Cinematic Swipe: Back To BACK TO THE FUTURE

On this date in 1985, Robert Zemeckis’s Back To The Future opened and despite an ending that promised more adventures, it was never intended to be the first installment in a series of films. But as is the way of Hollywood, the film’s resounding box office success had director Robert Zemeckis and writer Bob Gale found themselves using the original film’s ending of Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) taking Marty (Michael J. Fox) and his girlfriend Jennifer (Claudia Wells) to the future to help their future children as the logical starting point for Part II.

There was just one problem, though. Wells was unable to return to her role as she was taking care of her cancer-stricken mother. Casting Elisabeth Shue to take over the roll was the easy part out of the the dilemma, but recreating the first film’s closing moments for the new film’s opening ones was a little trickier. The clip below, in which someone has taken the two scenes and laid them side by side, shows that all involved did a pretty good job of replicating the end to the first film. You can also see where the filmmakers repeated the same shots. And how about how both Fox’s and Lloyd’s performances are nearly identical though performed four years apart?

And as a bonus, here is another video showing how the action going on during the Enchantment Under The Sea dance in 1955 is synched between the two films.