes a bit more. Again, I commend the late 19th century visual stylisation and more than one humorous allusion (Clint Eastwood, Frisbee). The final race for time with the train was truly thrilling and incredibly well shot for its time. Even though I only recently got into the trilogy, and its cult status slightly passed me by, I was slightly nostalgic during the closing credits, knowing that this was the last adventure of Marty and the Doc. (02/08/2021)

At Fox's urging, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale have turned their attention to a Western trilogy and are revving up the DeLorean while it's still hot. Clint Eastwood’s reputation is saved, Biff's generation gets another thrashing, and the descendant of rocket engineer von Braun even brushes his hair for the sake of love. It's no wonder, since his calves could heat up a locomotive’s boiler more than special anthracite fuel! I enjoy hunting for Silvestri's dark tones akin to Predator and the nuances of causality, even though I understand them about as well as Marty McFly does... “She's not gonna understand that, Doc. Hell, I'm in it with you, and even I don't understand it.” (03/07/2023)

Probably the best and cleanest of the whole series. The transfer to the Wild West and the slight calming down of the pace only benefited the film. Finally, it's not such a crazy, nonsensical farce, but quality sci-fi full of twists, precarious situations, plenty of solid humor and a huge dose of irony. Technically, it is certainly the most skillful part, which we, of course, owe to the year of its creation. Even so, this series is rather a suffering for me, mainly because of excessive fragmentation and inconsistency within the genre. Intentional? I understand, but not my cup of tea. (06/09/2012)