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[Combichristoffersen]

I think you meant number three because that would make sense. For both, the third is trying to do something a little too similar to the first movie but not nearly a fraction as well, while the second had a dramatically different tone and was better off and more intriguing for it.

Nah. Both BttF 3 and The Last Crusade are fine movies. BttF 2 is not bad, just kinda mediocre, and the only good thing I have to say about Temple is that it gave us Short Round. Otherwise ToD is close to trash tier. Even worse than Crystal Skull.

 

[ibyea]

The first one obviously. I do have a soft spot for 2 though. As for 3, I barely remember that movie.

 

[Hero]

I always enjoyed the 2nd one the most.

 

[RareFantasy64]

1 is clearly the best but 2 and 3 are solid and I can see how people may hold either as their favorite rather than 1, but 1 is the best

 

[AllIsOneIsNone]

The original is on a different plane than the other two. The second and third are entertaining, but they're pretty much like a spoof of the first that just happen to have a lot of the same actors and director.

 

[The Scollard]

I have to go with all the people saying 1>3>2. I like 2, but it definitely is the weakest of the trilogy. It has its good moments too, like showing the events of the first film from a different perspective.

 

[ZackieChan]

Leaving the theater from watching Part 2 as a kid was fucking mind blowing. How the hell was he gonna get back!?

Then we found out. 😥

 

[Switch Back 9]

I'm sure 1 is probably the better film, but 2 showed me the concept of a hover board so it wins.

 

[Ogni-XR21]

The first one is the best. The second one is handicapped by their total inability to write a character for Jennifer. The third one is fine, too.

I don't think he intended to knock her out initially. It was only when she started asking too many questions about the future that he chose to sedate her as their wasn't enough time to really explain everything to her.

I wonder if this was done because the original actress quit acting or if they never had any bigger plans for Jennifer.

 

[Dagobert Duck]

When I was younger it was 2>1>3...how wrong I was...

now its 1>3>2...i mean all of them are great, but the first one is clearly the best while the second one has awesome 2015...and then kinda falls apart... 3 is a nice comeback to the formula...

 

[MrCunningham]

Biff is full of good lines in that movie. I also like in 1985-A "He says he's my distant relative. I don't see any resemblance."

Back to the Future II was really Biff's story, as he was the strongest and most interesting character in the movie. Marty and Doc really didn't offer that much to the plot, once they made it to alternate 1985. Yeah, they were on a mission to collect an Almanac, but that was all they were there for. We didn't see Marty or Doc evolve as character in the second movie, they were pretty static and just served their purpose to move the plot forward. All we saw with Marty and Jennifer were their pedestrian life in 2015 and their goofy children. But we got to see a much more fleshed out Biff Tannen in the second movie, including alternate timeline versions of him with some interesting outcomes. There were three alternate 1985 versions of Biff if we include him from the first movie.

 

[Earthpainting]

1 > 3 > 2 for me. The second one has its merits, but it just felt merrier. While we're at it, I think the second Indiana Jones, Star Wars and Die Hard to be the weakest of their respective trilogies too.

 

[Spiders]

1 > 3 > 2 for me, but it's very close.

The entire trilogy is fantastic, and I really hope they never try to reboot it.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

I wonder if this was done because the original actress quit acting or if they never had any bigger plans for Jennifer.

What I said before is truly the case. They never originally planned for a sequel, so they wrote a jokey ending where Marty and now his girlfriend are supposed to meet the next generation instead of the previous generation. When a sequel actually happened, they chose to stick with the expectations they'd already planted rather than ignoring what they'd already filmed. So being stuck with what they'd done before, they just ditched Jennifer as soon as they could manage. They also got the "we've got to do something about your kids!" story out of the way early on, so they could get to the new stuff they were more interested in.

The entire trilogy is fantastic, and I really hope they never try to reboot it.

I don't think it's going to happen while the bigs involved with the original have any say in it, but I really wouldn't mind it. The basic premise of the first movie--a young person meeting their parents and having lots of fish-out-of-water interactions with a nostalgic version of 30 years ago--could be made to work from almost any starting year with many of the specific details and jokes completely replaced.

 

[entremet]

Part 1, then 2, then 3. I really don't care for Westerns so part 3 is my least favorite.

 

[Boss Doggie]

1 and 3. 2 really felt... awkward with how they handle things, and honestly future stuff timeline tends to be wonky when they try to match it with the past. With that said I think the first movie is ultimately the best because of how closed it was and how the past and present consequences tied up so easily.

 

[Rockandrollclown]

1>2>3. Not really a fan of the third one at all honestly. When I was a kid, it was 2>>>>>>>>>1>3 though. 2015 in that movie was just amazing to 8 year old me.

 

[Skellig Gra]

They got progressively worse. 1 is awesome, 2 is good but gets real hammy. 3 is meh.

 

[Pagusas]

1>2 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 3


I hate 3, the western just theme just doesnt work, feels campy and lacks the right feel.


I honestly love 2, it has some seriously rough parts, but my god that ending is PERFECT. The lightning strike, the letter, the swelling music, the "I'm back FROM the future", the pull out, just so many perfect moments.

 

[emag]

1955 is the best.

So most of 1, the back half of 2, and the start of 3.

 

[Sephzilla]

1 > 2 = 3

Back to the Future 3 gets a lot of completely unwarranted hate. The trilogy as a whole is probably one of the most top to bottom movie trilogies ever and mostly avoids the third movie curse.

Back to the Future II was really Biff's story, as he was the strongest and most interesting character in the movie. Marty and Doc really didn't offer that much to the plot, once they made it to alternate 1985. Yeah, they were on a mission to collect an Almanac, but that was all they were there for. We didn't see Marty or Doc evolve as character in the second movie, they were pretty static and just served their purpose to move the plot forward. All we saw with Marty and Jennifer were their pedestrian life in 2015 and their goofy children. But we got to see a much more fleshed out Biff Tannen in the second movie, including alternate timeline versions of him with some interesting outcomes. There were three alternate 1985 versions of Biff if we include him from the first movie.

I like this post. Biff is basically the MVP of the trilogy and yeah, BTTF2 is a Biff story

 

[StayDead]

1/2 > 3

I like 1 and 2 equally.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

and the start of 3.

"Great Scott! ... Howdy Doody time!"


EDIT: Since there's some Biff love, I'll note the next BTTF comic miniseries is "Biff to the Future", and is supposed to be about the life of 1985-A Biff.

 

[Sephzilla]

I still want to know how 1985 Doc doesn't know about his own fate at the end of BTTF2, since 1955 Doc learns it all from Marty

EDIT: Since there's some Biff love, I'll note the next BTTF comic miniseries is "Biff to the Future", and is supposed to be about the life of 1985-A Biff.

There's already a live-action 1985-A Biff story

 

[Lothar]

3 is a the only one that felt really low budget. 1 and 2 are like huge blockbusters and 3 is like an episode of Bonanza. The acting and dialogue are hokier. The music is not as good. It's more predictable. I don't like Clara at all. I don't see the compatibility beteeen her and Doc. For one thing, she has to be about half his age. It's hard to believe that Doc would be okay with interacting with everyone in the town. All of that is possibly changing the future.

 

[Boem]

Back to the Future 1 is a true cinema classic. Perfectly told story with not a single scene wasted. The kind of comedy with light scifi-twists/big ideas you just don't really see anymore, unless it's part of a bigger franchise.

Parts 2 and 3 are fine (personally I don't care for 3 so much, although it has its moments) and very enjoyable films, but 1 is a real classic for the genre - the one that deserves to be up there with movies like Raiders, ET and Groundhog Day.

That said, as a kid my favorite scene was always the part in 2 where Marty went back to the scenes at the school ball from the first movie, and he had to sneak around while those scenes were playing out. That shit blew my young mind back then.

 

[MarkMclovin]

When I was a kid, 2 was the best.

Now I'm nearly 40, it's easily 1 > 3 = 2. The love story in 3 kind of bugs me, but they had to give Doc something.

 

[RareFantasy64]

I like 2 best, but that being said, one of the ways it was so great was how it directly built off of 1, to the point where you might've wondered if you could see the other Marty in the original.

This aspect is really amazing and is one of the best parts of 2

 

[Moff]

1 is definitely the smarter, better and more carefully crafted film

however, I can't just dismiss the future segment in part 2, it's incredibly iconic and in many ways the most important part of the franchise, so it's tough to say which is the best of the 2

 

[Inferno313]

1 > 2 > 3.

1 is a great, fucking all-time classic film.

2 is a wonderful sequel that ups the ante in interesting ways, gives us an amazing finale sequence, and has that iconic future sequence even if it bites off more than it can chew, logically.

3 is a good film, but it feels like a step back-down after 2. Whereas 2 felt like an ambitious way to build on what the first film did, 3 feels like a formulaic sequel that just re-makes a lot of the first film in a different setting.

 

[Zee-Row]

2 was awkward with the way they got around not having Crispin Glover and the scenes involving his character.

 

[Regulus Tera]

As a kid I liked 2 the best because of the divergent timeline shenanigans and 2015. As an adult, I think I prefer 1 more due to how closely knitted the story is. That script was marvelous.


The only thing about 3 that I like is Clara. Clara is awesome and cute.

 

[Cid Highwind]

Original is best no competition

 

[Kronotech]

Number 2 will always be my favorite. It doesn't take itself serious. The interaction with the first movie is my favorite part and the over-done futuristic setting tops it off.

Every movie is near perfect to me but 2 edges em out.

 

[RyudBoy]

The first one, for sure.

 

[jroc74]

First one.

They started going out there with 2 and 3.

First one was perfect.

I agree with others 2 was nice but I did not like 3 at all.

 

[bengraven]

Part one is best but the first twenty minutes of part two is the most fun and part three is fucking great.

 

[winjet81]

The biggest problem with 2 and 3 is when they had Michael J Fox play his own son and his own great great great grandfather. Just horrible.

Having Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover, Christopher Lloyd and Thomas F Wilson playing younger versions of themselves in BTTF 1 was great and worked well. Even the older versions of Loraine McFly and Biff Tannen were plausible, if over the top.

But MJF playing different generations of characters that were not even him, was a terrible idea and fell dead flat.

 

[RoadHazard]

I always liked 2 the best, with its cool future (now past) stuff. But I think maybe I now think 1 is better. 3 is the worst, at least. Not bad at all, but the past just isn't as cool as the future.

 

[Ninja Scooter]

2>3>1. Same order as the Indiana Jones trilogy.

 

[Boem]

2>3>1. Same order as the Indiana Jones trilogy.

Maaaaaannnnnn no.

Raiders of the Lost Ark, just like Back to the Future 1, is the only entry in the series that's a true cinema classic. Super tight, every frame where it needs to be, just a perfect movie.

The sequels are all fine and entertaining but never quite reach the perfectness of the first movie. I like Indy 2 for doing something a bit different, but Willie drags it down a lot and there's a lot of dumb 'Spielberg & Lucas at their cheesiest'-type comedy, like the monkey brain or poker/cheating scenes. It's not surprising to me that Spielberg always said he doesn't really like the movie himself. Indy 3 is the type of course correction where they basically remake the first movie with a big name cameo (Connery) and a more comedic tone. It's basically the Disneyland version of Raiders of the Lost Ark. All the criticism people give towards Force Awakens when they compare it to New Hope/Empire applies to comparing Last Crusade to Raiders as well. It feels like an (entertaining) victory lap as opposed to something genuinely new and refreshing, like the original movies, and it kind of feels like a victim to its own success/status, by forcing them to basically do the same thing again.

(and, just to be clear, I like both the Indy sequels as well as Force Awakens. I just don't think it's possible to see them as anywhere near close to the classics the originals were).

 

[Linkark07]

I can't believe people say 3 is better than 2. As soon as Marty went to the wild west, everything became a bore. Slept through to the rest of the film.

 

[ShirAhava]

I've always enjoyed 2 the most but people putting 1 over 2 doesn't bother me they are both great.

anyone who has 3 over 1 or 2 is bat crap crazy tho I mean...really?

3 felt like a made for tv movie

 

[Ogodei]

2 is the worst by far. The clumsy introduction of Marty's alektrophobia, the dystopian darkness of the alternate present that is tonally dissonant with the entire rest of the series, the terrible old age make-up, Michael J. Fox as his own children inspiring a million Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence vehicles, the list of atrocities goes on.

I think the worst is the time travel completely falling apart though. BTTFs 1 and 3 are more character driven, but BTTF2 is specifically about time travel, so it's kind of important for it to make sense. How did Old Biff get back into the old future after he changed it? You'll note I didn't ask why, because why is obvious: The main characters needed the time machine. Old Biff's time paradox is small potatoes compared to the major issue in BTTF2, though: Future Marty.

In the BTTF2 future timeline, Marty McFly, his girlfriend, and his disgraced scientist associate disappeared from 1985 and weren't seen for thirty years. So who the fuck is this future Marty? And future Jennifer? And why are their children clones of Marty? Is the McFly household being invaded by Skrulls? Why didn't Doc just ask future Marty to help out? It's the same character and you wouldn't need to risk two Martys colliding and making space-time collapse in on itself. For fucks sake, BTTF2.

Timeline changes aren't immediate under their rules, it goes by a ripple. Otherwise Marty would've dropped dead as soon as he pushed George out of the way of the car in the first movie.

Their time travel seems to work under the assumption that the universe is actively trying to hold itself together, and assume that temporally-displaced people should continue to exist until the probability of their existence begins to approach zero, which is why Marty was able to last for a week in 1955, as the youngest sibling, it was more likely that something would intervene to cause George and Lorraine to get together in time to conceive him, and why the eldest sibling started to fade first.

Same with old Biff in the future. I think the producers said that at one point Lorraine would have murdered Baron Biff, but it took a certain amount of time for the universe to decide that that is what definitely happened. You see him staggering out of the vehicle in 2015 like he's in pain, a deleted (or merely proposed and never-shot) scene would have showed him fading out of existence because he had inadvertently created a timeline where he was killed sometime between 1985 and 2015.

It's likely that 2015 itself was changing by the time Doc and Marty went back, they just didn't notice it yet because they got right in the time vehicle and headed off.

 

[jroc74]

Timeline changes aren't immediate under their rules, it goes by a ripple. Otherwise Marty would've dropped dead as soon as he pushed George out of the way of the car in the first movie.

Their time travel seems to work under the assumption that the universe is actively trying to hold itself together, and assume that temporally-displaced people should continue to exist until the probability of their existence begins to approach zero, which is why Marty was able to last for a week in 1955, as the youngest sibling, it was more likely that something would intervene to cause George and Lorraine to get together in time to conceive him, and why the eldest sibling started to fade first.

Same with old Biff in the future. I think the producers said that at one point Lorraine would have murdered Baron Biff, but it took a certain amount of time for the universe to decide that that is what definitely happened. You see him staggering out of the vehicle in 2015 like he's in pain, a deleted (or merely proposed and never-shot) scene would have showed him fading out of existence because he had inadvertently created a timeline where he was killed sometime between 1985 and 2015.

It's likely that 2015 itself was changing by the time Doc and Marty went back, they just didn't notice it yet because they got right in the time vehicle and headed off.

This has me cracking up laughing for some reason... The bluntness of it maybe. Or imagining that happening seems funny as hell to me.

 

[PhantomZone]

Part 1, then 2, then 3. I really don't care for Westerns so part 3 is my least favorite.

The love story in 3 kind of bugs me, but they had to give Doc something.

The love story is what drags the third down to being a slow burn end to the trilogy. That said BTTF is one of the best examples on a fine trilogy that doesn't go off a cliff and bomb out by the end (see Jaws or the Police Academy movies lol).

 

[Sephzilla]

2>3>1. Same order as the Indiana Jones trilogy.

Last Crusade > Temple of Doom > Raiders

Get it right!

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

a fine trilogy that doesn't go off a cliff

 

[PhantomZone]

I was not even thinking about that part of the film at the time of making the reference lol.

 

[msdstc]

The first is the best and it's not even close. The other 2 are fine, but not in the same realm as the first.