National Film Vault

FILM NOTES

Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment released Back to the Future Part II in November 1989, arriving four years after the original became one of the decade's defining blockbusters. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, the sequel pushed its time-travel premise into an ambitious triptych of eras, requiring elaborate production design and practical effects that made it one of the most technically demanding studio films of its time.

This cell, titled Marty and Doc, captures three sequential frames of Marty McFly and Dr. Emmett Brown standing together against a dramatic backlit environment, almost certainly near the time machine. Doc Brown's white hazmat-style suit with its radiation symbol is visible across all three frames, which show only subtle variations in exposure and position, preserving a rare continuous moment between the film's two central figures.