10 Sci-Fi Movies That Ignored The Critics
9. Back To The Future Part II
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 65%
Metacritic Score: 57
Though we now love the Back To The Future films as we love our pets and children – equally and as a single unit, regardless of which is our favourite – this wasn't always the case. Back To The Future Part II arrived in 1989 and, as the previous four years had been spent cementing the original into a piece of essential 1980s zeitgeist, there were big expectations.
Thus, like every Star Wars film since Empire, everyone had an idea of what the plot should be. Unfortunately, this meant that critics and fans were unhappy with the cheesiness, the frequent jumps in time, the many competing threads and, of course, the fact that Part II left the action on an unresolved cliffhanger, meaning that, unlike the first film, it required another film to satisfy the narrative.
Nevertheless, everyone still came out to see it. It made its budget back many times over, Part III followed a year later and Part II underwent something of a rapid reappraisal, coming to be viewed as an essential part of the series rather than an aberration against the very name of Back To The Future.