Bob Gale says he wants Universal Pictures to destroy the censored version of Back to the Future Part II. The edited sequel was discovered on Netflix recently by eagle-eyed fans, who were not happy about what they saw. Most people assumed that the streaming platform was to blame for the minor, but sloppy edit. However, Gale has revealed that Universal Pictures are the ones to blame, not Netflix. The regular version of the movie is now streaming, unedited.
Apparently the Back to the Future 2 edited version was made for foreign markets. Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis didn’t even know that it existed. It’s also unclear which country had a problem with Biff’s Oh La La magazine cover. Gale says, “I asked that the studio destroy this version.” That’s pretty bold, but it has to be done to ensure that this kind of thing doesn’t happen again down the line, especially when Gale and Zemeckis aren’t around to call the shots anymore.
The scene in question finds Marty McFly thinking that he scored the Sports Almanac, only to learn that it was Biff’s girlie magazine. The edit took away some dialogue from Michael J. Fox and the cover of the magazine. It just seemed like an odd choice and the edit was really bad to where just about anybody who was paying attention would have noticed it even if they didn’t remember the magazine cover. Regardless, it’s all been taken care of now and Back to the Future fans can go back to watching the regular version on Netflix.
Back to the Future 2 is often considered to be one of the best sequels of all time. There is a cult audience that still worships it. It was a massive undertaking to follow the first installment, but there are elements, like the hover board and self-lacing shoes that people still reference to this day. During Josh Gad’s Back to the Future reunion, Bob Gale claimed the only props he had from the movie were the hover board and the self-lacing shoes, so that should really tell fans something when arguing the sequel’s merits.
Back to the Future means a lot of things to a lot of people, so it’s not surprising that fans were able to notice the Netflix edit. Now, one has to imagine that this could have happened to a lot of other movies over the years on the streaming service, or other services, due to the studios sending out the wrong version of the movie. Not all movies are as beloved as Back to the Future 2, so it would be easy for lesser-known movies to slip through the cracks with botched edit jobs. The interview with Bob Gale was originally conducted by The Hollywood Reporter. Hopefully Universal has learned their lesson with this latest editing debacle.
