National Film Vault

FILM NOTES

Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment released Back to the Future Part II in November 1989, arriving with enormous anticipation as the follow-up to one of the decade's defining blockbusters. Robert Zemeckis directed from a script by Bob Gale, and the film's vision of 2015 Hill Valley became a cultural touchstone, influencing how popular cinema imagined the near future for years afterward.

This cell, titled Marty and Griff, captures three nearly consecutive frames from the tense confrontation between Marty McFly and Griff Tannen inside the Cafe 80s setting. The tight, repeated framing across all three frames preserves the charged stillness of the exchange, with Griff looming over Marty in a moment that anchors much of the film's second-act tension.