Back To The Future 25th Anniversary Blu-ray Review - December 1, 2010

Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads. Back To The Future was recently released on Blu-ray and has been a hit among the BTTF fans. I am including myself in that as well because I love this set. As far as the movies themselves, it is no secret that I've been a fanatic of these movies all of my life. If I see them on TV, I will stop often and watch at least some of them. You know that you love a movie when you can watch it over and over but yet never get tired of them. Case and point even goes to this box set. I watched BTTF 3 the other night and was glued the whole time. Afterwards, I thought that I needed to listen to the audio commentary sometime soon. I decided to just listen to a bit of it to see what it sounded like. I ended up listening to the whole thing so basically I watched the movie twice in a row and loved it. Back To The Future is such a perfectly written movie. It has a great story, cast, and just every sort of emotion in it that you could ask for. You get invested in these characters and their stories.

As far as the Blu-ray presentation, you won't be disappointed. Part one looks incredible! I found myself in awe just so many times while watching it with how good it looked. Parts two and three don't have the crispness of picture that the first does but the presentation is still great. I really found myself paying attention to how good a lot of the Hill Valley 1885 scenes looked especially the train scene at the end.

With the extras, there is no shortage of them. If you've been buying these DVD releases over the years, a lot of these extras aren't new to you. They've carried over most of them while adding some new ones as well. The big new addition is the Tales From The Future documentary that runs over a couple of hours long and is spread throughout the box set. It includes new interviews with a lot of the cast and crew including Bob Gale, Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, Michael J. Fox, Lea Thompson, and more. I really enjoyed this behind the scenes look at it including the hard work to get the movie even off the ground, how they shot it, different ideas that they had planned for the movies but didn't do, casting, and plenty more. It is really good. I was afraid that they might focus most of their attention on the first movie and not have a lot on the sequels. Yes, most of the attention does go rightfully on the first movie but there is plenty of behind the scenes stuff on the sequels which I loved. There are stories on why Crispin Glover and Claudia Wells did not return for the sequels. Glover's was a contract problem while Wells was taking care of her mother who was very sick. It is amazing to hear how much work Michael J. Fox did to take part in this movie while also doing Family Ties. He says that there is a lot of shooting the first movie that he doesn't remember because he was so tired. They do show some stuff of Eric Stoltz who was set to play the role of Marty after they couldn't get Michael originally. Just seeing what was shown, he just didn't feel right for the role and that was how they felt too. They worked things out however they had to to get Michael in the role. There is a look at what the original idea was to close out the first movie and send Marty back to 1985 but everyone was much happier with the way it turned out. I know I am!! We learned that there was a push from high up in the company to call the movie "Space Man From Pluto" instead of Back To The Future. They all saw how bad that name was and had a clever way of getting the Back To The Future title instead. Mary Steenburgen is also interviewed and is a great interview talking about how much fun she had with the movie. Like I said, they carried a lot of the extras over from the other sets which is great including the deleted scenes, commentaries, Q&A's, music videos, Back To The Future: The Ride, trailers, and plenty more. There is a nice FAQ that is on the set as well. I love how they explained the alternate realities of Clara and the transition of Clayton Ravine and Shonash Ravine. Really well done.

The only negative with this set. The packaging. I'm not talking artwork. The artwork looks great. I'm talking about the actual disc holder. It is so hard to get the discs in and out of place so be careful with them.

If you're a fan of the trilogy, I can't recommend this Blu-ray set enough. The movies look great especially the first one. Tons of extras that will keep you watching for hours. I see this set getting a lot of repeated play in my future. The future? Oh, I can tell you about the future......