Back to the Future Part III Totally Explained

Everything about Jules Brown totally explained

Back to the Future Part III is the third and final installment of the Back to the Future trilogy. The film is a science fiction western, using the time travel premise of the series to take Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) back to the Old West of 1885.

Plot

The film opens by replaying the conclusion of Back to the Future Part II, which is an altered version of the conclusion of Back to the Future Part I. Marty is stranded in 1955, but has received a seventy-year-old letter from Doc Brown. In the letter, Doc explains that he's trapped in 1885 as the technology required to repair the De Lorean wouldn't be invented until 1947. The letter tells Marty where the De Lorean is, but gives him explicit instructions to not attempt a rescue. Instead, he's told to immediately return to 1985 and destroy the time machine in order to prevent further disruption of the space-time continuum.
   With the help of Doc's 1955 counterpart, Marty uncovers the De Lorean from a mine. Nearby they discover a tombstone that reveals that Doc died just six days after writing Marty the letter, having been murdered by Biff Tannen's great-grandfather Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen "over a matter of $80." With the De Lorean restored to working order through the use of 1955 components, Marty and the 1955 Doc agree that Marty will go back to 1885 and bring the 1985 Doc back to his own time. Before leaving, Marty takes a photo of the tombstone.
   After arriving in 1885 and surviving brushes with Indians, the cavalry, and a bear, Marty finds refuge for the night with his great-great-grandparents, Seamus and Maggie McFly, who are immigrants newly arrived from Ireland. When asked his name, Marty uses the alias "Clint Eastwood" to hide who he really is. Oddly, Maggie is played by Lea Thompson, who portrayed Marty's mother. This was done in part to allow the "Marty waking up after being hit on the head" scene to take place with Lea Thompson, just as in the other two films (wherein Marty wakes up discombobulated, and initially misbelieves that he's at home). The producers have stated that the scene shouldn't suggest she's an ancestor of Marty's mother, and that a possible explanation is that "McFly men are genetically predisposed to be attracted to women who look like Lea Thompson"'. Despite this resemblance, Maggie is slightly hostile toward Marty and appears more intelligent and downright than the scatterbrained, romantic Lorraine. It is from Seamus, who, while ignorant of Marty's relation to him, is perceptive of his guest's character, that Marty receives a "warm" welcome.
   Marty later goes to Hill Valley to find Doc, who has taken an alter-ego there as a blacksmith. Once there, Marty has a run-in with Buford Tannen, who attempts to hang him in front of the partially-constructed courthouse as punishment for Marty's ignorant use of the much-despised nickname "Mad Dog". While acting in this scene, actor Michael J. Fox (who portrayed Marty) offered to try the stunt without standing on a box. He then miscalculated where his hand would slip between the rope and his neck, actually hanging himself and causing himself to pass out. It was originally thought that a connection existed between Fox's Parkinson's-disease symptoms and this incident.
   Doc rescues Marty and argues with Buford over whether or not Doc owes Buford eighty dollars. Doc then takes Marty back to his workshop, only to discover that the De Lorean's fuel line is broken, which is problematic as unleaded gasoline won't be available in Hill Valley until the early 20th century, whereas the nuclear fusion generator that empowers the time machine won't do the same for the car's engine. The Back to the Future Part III novelization explains that Doc drained all the fluids from the De Lorean before storing it in 1885 to prevent corrosion, thus clarifying that the option to obtain gasoline from the stored De Lorean (in 1885) wasn't available.
   Doc makes several futile attempts to bring the car up to the required speed of 88 miles per hour, until he devises a plan to push the De Lorean with a steam locomotive. The only portion of the track that's straight and level enough for the plan ends at Shonash Ravine. Because a bridge across the ravine exists in 1985, Doc insists that they can avoid falling into the ravine by reaching 88 miles per hour before they hit the edge of the tracks. To better illustrate his proposal, Doc has created a toy model of the locomotive, the tracks, the time machine and a couple of key locations: the switch, where that'll switch the locomotive to the incomplete track, and a windmill, which Doc calls their point of no return. Once they pass that, Doc says, "it's the future or bust!"
   While surveying the tracks, Marty and the Doc see the town's new schoolteacher Clara Clayton on a runaway carriage. Doc saves her just before the carriage plummets into the ravine. The two fall instantly in love before Marty and Doc realize that the Clara was 'intended' by the course of history to fall to her death, resulting in the ravine being renamed Clayton Ravine in memorial to her.
   During Marty's time in the 1885 version of Hill Valley, several historical references are made to product inventions. Marty throws a pie plate manufactured by the "Frisbie" pie company; a reference to the origin of the Frisbee company. In another scene Doc talks to a barbed wire salesman at the saloon (barbed wire was an important invention in the American West). The salesman in the film bears some resemblance to Joseph Glidden, who patented the invention in 1874. It is unknown whether the film’s creators intended this resemblance.
   Buford attempts to kill Doc at the festival dedicating the town's new clock tower, only to have Marty disrupt the attempt. Buford goads Marty to a gunfight, which Marty schedules for the morning he and Doc plan to leave for 1985. Pulling out the photo that he'd taken in 1955, Marty discovers that Doc's name on the tombstone has been replaced by "Clint Eastwood" and realizes that he, and not Doc, is now 'intended' to die. As Marty and Doc camp out the night before they leave, Doc sneaks off to say goodbye to Clara. He tells her the truth about his time travel, which she believes is an excuse for abandoning her; both are crushed.
   The next morning, Clara buys a train ticket to San Francisco, but as the train pulls out she overhears a comment by a man who spoke to Doc about his love for her. Clara gets off the train and rushes to Doc's workshop, where she discovers the toy model of the time machine.
   Meanwhile, Marty finds a despondent Doc in a saloon, whiskey shot in hand, babbling about the future. Marty asks the bartender how much Doc has had to drink, to which the bartender replies, "That's his first one." Realizing Doc is still sober, Marty tries to persuade Doc to return with him to 1985. Doc finally agrees to go with Marty, but when the others in the saloon propose a toast to the future, he downs the whiskey shot and passes out. As Marty and the bartender try to revive Doc with a concoction called "wake-up juice," Buford impatiently waits outside for Marty, calling him "yeller" to get him to come out. Marty, who until now has been unwilling to back down from a fight, refuses the challenge. Doc eventually revives, and he and Marty attempt to sneak past Buford, but are noticed by one of Buford's henchmen. Buford nabs the still-hungover Doc, but Marty escapes, taking refuge in a room with an iron stove.
   Buford threatens to harm Doc unless Marty agrees to a duel. When Marty finally meets Buford, Buford lets Doc go and faces Marty for a shoot out. Marty refuses to use his gun because he knew that Buford was Biff's great grandfather and killing Buford would have erased all existence of the future Biff where in turn would have possibly eliminated the setting for Marty's parents to get together where Biff was a key factor. So he dropped the pistol to the ground. Buford shoots Marty and approaches him to gloat over his body, but Marty plays dead as he's wearing a self-made armor made from the stove's door, an idea inspired by a film he'd earlier seen in Back to the Future II. Marty beats up Buford, knocking him into an unfinished tombstone, and gets him arrested. Because the tombstone is the same one that would have been on Marty's grave, its destruction causes it to disappear from Marty's 1955 photo.
   Continuing with their plan, Marty and Doc meet the train, steal the locomotive and push the De Lorean down the tracks with Marty in the car and Doc in the locomotive. As Doc climbs along the outside of the train to board the De Lorean, he sees that Clara, who has caught up with them, has boarded the locomotive. He goes back for her, making the decision to take her with him to the future. Clara, however, gets trapped while trying to get to Doc, and Doc decides to rescue her instead of boarding the De Lorean. Realizing that Doc now won't make it to the De Lorean in time, Marty sends the hoverboard, which he'd kept in the De Lorean since his trip to 2015, to Doc, who uses it to rescue Clara. Marty sees Doc and Clara clear the locomotive on the hoverboard before he returns to 1985 in the De Lorean. The locomotive falls into the ravine and is destroyed.
   Upon Marty's arrival in 1985 over what is now named Eastwood Ravine after his own psuedonym of Clint Eastwood, the De Lorean is crushed by a freight train. Marty narrowly escapes the same fate, but believes that he'll now never see Doc again, as the only means of getting Doc back from 1885 has been destroyed. Marty returns home to find everything the way it was at the end of the first movie, minus Doc and the De Lorean. He also finds Jennifer intact on her porch just as Doc had predicted. After picking up Jennifer, Marty encounters a group in another car that challenges him, even calling him 'chicken' in an attempt to goad him into street racing. However, just like he did in 1885, Marty declines the challenge, averting an accident and erasing their last indicator of the future — a memorandum that Jennifer had brought back from 2015. Jennifer, who remembers her own time-travels shown in Part II, is told the whole story upon questioning Marty.
   Marty and Jennifer return to the track where they see the De Lorean's remnants and are surprised by the arrival of a new time machine piloted by Doc: a heavily modified 19th-century steam engine covered by devices that may or may not be meteorological instruments designed to interpret weather conditions, whose purpose would be (given Doc's passionate desire for exact knowledge) to reveal how much work is needed to reach 88 m.p.h. Doc has married Clara, and the couple have two children, Jules and Verne. When Jennifer asks Doc about the meaning of the now-blank memo, Doc cheerfully interprets it to mean that they can now create their own future, as it hasn't been written yet. As Marty and Jennifer watch, the train lifts off the track in the same way as the De Lorean did at the end of the first film and flies away. The clothes Doc wears in this scene were modeled after those of the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz.

Release and recognitions

The movie grossed US$23 million in its first weekend of US release and $87.6 million altogether in US box office receipts – $243 million worldwide. On December 17 2002, Universal Studios released Back to the Future Part III in a boxed set with the first two films on DVD and VHS which did extremely well. In the DVD widescreen edition there was a minor framing flaw that Universal has since corrected, available in sets manufactured after February 21, 2003.
In 1990, the movie won a Saturn Award for Best Music for Alan Silvestri and a Best Supporting Actor award for Thomas F. Wilson. In 2003, it received AOL Movies DVD Premiere Award for Best Special Edition of the Year, an award based on consumer online voting.
The film received a Thumbs Up from Gene Siskel and a very marginal Thumbs Down from Roger Ebert on Siskel & Ebert.

Western homages

On the DVD commentary, Bob Gale and Neil Canton acknowledge that the film gave them a chance to play with a genre they loved as children -- the Western. The film is full of references, jokes, and homages to the genre.

The three old timers in the saloon are played by classic Western character actors Harry Carey, Jr., Dub Taylor, and Pat Buttram.
Doc (in 1955) clads Marty in an absurd outfit based upon B-Westerns of the period.
The scenes where Marty arrives in 1885 and is chased by Indians, and later when Doc hitches the De Lorean to a team of horses, were filmed in Monument Valley, known as "John Ford country" after the great director who used it extensively in his Westerns.
Marty chooses "Clint Eastwood", the most notable modern Western actor, as his alias in 1885. The locals make fun of it as a "sissy" name, and tell Marty that if he doesn't face Buford, "Clint Eastwood", will forever be known as a coward. Marty also says when he receives the clothes Doc gives him in 1955 looks nothing like Clint Eastwood's. Viewers can see a poster of "Revenge of the Creature" which was made in 1955, which also marked the first film role for Clint Eastwood. Upon Marty's return to 1985, his brother enquires sarcastically after his costume, using words to the effect of "Who are you supposed to be — Clint Eastwood?"; an obvious irony, considering that Marty has, in keeping with the film series' preference for paradoxes, apparently created the character.
Marty defeats Buford by imitating the final showdown in A Fistful of Dollars (which he'd seen in Biff's penthouse suite in Part II).
The establishing shot of Hill Valley, in which the camera is on a crane and rises over the train station to reveal a bird's-eye view of the bustling main street, is an exact copy of a shot in Once Upon a Time in the West.
After Marty gets new clothes in 1885, he wears a poncho and hat similar to what Eastwood wore the Spaghetti Western films he starred in.
Doc Brown shoots the rope hanging Marty, much like how Clint's character frees Tuco multiple times in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Cast and crew

Cast

Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly (aka "Clint Eastwood") and Seamus McFly

Christopher Lloyd as Dr Emmett "Doc" Brown

Mary Steenburgen as Clara Clayton

Thomas F. Wilson as Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen and Biff Tannen

Lea Thompson as Maggie McFly and Lorraine Baines McFly

James Tolkan as Marshal Strickland

Elisabeth Shue as Jennifer Parker

Jeffrey Weissman as George McFly

Matt Clark as Chester, the bartender

Dub Taylor as Saloon Old-Timer #1

Harry Carey, Jr. as Saloon Old-Timer #2

Pat Buttram as Saloon Old-Timer #3

Burton Gilliam as Colt Gun Salesman

Richard Dysart as Barbed-Wire Salesman

Michael Peter Balzary (Flea) as Needles

ZZ Top as the band at the dance

Crew

Robert Zemeckis: director/screenwriter

Bob Gale: producer/screenwriter

Neil Canton: producer

Kathleen Kennedy: producer

Frank Marshall: executive producer

Steven Spielberg: executive producer

Steve Starkey: associate producer

Other notes

When Marty first arrives in 1885, the De Lorean doesn't have ice on it, as it does immediately after some of the other time trips. The producers explained this in the DVD commentary of the first movie. They found it to be difficult to cover the De Lorean with ice for repeated takes, so as the three movies went on in time the De Lorean began to be progressively less covered in ice with each trip through time. The time trips in this last film apparently have no ice at all on the car, though if you watch the very last trip it takes, you can still see that the De Lorean has minor ice in a close up of Marty's face through the window.

Late former President Ronald Reagan, reportedly a fan of the BTTF series, was offered the role of the Mayor of the 19th-century Hill Valley, to which he ultimately declined.

When 1955 Doc tells Marty that he doesn't "want to run into some tree that once existed in the past," it's a direct reference to the first film, where Marty runs over Old Man Peabody's prized pine tree upon his arrival in 1955.

Video and computer games

LJN released an NES game called Back to the Future Part II & III, a sequel to their game based on the first movie. An arcade Back to the Future Part III game was also released that would eventually be ported to several home video game systems, including the Sega Genesis.

References in other media

In an episode of when the family travels back in time to the old west, when main character and father Wayne Szalinski is asked his name by the town's inhabitants, he says it's John Wayne. When his wife gives him a look of disbelief, he says that if Marty could be Clint Eastwood in Back to the Future Part III, there was no reason why he couldn't be John Wayne.

In The Simpsons episode 'Dude, Where's My Ranch?', the girl "Clara" is named after Clara Clayton.Further Information

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