Back To The Future 30th Anniversary Trilogy (Blu-ray Review)

Starring: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Thomas F. Wilson, Crispin Glover
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Running Time: 342 mins
Certificate: PG
Release Date: October 5th 2015 (UK)

Every year the internet gets excited after someone photoshops an image from Back To The Future to suggest we’ve finally reached the date that Marty, Doc Brown and Jennifer go to when they travel into the future in Back To The Future Part II. However, it’s always been a hoax – until now, that is!

Yep, October 21st, 2015 is the date that fans have been waiting for, even if we’ve had to come to accept that flying cars, hover boards, self-lacing shoes and food rehydrators aren’t the commonplace items the movie suggested they would be.

It’s not too surprising then that a DVD and Blu-ray re-release has been put together to celebrate both 30 years since the original movie and the fact we’ve very nearly reached the future (as well as 60 years since the 1955 parts of the trilogy).

I would tell you about the movies, but quite frankly if you’ve never seen the Back To The Future films, you have no right being on a film website. Just go and watch them now, and feel like a complete idiot that it’s taken you this long to see them, as they are great fun. I’ve written elsewhere about how the original movie helped make me a film lover, to the point I watched it so much as a kid that I completely wore out the VHS tape and had to buy a new one. It’s still one of my all-time favourites.

The added interest in this release comes from the new bonus disc, which offers over two hours of extra special features, all of which are pretty good. There’s the 45-minute ‘Looking Back To The Future’, which pieces together original 80s and newer interviews to give a great overview of the making of the first movie, from the original idea to the creation of the time-travelling DeLorean. Although much of the information has been seen in other documentaries, there’s still some interesting new info, particularly about the mechanics of making the film, from how they created the flame trails to the way they intricately turned 1955 Hill Valley into 1985 Hill Valley.

Also well worth a look for fans is the featurette, ‘OUTATIME: Restoring the DeLorean’, which shows how the main ‘hero’ DeLorean from the trilogy was allowed to slowly decay, with fans stealing bits of it, animals making their home inside and the whole thing generally falling to bits. As a result, in 2012 it was completely restored by a group of BTTF fans, and this featurette takes an interesting look at that.

You may not have even known there was a Back To The Future animated series, but in 1991 there was. It continued the story of Marty and Doc Brown, along with the Doc’s kids, Jules and Verne. There are two episodes included in this new release, which also feature live-action semi-educational sequences with Christopher Lloyd. To be honest it’s not the greatest cartoon ever made, but it’s a fun addition for fans who’d like to get a taste of this spin-off.

However, the thing that many will be most interesting to many is a brand new short film featuring Lloyd as Doc Brown. After you get over the fact that 30 years on Lloyd looks a fair amount older than the aged Doc Brown suggested he would in the movies, it’s certainly nice to have him back. To be honest it’s not the greatest of shorts, but it does offer the makers the opportunity to tell us why our version of 2015 is so different to the one seen in Back To The Future Part II. Apparently it’s the Doc’s fault (although he does have a good reason)! It would have been nice if they could have tried something a little more ambitious, but it’s still great to see the Doc back again.

Also pretty entertaining are a couple of commercials for things we see in 2015 Hill Valley. There’s a teaser trailer for Jaws 19, which also gives us a taste for what happened in Jaws five to 18. The hover board also gets an advert, to let us know how cool levitation is.

Beyond the Bonus Disc, it’s essentially the same as the earlier Blu-ray release, which included a fair amount of special features and a pretty good HD transfer of the movies.

Overall Verdict: Although it’s a toss-up whether you need the new features if you already own the Back To The Future trilogy on Blu-ray, but if you don’t you really ought to buy it.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac