Back to the Future Part II

Back to the Future Part II wasn't really supposed to exist as its own film. The original Back to the Future's "TO BE CONTINUED" tag was actually a post-hoc addition for home video, not a plan, after studio head Sid Sheinberg demanded a sequel. The pitch that eventually became two movies went from Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis, through Spielberg, to Sid Sheinberg, who greenlit the whole thing on the spot.

From the film's vision of the future 2015, to its pre-CGI ingenuity, and a purpose-built motion-control rig called the VistaGlide that let Michael J. Fox play multiple characters in the same unbroken shot, Back to the Future Part II's ingenious visual effects work was good enough to earn it an Oscar nomination.

But we need to talk about George McFly. The character was originally written as dead in the darker alternate-1985 timeline, after negotiations with Crispin Glover fell apart over money and a real creative disagreement about where the character's arc was headed. What happened next was the production used face moulds taken from Glover during the first film to build facial prosthetics for his replacement, Jeffrey Weissman. It led to an infamous lawsuit over the reconstruction of his likeness without consent, that would have ramifications in Hollywood for decades to come...

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