Back To The Future: All Three Movies, Ranked Worst To Best

The Back to the Future trilogy is one of cinema’s most celebrated trios of films, but how do the three movies rank against each other? Released in 1985, the first Back to the Future movie was directed by Robert Zemeckis, who co-wrote the script with his regular collaborator and producing partner Bob Gale. The film was produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, and became an immediate success. A critical hit and the highest-grossing movie of 1985, Back to the Future unsurprisingly spawned two sequels.

1989 saw the release of Back to the Future Part II, with Back to the Future Part III arriving just a year later in 1990, both of them bringing back franchise leads Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly and Christopher Lloyd as Emmett “Doc” Brown for more time-travelling chaos. With their blend of sci-fi movie trappings, a great sense of adventure, winning comedy, and a lot of heart, all three Back to the Future movies played well with audiences, as it became one of the most beloved movie trilogies of all time.

Of course, as is the case with any trilogy, not all films in it are equal. There’s plenty of debate to be had about which order the movies rank in, even if at its weakest the franchise is still hugely entertaining and a whole lot of fun to watch. Here’s all three Back to the Future movies, ranked from worst to best.

3. Back To The Future Part 3

Picking up from where Back to the Future Part 2 ends, the third installment in the trilogy sees Marty McFly having to travel back from the 1955 he is currently in even further into the past, all the way to 1885, where Doc Brown is trapped. After learning that Doc is now dead in the “present” of 1955, killed by Buford Tannen, Marty goes back to save the Doc, leading to a Western-tinged, historical adventure film.

That’s a strange choice of setting for a film so concerned with time-travel, and yet Back to the Future Part 3 still works almost, if not quite as well as, its immediate predecessor. With its Western stylings, Back to the Future Part III is a trip back into Hollywood’s past: it’s a more traditional, linear storyline, especially when compared to Part II, and it has some more classic elements with regards to how it uses the genre, its bad guys, and its romances. At the same time, though, it’s also an interesting deviation for the third film in the series, changing up Marty and Doc’s roles by having the latter fall in love with Mary Steenburgen’s Clara Clayton, with the former tasked with saving him.

This change in style means some of the spark is missing from Back to the Future Part 3; it is, by design, different, and the madcap charm and energy that drives the first two films isn’t quite replicated here. The Western sets, too, leave a little something to be desired in terms of how they look. There’s not as much inventiveness here as seen in the first two movies, although that’s perhaps to be expected by the third movie, and the slower pace doesn’t quite suit the franchise.

At the same time, though, there’s still plenty for Back to the Future fans to love. The chemistry between Fox and Lloyd is once again off the charts, and complemented nicely by the addition of Steenburgen, while Thomas F. Wilson’s latest take on one of the Tannen family members is yet another shining example of how key he is to the franchise as a whole. There are still some strong action set-pieces you’d expect from Zemeckis too, especially with how he utilizes the locomotive. It might lack some of the genius of the first movie, but there’s a lot of heart here, and it brings the Back to the Future trilogy to a sweet, satisfying conclusion that gives its characters a fitting end and should leave all fans happy.

2. Back To The Future Part 2

For the sequel, Back to the Future actually finds itself going to the future, with Marty McFly and Doc Brown travelling forward to 2015. Back to the Future Part 2 sees Marty, Doc, and Jennifer Parker (now played by Elisabeth Shue, replacing Claudia Wells) make the 30-year jump in order to save Marty and Jennifer’s kids from going to prison and ruining the family. There, Marty finds a sports almanac containing results from 1950-2000, which he can use to profit in the past. It’s ultimately taken by an older Biff, who then manages to steal the DeLorean and give the almanac to his 1955 self, radically changing the 1985 “present” of the movies.

That plot leads to a wave of time-travel silliness. This is Zemeckis more fully exploring the potential of the concept, and where Back to the Future has its most crossing of timelines. It was somewhat convoluted for the time, if not by today’s standards where the idea of time-travel and alternate timelines is much more commonplace in movies (in part thanks to the Back to the Future trilogy itself). Here, it felt incredibly fresh. Whereas the first movie played on the nostalgia for the 1950s, this one has a much greater task: creating a whole future world. Some of the hallmarks that people think of when it comes to Back to the Future – the hoverboard, holograms, the self-lacing Nike sneakers, Jaws 19 – all come in Back to the Future Part II, and they’re all introduced fairly on too.

The first part of the film, when it is in 2015, is a visual feast for the imagination that holds up even when knowing what it got right and wrong. It features some great world-building from Zemeckis and his effects team, and allows for some of the most memorable images in the Back to the Future trilogy. There is a trade-off with this, which is that the storyline – which goes from 1985 to 2015 to 1955 to an alternate 1985, then back again – while allowing for some wonderful time-travel entertainment, isn’t as coherent or tight as the first and third movies. A little bit of the first’s heart is lost too, a casualty of the added spectacle and scale, but there’s still enough that shines through with Fox’s performance. The middle installment moves faster than 88mph; it’s a kinetic movie that changes and deepens the first film and the world of the franchise as a whole, raises the stakes, heightens the ambition, and is an absolute blast.

1. Back To The Future

The original and still the best, the first Back to the Future movie was and still is an all-time great blockbuster. Bursting onto the scene in 1985, the film is confident, bold, smart, and hasn’t really aged one bit since. The plot of this one, at least compared to its first sequel, is reasonably straightforward: Marty travels back in time by mistake from 1985 to 1955, where he meets his parents, the young version of his dad’s bully, Biff, and ends up as the romantic interest of his own mother while making a bid to get back to the future without messing with the timeline.

Within that framework, Back to the Future is a marvel of ingenuity, of a level of inventiveness in its script that not even Doc Brown could conjure up in his garage. Robert Zemeckis pushes together a sci-fi adventure with a high-school comedy, and the results are dazzling. After the setup – all of which is paid off in one way or another across the movie – Back to the Future screeches off and doesn’t look back. It has a script and performances that not only make the time-travel aspects work, but mean even the potential of incest doesn’t come off as too unsettling to disrupt things. The comedy is pitch-perfect, there are some of the most quotable lines in cinema, and while it’s not full of action, the set pieces here are brilliantly done.

Zemeckis’ direction, too, is wonderful. There is so much energy in this film, like it’s been hit with the same bolt of lightning that later strikes the clock tower. But for all it’s funny and fast, it also has the beating heart that gives everything a real warmth, while there is a sense of poignancy, too, in seeing Marty’s parents first as tired adults, then as fresh-faced teenagers, and connecting the dots of how life turned them from the latter into the former. Backed by a now iconic soundtrack, the movie has its protagonist invent rock’n’roll, a spirit that carries through to the entire film itself. The other entries in the trilogy are good, but Back to the Future is a perfect movie.

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