The final installment of the Back to the Future trilogy finds Marty digging the trusty DeLorean out of a mineshaft and looking for Doc in the Wild West of 1885. But when their time machine breaks d...
Back to the Future Part III moves briskly along like tumbleweed but suffers from steam depletion. When many exclaim a sentence similarly to "bahhh the Wild West one is just stupid", naturally I enter the film with caution. But after the mess that the DeLorean caused in Part II, it was not going to a be difficult task to improve upon its predecessor. Fortunately, this conclusive chapter brings back the swooning entertainment that produces more swings than saloon doors. Yeah cowboy! All that was missing was Clint Eastwood...oh, wait! Doc, after the events of the second film, is now trapped in western 1885 which sees Marty travel back in time in order to bring him back.
Shootouts in the dusty streets, rodeos in the pale moonlight and a spittoon filled with western delight. Zemeckis throws Marty "Clint Eastwood" McFly into as much cowboy carnage as possible, allowing ornate exploration into this refreshing aesthetic change. Yet despite the overhaul in production design, it still remains the exact same narrative structure as the original and is unable to detach itself from being a re-hash. The same plot details, for example Marty getting knocked out and waking up in his mother's bed or inventively attempting to push the DeLorean to 88mph (because it's always broken!), are repeated. Beat for beat. And whilst the latter, which involves a cumbersome steam train, was probably the most exhilarating sequence of the entire franchise, the proceeding déjà vu story was far too repetitive for the sake of callback humour.
The same criticisms from the previous chapter can still be applied here, but with Zemeckis focusing on just one timeline instead of multiple. Acting remains consistent, although Irish Fox was extremely distracting, as does the visual spectacle. Various scenes involving the same actor sharing the screen simultaneously were noticeable as the actors were never looking directly at each other, which again was distracting.
However Gale's literary inclusion of Clara, a female plot device for Doc, was a breath of fresh frontier air. Finally enabling some much required emotional development for him, and it proves that a hearty central story is necessary for these films to thrive. It wraps up many convoluted plot strands from Part II (whilst creating a few new ones), but it concludes the trilogy with a heartwarming bow decorated in resolute defiance. Even if Doc hampered on about destroying the time machine for three films yet builds another one from a train just to say "see you later!" to Marty (it's the small details people!).
Still, a much more entertaining romp than its predecessor which still unfortunately plummets into the ravine of repetition. Yet it does so in a good ol' fashioned western style. Yeehaw!
