Robert Zemeckis
Ritorno al Futuro II

THE REVIEW

Despite the open ending, at the end of the first episode there is no "To be continued." And Robert Zemeckis immediately rushed to say there would be no sequel. It was the incredible commercial success that made him change his mind. The big bucks: an old story.
But the director did not let himself be seduced by easy money, he cornered greed – precisely the theme of this second part – and took his time. The result: a brilliant screenplay full of twists and references. By far the most beautiful of the trilogy.
Let's go in order.

The future. All of us would like to know what awaits us. And for Marty, it's no different. But instead of glory, there are three revelations that don't exactly align with his expectations.  

-    Marty McFly, Mr. Loser. That man took his life, flushed it down the toilet, and then flushed again.
-    If your father hadn't had that race, he wouldn't have broken his hand and wouldn't have given up music.
-    You are fired.

Then a red book. The best of souvenirs. Impossible to resist.

They return home. But Hill Valley has become Hell Valley. The brilliant Zemeckis managed to make us understand nothing. It would have been even better if he hadn't shown us the junk with the cane. Without this pleonasm, the dialogue between Marty and Doc in the lab would have been even more wonderful:

-    "Obviously the space-time continuum has been disrupted creating this new sequence of events resulting in this alternate reality."
-    "What language is that, Doc?"
-    "Imagine that this line represents time: present – past – future. From some point in the past, the timeline veered into this tangent creating the alternative 1985. Alternative for you, for me, (…) but reality for everyone else….".
-    "That son of a bitch stole my idea! Must have heard when... It's my fault. The whole thing is my fault."
-    "This proves that the time machine must be destroyed. After we fix this.".
-    "So we'll go back to the future….".
-    "We can't, because if we go to the future from this point in time, it would be in the future of this reality…. No, to set things straight, we must know the exact circumstances of when, how, and where….".

November 12, '55. That's when. The day is exactly the same. We need to go back to the first episode. And now in 1955, there are two Martys, two Docs and above all there's a Biff who wants to punish Levi-Strauss for wrecking his car. And Levi Marty would be doomed unless he got some help from above. Don't worry, it's not the Almighty. It's just a wire attached to the DeLorean.

-    Do you have the book?
-    It's in my hand. It's here in my hand.
-    Burn it!!!!
-    Roger that!!!

But the young time traveler is not yet convinced. He looks at it and looks at the DeLorean in the sky. He doesn't want Doc to see him. Put the book in the jacket; there's a fortune in it. But Marty resists. The almanac is in ashes in the bucket that Almighty made him find right there. Our hero smiles. He lost a heavy mountain of gold but lightened his spirit. Mission accomplished. The future is back to normal. He returns home.

But beware: that is the night of Hill Valley's lightning storm. And it only takes one bolt to generate the 1.21 gigawatts to activate the flux capacitor (Zemeckis forgot the 88 miles per hour, but we forgive him). And the lightning strikes.
Doc has disintegrated. If he were still alive, he would have already come back to get me. And yet, I don't see anyone arriving. Wait a minute. A car. Is that package for me? Are you kidding me? No one could have known I would be here at this hour. Wait a minute. There's someone. It's sent by Doc! 1885!!! There's only one man who can help me.

Brother Martin did something great by burning the red book. He defeated greed, the capital vice that mocks (almost) all men. If Silvio hadn't fallen for this trick, no one would have convicted him of tax fraud. But Marty is much better than Silvio. And now the Almighty deems him capable of challenging the vice that only saints can overcome. But that's another great story.