2. Jennifer Parker
When We First Saw Her...Back to the Future (1985) In
Back to the Future, Jennifer Parker serves as Marty McFly's super hot, super cool '80s girlfriend. Seriously, I don't know anybody who has seen this movie who doesn't think Jennifer is the epitome of "awesome wife material." She's only in this movie for about 10 minutes in all, but we get the sense that the writers want us to know that she's the girl of Marty's dreams. Aside from being kind of badass (she doesn't mind being late), Jennifer is also really supportive of Marty's music-related dreams in a sexy way (I'm not sure what I mean by that, but I can't bring myself to delete it... it feels so right). The most important aspect of Jennifer's personality that I'd like to highlight, though, is that we get the sense that she's pretty intelligent. She also has a very strict dad. He's all like, "Jennifer!", and she's all like, "Coming!". You know the type.
When We Saw Her Next...Back to the Future Part II (1989) I suppose you might associate this with the pitfalls of actually recasting a role with a new actress, which is what happened when the original Jennifer, Claudia Wells, was replaced (for scheduling reasons) by Elizabeth Shue. And from the moment we get our new Jennifer... well, she's like a completely different person. Dumb, irritating kind of goofy... nothing like the badass Jennifer of yesteryear we all fell in love with in the first movie. I know that if your recast somebody in a role for a sequel you're gonna get a different kind of performance, but it's not necessarily the way that Shue is acting this that makes it odd: the dialogue just doesn't make sense for the character. Her cool charm has vanished, replaced with, like, annoyingness. Marty doesn't even seem as fond of his girlfriend. I don't know why they made Jennifer so goofy... maybe Wells would've pulled it off. I've just always felt like this was somebody else entirely.