Back to the Future Part III

[School of Movies 2025]

We return to the format of the first film, trapped in a specific, focused time period, lovingly recreated for modern audiences. The big obstacles to be overcome are both based on the ticking clock point-of-no-return, and are unexpectedly and deeply personal for our protagonist.

This one is Emmet's movie. While Marty still has to learn a harsh lesson about whether other people think he's chicken or not, he is on a rescue mission and this third film puts Doc Brown front and centre. This is because being saved from temporal exile and murder-by-Tannen externally pales in comparison to the urgency in which Emmett must save himself internally, philosophically, and in key regard to his until-today strained relationship with the rest of the human race beyond Marty.

Christopher Lloyd brings it, in this sweetly tragic, broken-and-mended love story through time, opposite the luminous Mary Steenburgen as doomed schoolmistress Clara Clayton in the Hill Valley of 1885. This is a bittersweet goodbye that punctuates this madcap, majestic trilogy with a firm and definite full-stop, ending on the highest of notes that defies all modern conventions of the permanent strip-mining of exhausted IPs.

Guest: Jesse Ferguson @TheDapperDM from the Recorded Tomorrow Podcast

Those early Digital Gonzo shows can be found on the School of Movies Archive podcast feed. They are rough as hell, amateur hour on my part and each barely breaks the sixty minute mark. The best bits of all of them are featured at the end of each of these three new shows. Many thanks to my vintage guests, James Batchelor and Nikki Taylor.