National Film Vault

FILM NOTES

Back to the Future Part II arrived from Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment in November 1989, the middle chapter of Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale's trilogy. Following the enormous success of the original, the sequel pushed its time-travel premise into bold new territory, presenting three distinct timelines and a production design that has only grown more discussed with the passing decades. It remains a landmark of late-1980s studio filmmaking.

This cell, titled Mr. Strickland, captures James Tolkan as Gerald Strickland in what appears to be the alternate-1985 sequence, armed with a shotgun and surrounded by debris. Three frames from the same continuous shot preserve Tolkan's commanding screen presence in one of the film's darker, more unsettling passages.