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PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of Back to the Future Part III (Alan Silvestri)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... on the chronologically-ordered, 2015 expanded set if
you've always loved the themes from the original Back to the
Future score but were discouraged by the simple regurgitation of
them in the first sequel; they are explored more intelligently in this
final entry.
Avoid it... if you seek the tight cohesion, overwhelming sense of wonder, and full thematic spectrum of the first score, for Alan Silvestri does lose some of its original themes and, in a few ways, its feeling of magic in his attempt to explore new territory.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Back to the Future Part III: (Alan Silvestri)
Written and partially produced at the same time as Back to the Future
Part II, the final installment of the Back to the Future
franchise in 1990 was afforded an identical budget to its predecessor
(about $40 million) but returned by far the least in grosses of the
three films. Still popular enough with critics and audiences to produce
a decent profit, though, Back to the Future Part III features a
solidified storyline that avoided the potentially confusing level of
time paradox pitfalls of the second entry. After preserving the proper
timelines in the past, present, and future at the end of Back to the
Future Part II, Doc Brown and his time-traveling DeLorean are hit by
lightning, forcing him back to 1885 and disabling the car. Upon
recovering the hidden vehicle in 1955 with that version of Brown, Marty
McFly has to travel back in time once again to save Doc from an untimely
death and encounters his friend conflicted about a love interest he has
met there. With the majority of Back to the Future Part III set
in 1885, the film enjoys a consistent plot with pithy parallels to the
1950's part of the trilogy, and it culminates in one of the most
exhilarated train sequences to ever be shot for the screen. Composer
Alan Silvestri had received countless accolades for his work for Back
to the Future, and much of its music was reprised by necessity in
the 1989 sequel. Before production got far with Back to the Future
Part III, the composer did write a short, Elmer Bernstein-inspired
Western theme to accompany a teaser of the third film contained at the
end of the cliffhanging second one. It overshadowed a score for Back
to the Future Part II that was technically adept and contained a few
interesting alterations to the first film's material, but on the whole
wasn't original enough to really extend the music's own narrative in a
meaningful direction. Entire sequences of the score for Back to the
Future were largely copied and pasted into the sequel, with only one
new, rather grim suspense theme explored in the altered realities of
that story.
Finally breathing new life into the Silvestri's music for the franchise was Back to the Future Part III, which not only offered a few memorable new themes to the mix, but also relied less upon the straight reprises of previous thematic incarnations that plagued Back to the Future Part II. The downside to that equation is that some of the more integral secondary thematic elements of the first two films are underplayed in Back to the Future Part III. Returning to close out the trilogy, of course, is Silvestri's primary theme for the franchise, split as usual into its triumphant fanfare and adventurous rhythmic halves. Because the last moments in the 1955 period of the first film are briefly recounted, the composer opens Back to the Future Part III with restatement of his standard finale, segueing it to a short burst of the fanfare for the official title of the third film. Thereafter, Silvestri's employment of the theme's two parts is more fragmentary than before, adapting it smartly into the new theme for the train and other surviving elements from the prior scores. Even in the finale of the third film, Silvestri alters the pacing of the conclusive phrases of the theme's two parts to signal the definite end to the overarching story. The performances of the adventurous half of the theme sound far more inspired in this score than in Back to the Future Part II, played with genuine excitement during the lengthy train sequence and with striking beauty in its mingling with the love theme for the film as well. The fanfare receives a compelling translation to redemptive strings early in "It's Clara (The Train Part II)." Diminished from the picture, and practically absent from the score in their whole forms, are the wholesome theme for Marty and Doc's friendship, as well as the bubbly, frantically rhythmic theme for Brown. The only remnant from the positive side of Back to the Future that doesn't completely fade from relevance is the series of tingling, percussive triads that are used as descending stingers for magical moments on screen. Its most prominent usage is at the start and end of the film; the motif opens the score with three sets of pairs and is intriguingly merged into a longer descending figure of similar tone at the opening of "Doc Returns," the dying embers of the car's life. The rambling danger motif that represented the troublesome Biff Tannen in the first two films is once again broadened in its application to action scenes in Back to the Future Part III, just as it extended to the "Clocktower" sequence in the original), though it's mostly confined to background depth. The suspenseful preparation rhythm from the mall (and Libyan gunmen) sequence in Back to the Future Part and "The Future" in Back to the Future Part II is heard briefly in "It's Clara (The Train Part II)." Although the primary theme of time alteration from Back to the Future Part II wasn't particularly memorable, it is incorporated into moments in the third film that suggest that the timeline could be changed for the worse. This menacing material is most notably heard in the first half of "The Hanging," a few seconds in "Point of No Return (The Train Part III)," and, with a lighter touch, in the first half of "The Future Isn't Written" (the last actually making use of the full theme as heard in "My Father!" in the previous score, but in a much different tone). A brief mention of Biff's somber, alternate 1985 reality theme, complete with its whining violin introduction, is also heard in "Into the Mine/Tombstone/It's Me." Of these evolutions of motific ideas, the lack of bigger role for the original Marty and Doc themes seems odd, especially since the timeline of the films suggests that each story takes place immediately after the previous one. That said, the tender moments between those two characters in this film have been mostly supplanted by the relationship between Doc and Clara, woman he saves in 1885, so spotting of the idea may have been a challenge. The new themes in Back to the Future Part III include the Bernstein-styled Western idea previewed at the end of the prior film and the aforementioned love theme for Doc and Clara. The former doesn't really have much of a place in Back to the Future Part III outside of comedy usage, foreshadowed in "Hill Valley," bursting suddenly in "We're Out of Gas," and anchoring part of "End Credits." The love theme, reminiscent of some of Jerry Goldsmith's character themes of the 1990's, is heard extensively throughout the score, gorgeously flowing in "Main Title" and several later conversational cues before impressive full ensemble performances in "Doc Returns" and "End Credits." These latter two cues featuring the fullest performances of the love theme in Back to the Future Part II unfortunately expose the fact that the theme's closing phrase mirrors "When You Wish Upon a Star" a bit too closely for comfort. The reference does hit the right sense of innocent wonder, however, so perhaps it works. Somewhat more nebulous, but figuring heavily in the climactic closing to "Doc Returns," is the theme for the train, a three-note motif that gains momentum along with the doomed engine. Accompanying it is a secondary six-note phrase, a series of two-note stingers, and puffing snare rhythm obviously meant to mimic the sounds of the locomotive. So much of the action material from all three scores is passionately merged into the two later train cues that Silvestri almost creates an all-new atmosphere of adventure for just this fantastic extended scene. Among the more singular moments in the score, "Indians" cue stands out as offering Silvestri's chase material in its own parody of stereotypes. The soundtrack also included contributions by ZZ Top that became source material in the picture, the "Doubleback" song adapted by Silvestri into the era of the story. On the original 1990 album, this adaptation combined with a fair amount of the score to round out a 45-minute presentation. Unfortunately, the arrangement of Back to the Future Part III on that initial Varèse Sarabande product is completely and nonsensically out of film order. On some CDs, such rearrangement is nothing more than a bit awkward, but here it was always extremely irritating. In 2015, alongside Intrada Record's expanded set of the prior score, Varèse made Back to the Future Part III a CD Club entry and provided the proper presentation of the film versions of the score's cues, along with ample alternate takes and a bevy of source material. More importantly, the expanded set confirms that the sound quality in the recording of the third score was much improved compared to its predecessor, an oddity given their close proximity. Ultimately, Silvestri's concluding score for the franchise may not have the overwhelming cohesion or sense of wonder as the 1985 original entry, nor will it appeal to enthusiasts of the Predator score the way the prior one did with its percussively rhythmic passages, but it is an intelligent exploration of new territory that adapts the existing themes with far more satisfaction in structure and sound quality than its predecessor. ****
TRACK LISTINGS:
1990 Varèse Album:
Total Time: 44:51
* composed by ZZ Top and arranged by Alan Silvestri 2015 Varèse Album: Total Time: 109:20
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert of the 1990 Varèse album includes no extra information about the
score or film. That of their 2015 expanded product contains extensive notation about both.
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