"These are our boys, Jules... and Verne!"
Separate films being made back-to-back, as one giant production, was not unheard of in the late 1980s. The Salkind Clause had existed for well over a decade by the time Robert Zemeckis, Bob Gale, and Amblin Entertainment announced they would be making two sequels to their 1985 mega-hit Back to the Future, instead of the traditional one. Because they could not fit all of the story they wanted to tell into a single film.
It was a pretty big creative swing that, thankfully for all involved, paid off. Both for its makers and its viewers. Well, this viewer, at least. I recall the warm glow this finale ignited in my heart and the bright smile that spread beneath my widening eyes as Doc and Clara's time-traveling train took flight and swooped off to who knew where or when.
Silvestri's love theme for Doc and Clara debuts in the opening credits, which was markedly different from the second film's rousing "the sky's the limit" action adventure interpretation of the first film's iconic theme. A stylistic shift that communicates the warmer, gentler nature of Part III.
In the liner notes for this 25th Anniversary Edition composer Alan Silvestri describes the love theme as, "...an out-and-out nursery rhyme. Doc's love for Clara was childlike. It was the first time you felt Doc had ever experienced anything like that. And it was meant to be just a one-finger, simple, pure child's nursery rhyme."
That simple one-finger theme, which grows stronger and stronger as the movie progresses towards its exciting race back to the future, is my favorite thing about this particular score. A reminder that, for all of their time-traveling bombast and paradoxical play, the Back to the Future films are, at their core, about the power of love.
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