9 Movie Sequels That Ruined Great Characters

After original George McFly actor Crispin Glover declined to return for Back to the Future Part II over a pay dispute, Robert Zemeckis and Co were tasked with finding a believable replacement who could fill Glover’s shoes and match the brilliantly eccentric performance he gave in the first film.

But rather than simply recast the role as they’d done with Marty McFly’s girlfriend Jennifer Parker which swapped Claudia Wells for Elisabeth Shue, they decided to cast lookalike actor Jeffrey Weissman. Even more weirdly, they had Weissman wear prosthetics modelled on Glover’s face and purposefully filmed him in ways that obscured the fact they’d even replaced Glover at all.

Despite the physical likeness Weissman couldn’t quite pull it off and the result was more poor imitation with a heavy dose of uncanny valley than anything else. The only saving grace about the recasting was that George McFly played a far less central role in the next two Back to the Future films so it didn’t impact too much on their overall enjoyability, fortunately.