Back to the Future: the Ultimate visual history, a Back to Future book (2015)

In 1985 moviegoing audiences were introduced to one of the best time travelling movies ever made, Back to the Future. The film starring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd became a huge succes and is one of those classic 80’s movies that pretty much everyone remembers seeing. Eventually a second and third part were released, both also highly succesful movies. I myself regard the Back to the Future movie trilogy as one of the best movie trilogies ever made. It just simply works. The story is great, the characters are pretty much unforgettable, and it contains a ton of sequences that are absolutely amazing to watch. While it is very unlikely that a sequel to these films will ever be made, the franchise still lives on in the hearts of movie lovers all around the world. The year 2015 was not only an important year in the movie itself, but also marked it’s 30th anniversary. A perfect moment to release the book that I am about to review.

The Back to the Future Ultimate Visual History is a book, that chronicles all the aspects involved in making all three movies from the trilogy. It is divided into four main chapters. The first three focus mainly on everything that was needed in order to bring the three movies to the big screen. The final (shorter) chapter, deals with the Universal Studios theme park attraction Back to the Future: the Ride, as well as the short lived Back to the Future animated series. The first three chapters were definitely the most interesting. These contain a wealth of information about the three films, including interviews with the cast and crew, as well as a lot of background stories. How many of you for instance knew that the role of Marty Mcfly was originally played by actor Eric Stoltz? And that he was fired after nearly six weeks of shooting film. Or how much of a pain in the ass actor Crispin Glover, who played the role of Marty’s dad, was on set. It are stories like these, and much, much more that make this book such a joy to read.

But ofcourse it’s not called “the Ultimate Visual History” for nothing. The book comes with a wealth of behind the scenes photographs, production designs, movie posters and other things that make the book a treat for your eyes as well. Also included are a couple of replicas from things that were featured in the film. For instance the photograph from the first movie, that had Marty’s brother and sister slowly fading from the picture. As much fun as these features are, they are also the book’s weakest point. Usually in books like these, the reader is able to remove these things in order to take a closer look at them. Here though, they are glued to the pages of the book, and as such they can’t be taken out without causing damage. Ofcourse I did not remove them, but despite that, because some of them are quite large you do run the risk of causing damage eventually, especially if you want to flip through it’s pages.

But this is a minor issue in what is otherwise a great book. The book is well written and thankfully does not bore you to death with a lot of technical details like which camera techniques were used or stuff like that. The thing I also enjoyed about it were the numerous interviews with the original cast, and also the forewords written by Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd. It is always very cool if you manage to get the actors themselves involved in a project like this as well. All in all I highly recommend this book. Especially if you are a fan of these movies, it provides an interesting background companion to what was involved in the making of these classic films. So all I can say is, let’s go back ….to the future….

I give Back to the Future: the Ultimate Visual History a 9 out of 10 score.