Did Biff deserve to live in ‘Back to the Future II’? The creators believe that definitely not
In 1733, the writer Samuel Madden imagined in Memories of the 20th century What would happen if an angel carried diplomatic letters back in time from the distant year of 1997 to your year? Technology had not changed since the 18th century, but politics and religion had, creating, in a way, the first temporal paradox in the history of literature. By the time we reached 1997, we had more than overcome the paradoxes thanks, in part, to Back to the Future IIwhich in 1989 made an entire generation live by and for time travel.
Get in the DeLorean!
Back to the Future II It took place simultaneously in 1955, 1985 and 2015, and ended in 1885. For an audience accustomed to a lighter family film, it was all about questions and more questions trying to understand how Robert Zemeckis’s narrative worked. And among all the questions, there was one for which they had a solution… but decided to eliminate. What happens to old Biff when he gets out of the DeLorean again in 2015?
The creators intended to show that, upon returning to their time, would have been erased from existence by changing his destiny by giving his 1955 self the sports almanacIn fact, they even filmed him falling in the street and disappearing, and that’s how the scene appeared in the test screenings. However, the public didn’t quite understand it and they cut it out before it happened, leaving it ambiguous and clutching their hearts. Luckily, the scene has survived to this day. Be careful.
There is another question that has been on my mind for years: Why does Jennifer faint when she sees herself but Biff has no problem even giving her the sports calendar? The answer is pretty obvious, but it’s easy to miss: Biff doesn’t know he’s seeing his old self (to him, it’s just some anonymous guy), but Jennifer is perfectly aware of who she’s spying on when she faints. And it’s impossible not to be a little shocked, we can all agree on that.
