National Film Vault

FILM NOTES

Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment released Back to the Future Part II in November 1989, reuniting director Robert Zemeckis and writer Bob Gale with the cast of their 1985 blockbuster. The sequel pushed deeper into science fiction territory, imagining an elaborate 2015 and a dystopian alternate 1985. Shot on 35mm by cinematographer Dean Cundey, the film remains a landmark of late-eighties studio filmmaking and a touchstone of American popular culture.

This cell, titled Marty McFly Jr. and Griff, captures moments from the 2015 Hill Valley sequence involving Griff Tannen and Marty McFly, with a second frame placing Marty alongside Griff's gang member Data. The strip was inverted on the light panel during documentation, a common occurrence with 35mm pulls. Together the frames represent the film's central future-set confrontation, one of the most visually inventive passages in the trilogy.