British Academy Film Awards — 2 wins, 1 nominationAcademy Awards — 1 nominationKids' Choice Award — 1 nominationSaturn Award — 1 nominationAll 2 wins · 4 nominations on record
British Academy Film Awards: Best Special Visual Effects
Scholarship
Named in the title of 1 peer-reviewed work
Examples
Sources: Wikidata · OpenAlex · Library of Congress. The record of the motion picture, not an assessment of this cell.
FILM NOTES
Back to the Future Part II arrived in 1989 from Universal Pictures, the middle chapter of Robert Zemeckis's trilogy and one of the most ambitious studio sequels of its decade. Building on the runaway success of the 1985 original, it pushed Marty McFly and Doc Brown across a fractured timeline of 2015, an alternate 1985, and back to 1955, tangling the story into a genuine puzzle box. The film's vision of hoverboards, flying cars, and a manipulated future became a permanent piece of pop culture shorthand, and its clock tower imagery, inherited from the first film's climactic sequence, remains the franchise's most recognizable emblem.
This cell centers on the Hill Valley clock tower struck by lightning, the visual signature tying the entire trilogy together and the mechanism behind the time machine's original power source. Its presence in Part II reaches back to the 1955 sequence from the first film, reused and referenced as the saga's central image of fate and engineering colliding. For collectors, a frame built around this exact event holds outsized value, since it distills the franchise's founding concept, harnessed lightning, into a single instant of film history.
Authentication Findings8 checks
Consistent with a 35mm theatrical release print of Back to the Future Part II (1989).
Gauge
35mm, four perforations per frame on both edges; the strip holds three frames.
Perforations
Four per frame on each edge, evenly spaced; punched holes appear cleanly defined with no visible tearing.
Soundtrack
Two variable-area optical tracks visible as a bilateral waveform pattern running along one edge beside the picture area.
Edge print
Top edge reads 'EASTMAN' (mirrored as captured); bottom edge reads 'M3 28 67 86' (mirrored as captured).
Base & colour
Base appears warm/amber-tinted; dye image shows a warm sepia cast consistent with an aged colour print.
Projection history
No visible splices; light vertical lines consistent with projection wear are present across the frames.
Picture
Positive colour image; all three frames appear to be consecutive frames from a single continuous shot, consistent with a release print of Back to the Future Part II (1989).
Era check
The bilateral variable-area optical soundtrack, Eastman stock edge coding, and warm amber base are all consistent with a late-1980s theatrical release print.
Read from the original intake capture shown below. Observations only — film is authenticated, not graded.
This original motion picture film element has been examined and authenticated by Crown Grading in partnership with National Film Vault, and encapsulated for archival preservation.
Why so little survivesRelease prints were leased to theaters, not sold. When the run ended they went back to the distributor to be destroyed, and most were. What collectors hold today came from the prints that escaped that order, and no new 35mm prints of these films are being struck.
CROWN SERIAL 000064241
Original Film CaptureAs received
Photographed on the light panel at intake, before encapsulation — tap to open full size
Tap to enlarge
