Let’s dream about a potential Back to the Future Part 4 for a minute.
I expect such an idea would get a polarising reaction if a sequel were announced. There would be screams of cheers, screams of ‘you’re ruining my childhood’ and probably everything in between.
If a sequel to Back to the Future were to be announced there would be a huge gasp across the movie loving world which would be a combination of ‘this is the most exciting thing ever’ and also ‘please don’t ruin my childhood’.
The Back to the Future trilogy is so loved that even the creators of the film have said they would do everything they can to stop the studio from making a sequel. Maybe a sequel could have come out in the 90s or even the early 00s, but we’re now at the stage where it’s seen as something that could never live up to expectations. That doesn’t mean this writer cannot dream of the possibilities.
If you’ve never seen the movies, the basic premise of the first one is that a teenage boy called Marty has befriended an ageing scientist, Doc Brown, who has invented time travel. Through an unfortunate series of events Marty ends up stuck 30 years in the past to 1955 where he has inadvertently changed time and is on course to have prevented his own existence by stopping his parents from becoming involved.
Marty is also lacking the nuclear fuel needed to power the time machine to get him back to his own time. This leads him to seek the help of the younger Doc Brown to devise a plan to get home.
I won’t describe the whole plot, but can say that by the time the credits roll Marty has succeeded in getting his parents together and saving his existence whilst also managing to get back to 1985 which was the year he came from. It’s a great movie which is a fun adventure and other than a few plot holes and questions which are inevitable with every time travel based story the movie wraps up fairly neatly without the specific need of a sequel to continue the story.
The film does end with a tease of the characters going forwards into the future, and it’s exactly here where Back to the Future part 2 picks up. The first sequel is an interesting film in that after the opening half hour showing us a vision of the distant future of 2015, and a few minutes showing us how altering time can lead to bad things, the plot actually takes us back to within the plot of the first film in 1955. The remainder of the film plays out within the events of the original film and this close connection between the first two films really justify why the sequel is called Back to the Future Part 2 rather than just Back to the Future 2. It is a second part to the same story, and unlike the first film, the filmmakers were confident enough to end the film with a definite cliffhanger to set up a part 3.
Back to the Future part 3 is interesting in that it is infinitely more stand alone and disconnected from the first two. I would argue that it would be possible to watch Part 3 without watching the first two films, but I would say that it’d be crazy to attempt to watch part 2 without having already seen part 1. Part 3 gives us a western style film complete with cowboys, gun fights and horse riding.
The plot of part 3 simplifies things to the same premise of the original – Marty must go back in time to save a life – this time Doc Brown’s rather than his own, and once again they have to solve that the time machine is lacking fuel – although this time it’s simple gasoline rather than the much sexier nuclear plutonium.
And unlike the end of Part 1 which teased the possibility of more adventures and Part 2 which had an absolute unresolved cliffhanger, Part 3 had a fairly conclusive ending. The DeLorean was destroyed by a train seemingly leaving Doc Brown trapped in the past, only for Doc to show up with a new steam powered train time machine. Clearly a few years have passed for Doc to be able to build a new time machine, and during that time the Doc and his now wife Clara have had two children, giving Doc a happy ending. Marty meanwhile has his happy ending looking towards the future with Jennifer. Done. No need for a sequel, right? Well…
In the 30 years since Back to the Future Part 3 we have had a cartoon series where the Doc’s twin boys Jules and Verne were primary characters, so in this sense we had a sequel, and whilst these may be seen as non canon for the film series, they actually give us a good indication of what the sequel could be. A new generation of Doc’s children taking centre stage who have to do something to ensure the safety of the future. It could even go down a similar route as the first film, where the boys cause their own existence to be in jeopardy.
A retread of the the story beats of the first film could be a safe bet, as all three films in the original trilogy reused themes and lines from sequel to sequel. A fourth film in the series wouldn’t be Back to the Future if we didn’t get lines such as ‘Mom, is that you?’ and ‘Nobody calls me chicken’.
But would audiences really be happy if a sequel came out and it relegated the original cast to supporting roles (cough Star Wars)? Well as much as we may like Marty and Doc to take the leading roles again, there are several problems. Firstly, both of them are much older than they were when they filmed the originals, and in the case of Michael J Fox who plays Marty, he has long been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease which has affected his career over the years. This doesn’t mean Michael couldn’t return and he has taken on several roles and shows over the years, but it’s possible they may need to incorporate his condition into the character of Marty.
This does also raise another issue however, as Michael J Fox played both his son Marty Jr, and his daughter Marlene when we saw them in the future presented in Part 2. It would be strange to recast these characters if they were to be featured as the Doc’s children could be, and with Michael’s health condition possibly being visible in all of his performances as the various generations of McFly that may require more explanation than just incorporating his health into just one character.
If they were to recast Marty and Jennifer’s children, it would actually have a much sadder in storyline implication. If there were different versions of Marty’s children in a new sequel it would imply that after the events of Part 2, that what we saw Marty do back in 1955 and then in 1885 in Part 3 have in fact altered the future so that the versions of Marty Jr and Marlene we saw in Part 2 were erased from time…
These are some of the thoughts that would need to go into a potential Back to the Future Part 4, but if these hurdles can’t be overcome we do actually have another official Back to the Future sequel that many haven’t experienced and that was the brilliant Back to the Future The Game that released on PC and games consoles in the PlayStation 3 era.
The game was released by Telltale games and was another of their The Walking Dead style story driven games which feature cinematic scenes and gameplay based around dialogue and decision making. This actually meant the project was much more like an interactive CGI movie rather than a traditional video game. There are actually videos out there where people have edited together footage of the game to make it watchable like a movie, and with Christopher Lloyd reprising the role of Doc, and a spot on impression of Michael J Fox (who does make a smaller appearance himself) by A.J Locascio this is probably as close to an official Back to the Future Part 4 that we may ever get.
So, is that it? Or is there any other food for thought on this matter? Well yes. A few years ago Michael J Fox did speak about the possibility of a fourth film and said that he’d be interested in playing the Doc this time. This thought puts the idea more into the realm of reboot territory, and I think there were more confused frowns at this idea than excitement. People want to see Michael and Christopher back as Marty and Doc, and any recasting would likely receive a mixed reception at best.
CGI de-aging as we have seen in Star Wars and Marvel films are possibilities if we needed to see younger versions of our heroes, and we can continue to dream of a scenario where Marty has to go back to 1955 one more time.
It doesn’t look likely that we’ll ever get a sequel to Back to the Future, but I’ll end this article with this thought for fans of the series to ponder on. Just as Marty and Doc ended up in an alternative 1985 in Part 2, there are almost certainly parallel timelines out there where there is a Back to the Future Part 4 that was made in 1994, and potential Parts 6, 7, 8 and so on. We just need to create a device to cross time and space to be able to find them.
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