CLEVELAND - Michael J. Fox is one of my all-time favorite actors, but I must admit, it's probably because of just one of the many roles he has played during the past three decades and it may not even be his most popular.Marty McFly.
That's right. Fox's portrayal of the 17-year old skateboarding, aspiring musician in 1985's blockbuster hit film Back to the Future got me hooked like a raging crack addict on both he and the film. Needless to say, I eagerly anticipated the long awaited sequel which ended up taking four years to come to movie theaters. And so it was, 20 years ago today that Back to the Future, Part II premiered, much to the delight of my 12-year old self. I had been hanging on every little morsel of info I could that came out prior to the sequel's release. I salivated with joy at a featurette that was produced and broadcast in the weeks leading up to the film's theatrical release. In short, I was insanely obsessed.
Fox starred on TV's "Family Ties" as the ultra-Conservative and proudly young Republican Alex P. Keaton beginning in 1982. When Back to the Future was released in '85, he was in the midst of his third season and enjoying tremendous success on the series. By the time the sequel came out, "Family Ties" had ended and Fox, at age 28, still convincingly played the adolescent McFly with charm, verve and enthusiasm. He even played multiple roles in the flick as well as the finale to the trilogy which was filmed concurrently to Part II and released six months later.
Back to the Future, Part II picked up when the first film left off. Still set in 1985, the sequel called for Fox as McFly to travel 30 years into the future to 2015 to fix a "flaw" in his future kids' life. Doing more harm than good, McFly unknowingly returns to his "present time" of 1985 thinking all was corrected. He soon finds that he must return to 1955, the era to which he traveled in the first movie to correct a "simple error" he made in 2015 that wound up ruining not only his own past and present, but his entire family dynamic and the world at large! The film allowed us to view events and scenes from the first movie at different angle against the backdrop of a more layered and complex story.
It was amazing and innovative.
The film ended in a cliffhanger, just as the first one did and segued into the Western-themed Back to the Future, Part III. Among the awesome aspects of Part II was the hoverboard in 2015 as well as the Nike sneakers with "power laces."
It saddens me to this day that Fox became afflicted with Parkinson's Disease two years after this film's release, though he didn't publicly disclose that until 1998. Now 20 years hence, he has since retired from acting because of the degenerative nature of the disease, but he's remarkable in his positive attitude about it. In Back to the Future, Part II, the 1985 McFly always grew enraged when someone called him a chicken and that fact greatly compromised his future. For Michael J. Fox, he's been anything but a "chicken" in dealing with his present.
That's why, no matter what, his future will always be bright.
