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Is there a conspiracy about Back to the Future? (1 Viewer)

MichaelG

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Wish I had seen BTTF in the theaters but I didn't, so I have never seen anything but that dang Pan and Scan version on TV and HBO. I can't wait to finally see it in Widescreen!
But, the first time I saw it on video I could swear that the ending to BTTF said
To Be Continued in Back to the Future Part 2 comming Summer 1989
I am kidding of course
 

Vince Maskeeper

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Actually, it was:
"To Be Continued in Back to the Future Part 2 coming Summer 1989, great seats still available only $5, call now (212) 743-1440-- See You At The Movies!"

-V
 

Josh Dial

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Well, to make things more complicated, I remember seeing it boths ways in the theatre. I lived in a small Canadian city, and movies there took like forever to arrive. I do remember seeing the TBC tag, simply becuase my mom, who didn't like the movie, was complaining that it didn't deserve another kick at the cat (her words :) ). About a week later, we went to visit relatives in Regina (a larger city) and the TBC was NOT there. My cousins tried to convince me that I was making it up. We even snuck in to see the movie again that night, just to make sure we didn't miss it.
To clear things up, I went to the theatre owner of the Red Deer (home town) cinema and asked what was up. He told me that a few theatres that received the reels well before street date (which I guess happened more back then) had copies without the TBC added in. I asked him to phone a few theatres within the chain (across Canada) to verify this. All in all, he only found 2 theatres that actually had the TBC added. Both in smaller towns. He concluded that becuase the reels were received WELL after the release, that the had the edit. As a side note, when I later applied for a job at this theatre, the manager remembered me as the kid who asked him to phone like 20 theatres accross Canada :)
This explains MY situation, YMMV
cheers!
Josh
 

Brenton

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Starwars.com has mentioned at some point that "Episode IV: A New Hope" was added to the film in 1978.

As for Back to the Future, I can't say I saw it in the theater... as I was still a couple of months away from being conceived. But Josh Dial confirmed the theory I was about to offer: some prints had it, some didn't. My guess is that the film was locked down without it and who-knows-how-many prints were made before the Bobs decided to add it.

BTTF.com is wrong.
 

Jorge Montes

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Jul 11, 2001
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I suppose I really can't touch on BTTF's tag as my first viewing of the film that I recall was on TV shortly before Part II came out in theaters (when I saw part 1, I was approximately 4 and I remember being scared out of my gourd by the fire from the car; I was a weird kid). Though I did heard about this controversy and I always wondered if it just wasn't something similar to what Josh Dial said. I mean, if the film is a huge hit, don't ya think they'd have that to slip in a surprise to audiences (a la Pixar bloopers for "A Bug's Life" was a random surprise)?

Now, something else that's been driving me up the wall:
I *distincly* remember certain things, like "during the start of the movie, could you see a duplicate Marty McFly looking on from the bushes of the mall parking lot as he watched himself disappear?" (when the film came to cable, I looked hard to figure out what people had been talking about)
I'm gonna have to check my worn-out VHS tape one last time to see if this is true, because if it is, the amusing changes Marty makes would be destroyed. I know the mall goes from "Twin Pines Mall" to "Lone Pine Mall" after he runs over the tree. No question with that, but Marty watching himself? No possible! He's in an altered future at the end of the movie, not the same future from the first half of the movie.

Great. Thanks guys. I'm gonna be up all night running this time travel paradox philosophy in my head.
 

David Lambert

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I'm gonna have to check my worn-out VHS tape one last time to see if this is true
Don't bother. It's NOT true.
It was a discussion on CompuServe over 15 years ago, by folks who didn't have videotapes because they weren't released yet. So everyone who, after seeing the film, thought they had seen something earlier, had to go back to theaters to confirm what they thought they saw.
Noone ever came back with a positive confirmation, natch! :) There's nothing there.
 

Douglas R

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Well.... looks like all those who swore they saw To Be Continued on the theatrical prints were WRONG. This from a review of the R4 release:

"Oh, and we get the official word [on the commentary] from the Two Bobs - the version on the DVD is the version that was shown theatrically. On the video there were changes (most notably, a "to be continued" at the end), but this version is unchanged. That's good to know."
 

Moe Dickstein

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The thing about this is that the *scene* is still there, Zemeckis originally didnt intend a sequel, the scene was a joke.

Also, 2 and 3 were originally one script, it just was too big, so they split it in half and added to it a bit and had two films.

The Lester musketeers were also intended to be one film, but so much footage was shot that it was made into two.

The actors sued the producers (the extremely shady salkinds, of superman fame) since they had only been paid to be in one film and not two....
 

Stevan Lay

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Jan 5, 2000
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Just watched the R4 version of BTTF and it definitely never showed the "To be continued..." signage at the film's end. It is, however, included in the sequel.
 

James Reader

Screenwriter
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The commentary on the R4 release in reference to the missing caption, states that the 'To Be Continued' was not shown on the initial release. What is on the DVD is the original theatrical release.
This conversation is over. ;)
 

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