Awesome / Back to the Future Part III

Marty: Hey Doc! Where you goin' now? Back to the future?
Doc: Nope. Already been there!

• There's a subtle bit of awesomeness in Marty's declaration of getting Doc out of 1885 after he and 55!Doc find out he gets shot and killed.
  1955 Doc Brown: [after Marty finds a photo of 1885!Doc; shocked] Great Scott, it's me! Then, it is true. All of it. It is me who goes back there... and gets shot...
  Marty McFly: [determined] It's not gonna happen, Doc... After you fix the time circuits and put new tires on the DeLorean, I'm gonna go back to 1885 and I'm bringing you home.
  • Look at Doc's facial expression. He's never had anyone have his back like that before, and it shows that he finally grasped how deep Marty and 1985 Doc's friendship was.
• When Buford had a derringer gun to Doc's back, what does the latter do? He turns around to face Buford in order to defy his destiny (he originally died from a bullet to his back). If he's going to die, he's going to do it facing death with dignity. He also doesn't hesitate to scream and try and charge Buford when he shoves Clara to the ground, despite being held back by Buford's goons, and doesn't cower when Buford points the derringer directly at him.
  • Marty also doesn't hesitate to get in Buford's face immediately. After the confrontation, a number of townspeople come up to Marty and thank him for being one of the few people who stand up to Buford.
• Strickland's line to Buford at the dance:
  Buford: Smile, Marshal. After all, this is a party.
  Marshal Strickland: The only party I'll be smilin' at is the one that sees you at the end of a rope.
• When Marty McFly finally overcomes his Berserk Button and decides not to fight Buford Tannen over being called a 'chicken' (or "yellow", as in "yellow as a canary's belly")—because, in Marty's words, "He's an asshole ^note Or "idiot" in television broadcasts! I don't care what Tannen says, and I don't care what anybody else says, either!" Notice Seamus nodding approvingly; he's relieved that "Mr Eastwood" finally gets it and isn't resigned to repeat his brother Martin's fate.
  • Though when he does fight Buford, he does so mano a mano, first using an iron stove door as a bulletproof vest (and a few moments later, a cudgel), THEN punching the crap out of Buford, and fittingly, making him collapse onto a manure cart.
    • The best part being that Marty hits Tannen so hard, he stops and restarts the dramatic music several times before laying him flat out.
    • It's very satisfying to see Marty, apparently dead as Tannen walks up to him, suddenly kick the gun from the outlaw's hand and leap to his feet, followed by Tannen punching him straight in the gut as hard as he can, only to break his own hand with a priceless look of shock and pain on his face. And then Marty shows his makeshift bulletproof vest and starts whaling on him with it.
    • Even Seamus, despite being a pacifist, got a good chuckle out of Tannen falling in the manure cart.
    • Oh, and one last thing: during the fight, Marty sends Tannen straight into the pre-engraving tombstone that marked Doc's grave in 1955, and would've become Marty's had he lost, with enough force to break it in half! Screw Destiny! And the icing on the cake? The picture of the tombstone shows it fading away, leaving nothing but an empty plot!
  • On top of everything else in the duel, Marty shows his Guile Hero qualities by challenging Tannen to a fistfight, with a backup likely knowing that Tannen would just shoot him. After being threatened with the world denouncing Clint Eastwood as the biggest yellowbelly in the west, his plan ends up turning that into Brick Awesome by making Tannen look like the coward.
  • A major part of the Awesome comes from the Heartwarming value of this scene. Threaten his masculinity? That's okay with Marty. Threaten his best friend? You've got yourself a duel. "Gutless", "yellow", nothing. This kid finally understands what's important.
  • Finally, Marty overcoming his Berserk Button allows him to avoid making the same mistake he did in the "present", where he'd crashed into a Rolls-Royce, ruining his future. He gets to see what the immediate consequences would have been, too. And then, we're shown the fax from the future—"YOU'RE FIRED"? Not anymore.
    Jennifer: [after Marty floors his car in reverse as Needles races off ahead] Did you do that on purpose?
    Marty: Yeah, you think I was stupid enough to race that asshole?
• Doc shooting Marty down from Buford's attempt to hang him with his telescopic rifle definitely qualifies. "It'll shoot the fleas off a dog's back at 500 yards, Tannen—and it's pointed straight at your head!" Doc stands up to Tannen's bluster and threats without flinching once, and throws his demands for payment back in his face standing like a badass with a huge ass gun. The way Doc walks into frame is awesome, too.
• A Missing Trailer Scene: Doc, holding his modified rifle, snarls, "Don't try it, Tannen!"
• Marty returns the favor for the above later by preventing Buford from shooting him. Not only was it a frisbee throw (using an actual Frisbie pie plate!), but he hit Buford's hand just as he pulled the trigger, and the only casualty was Doc's hat.
• Doc's attitude when Buford captures him. When Tannen tries to lure Marty out for a gunfight by threatening to kill Doc if he doesn't show, Doc yells to his friend to stay away and save himself. When Buford levels a gun at him, he takes it without flinching (for the second time).
• Doc shows up at the end of the movie in a time-travelling flying steam train. Let's face it—Doc's COOL. And a nice shoutout to his prior time machine: the Time Machine Locomotive features gull-wing doors!
  • Doc is also thinking big: He doesn't have a car anymore... but he does have a massive train he can convert...
  • Especially impressive since the last we saw of Doc, he and Clara were hoverboarding into the horizon away from the DeLorean. That can only mean Doc figured out how to build a second time machine completely from scratch in a time when electricity was as valuable as plutonium. "Genius" is too small a word to describe him at this point. The man's a goddamn wizard.
• The DeLorean's final time jump - the whole scene is soaked in awesome: Marty slipping Doc the hoverboard so he and Clara don't die when the train plunges into Shonash Ravine, Doc's Big Damn Hero moment as he carries Clara to safety on the hover board, with Alan Silvestri's fanfare playing to the moment, then Marty settling in, donning his hat as the car gets closer to 88 and the flux capacitor starts kicking in, then the camera focuses on the time circuits set to finally return Marty to 1985 as the music builds to a crescendo—then the music cuts out as the DeLorean makes the jump with a WHOOSH! and its trademark flame trails. All capped by the train dropping into the ravine in what is quite a spectacular, explosive wreck. Truly the perfect climax for the final film in the trilogy.
  • The DeLorean itself during its final trip - It now carries elements from every time period it's been to across the entire trilogy: The DeLorean body from 1985, Mr. Fusion from 2015, the replacement circuitry by the younger Doc in 1955, and the flanged rail wheels from 1885. A fitting send-off for its final time jump.
• In Part Two, there were multiple Acting for Two scenes. In this movie, there's a whole Acting for Two subplot between Seamus and Marty. His questionable accent aside, Seamus is so convincingly different from Marty that it's easy to forget you're watching Michael J Fox talking to himself, again.
• The legacy of Clint Eastwood, according to Hill Valley. He showed up one day dressed like a complete fool, ran afoul of the biggest outlaw the town knew, shot every target in a shooting gallery (having learned in some place called 'Seven Eleven', apparently), saved the local blacksmith's life by throwing a pie plate at the savage outlaw that very same night, got in a gunfight with him in the middle of the street on Monday morning, and by 8:30 had taken the guy down without firing a single bullet, but by actually deflecting a bullet using an old stove door, which he then used to lay a beat-down on the guy. And to cap it all, he went out in a blaze of glory in a fashion that Butch & Sundance would've been proud of: the guy hijacked a train, unhooked the cars so it was just him, blew the engine up and rode it right into Shonash Ravine, where it blew up and killed him, in an event so epic they renamed it in memory of him. Hell, maybe a San Fran woman named Ruth decided to name her baby after the legend...

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