Back to the Future is a trilogy of time travel-themed comedy movies, known for its bright visuals, 80s cheese, quirky humour, endless supply of internet memes, and the iconic chemistry between its two main characters: Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd). The overarching story follows the pair of unlikely buddies as Doc invents a time machine in the form of a modded DeLorean car, which is able to transport the driver through time once it reaches 88 miles per hour.

The first movie was absolutely groundbreaking, ending on a bit of a cliffhanger and prompting a full trilogy to be made a few years later. To this day, it is a classic sci-fi that is so highly regarded, that nobody thinks they should ever be remade or rebooted. The movies in the trilogy kind of fluctuate in quality, but they’re all good–it’s just that some of them aren’t as good as the others. The ranking isn’t likely to surprise anyone, but this is a definitive best-to-worst list of the Back to the Future film trilogy.

3

‘Back to the Future Part II’ (1989)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 63%

Back to the Future Part II is the first film in the trilogy to actually take place in the future, centring on a fictionalized version of 2015 rather than 1955. Of course, there wasn’t exactly any way to predict what 2015 would be like, which means that the 2015 featured in the film is way more technologically advanced than it should be, with flying cars, hoverboards, and robots all over the place. This wasn’t a big deal at the time, but when 2015 actually rolled around, the movie didn’t age very well, to say the very least. But hey, it’s nice that Robert Zemeckis was so optimistic about what the 21st Century would actually look like.

Part II wasn’t a bad movie by any means, but there is one thing that is absolutely certain: it in no way held a candle to the near-perfection of the original. Like the previous film, it is very entertaining, but this one has some questionable writing choices that really don’t make a whole lot of sense. On top of that, the film was decidedly darker, shattering audience expectations for a goofy old adventure through time. It’s not that there weren’t some comedic bits, but these were scattered throughout some deeply serious moments. In short, it’s a perfectly fine movie, just don’t go into it expecting it to deliver the same level of “oomph” that the first did.

2

‘Back to the Future Part III’ (1990)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 79%

Back to the Future Part III took a huge risk by having the time travel plotline take things even further into the past than before, sending viewers way back to the Wild West, in the year 1885. This means that Marty doesn’t get to interact with himself or his family members at different stages in their life like the previous installments, providing a new, unique dynamic that the franchise was sorely lacking after the mild disappointment of the second part. Not only is this movie a classic sci-fi comedy, but also a Western adventure, blending two beloved genres in a really awesome way.

This experimental blend of genres didn’t seem promising at first, especially knowing it was coming out a mere six months after the previous installment. This is usually a death sentence when it comes to movies, yet the third and final piece of the trilogy managed to surpass its predecessor in every way, even if it didn’t quite live up to the original. The perfect conclusion to a wildly fun trilogy, Back to the Future Part III maintained its charm and level of straghtforwardness, meaning it’s easy to watch for newcomers to sci-fi, and for seasoned veterans of the genre.

1

‘Back to the Future’ (1985)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

You can’t beat the original. The first Back to the Future film was absolutely revolutionary in the sci-fi genre. It first introduced the iconic duo that is Marty and Doc, and saw Marty head back to the year 1955 after Doc is gunned down by a group of terrorists, from whom Doc stole the radioactive material needed to invent his signature DeLorean time machine. Upon arriving in 1955, Marty discovers he doesn’t have the necessary materials to make it back to his own time. On top of that, his presence in the era is altering the future, driving a wedge between his teenaged parents, putting his very existence at risk. Now, Marty must save Doc to ensure his survival in 1985 while simultaneously ensuring his parents fall in love with each other as they should.

To this day, four decades after its release, Back to the Future is widely considered one of the best sci-fi comedies of all time, and one of the greatest films of all time in general. This is largely due to how simplistic it is: there’s no convoluted plotlines about time paradoxes or intersecting timelines that turn this way and that while audiences struggle to figure it out. It’s straightforward, and it has a lot of fun with itself in the process. Back to the Future isn’t just a source of nostalgia, it’s a cinematic masterpiece and one of the best films of the 1980s, one that simply must be seen by any cinephile. Was there ever any doubt that it was the absolute best of the trilogy?

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