If you have followed the classic Back To The Future franchise, you would know that Crispin Glover wasn’t in the sequel.
This trilogy has been one of the most influential pop-culture phenomena around the world, not just in the USA.
It is this journey of these iconic characters Doctor Emett “Doc” Brown, played by Christopher Llyod and Marty McFly played by Michael J. Fox travels across time using the time machine built by the Doc.
In the first part, while experimenting, and sending the DeLorean time machine, Marty accidentally gets back in time when his parents were young and yet to meet each other.
Apparently, Marty disturbs the timeline by accidentally bumping into his mom’s car where his father was supposed to be at that place, thus developing their love story.
And now Marty has to help his father George McFly to woo her mother and come together in order to prevent himself being wiped out from existence.
Crispin Glover plays his young father back in the time, this goofy and timid character bullied by dim-witted Biff played by Thomas F. Wilson.
Crispin’s character was really liked among the fans in the first BTTF movie, George McFly was infamously replaced in the second part, but do you know who played his role in the sequel?
This movie trilogy grew out to be a huge franchise, a merch and much more over time, with numerous video games, cartoon series and sequels coming out of this one.
Even though fans would give anything to watch the fourth installment in the Back To The Future series, the writer Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis already announced that there won’t be another.
As per the writer and the director, they won’t be bringing another one in this series to protect the integrity of this closed-pack trilogy.
Before we get into how and why Crispin was recasted, you would also be interested to know that the ending scene of the first movie which was shown at the beginning of the second movie was re-shot.
It was re-shot frame-to-frame only to replace Claudia Wells as Jennifer with Elisabeth Shue because Claudia’s mother was diagnosed with cancer at that time and she had to put her career on hold to deal with the situation.
Other than that, most of the cast and crew in the first movie returned for the next or the last one in the series as well.
However, the major change was the role of George McFly who was re-casted with Jeffrey Weissman playing the character.
Crispin Glover Was Replaced By Jeffrey Weissman, But not Really!
Crispin Glover was really entertaining and fun to watch in the first film, with his hysterically funny, weird and yet charming teenager character.
Given the success of the first film in the series, Crispin was actually keen to reprise his role in the second installment but it didn’t go as planned as it is evident now.
Even when they were shooting for the first movie, the actor was quite vocal about how he didn’t like the ultimate messaging of the movie in the end.
In an interview with the AV Club, he talked about how he didn’t like the fact that his character gets rich in the end and how the moral goes with it. Here’s a piece of what he exactly said :
“I had a conversation with Robert Zemeckis about it and I said, “I think if the characters have money [in the updated timeline at the end of the film], if our characters are rich, it’s a bad message. That reward should not be in there.” People love the movie, and of course who am I to say—I was 20 years old, though. And again, I was stepping into it from a time period of questioning. But Robert Zemeckis got really angry. Essentially, he did not like that idea. He was pissed.”
He also talked about how he thinks the reward should be his father and mother in love, rather than them being rich. According to him, equating their new riches with moral success isn’t good or simply bad messaging.
However, even though the friction between him and the director was there, he went on to work on the movie, reluctantly shooting the end scenes despite having the same concerns.
glover Wasn’t In Sequel Due To Salary Dispute
Sometime back, the co-writer and co-producer Bob Gale of Back to the Future Trilogy shared that it was a salary dispute due to which Glover couldn’t reprise his role in the sequel.
He shared that Glover claimed for the amount $1 million to just appear in the movie while being not very much a fan of the sequel script.
The producers of the movies did not want to meet his demands, hence Weissman was brough to replace his role for the George McFly character in the sequel.
However, Glove stated clearly that this is a fabrication in the story coming from Gale and he still resents the whole experience to this day.
Glover carlified that he was getting much less money to return for the movie in comparison with his other co-stars, so he decided to drop out from the film.
And instead of recasting, the makers decided to use the footage of Glover from the first movie along with his face-resembling prosthetic usage on Jeffrey Weissman to make him appear in the film.
Glover’s Face Was Used Without His Permission
According to Glover, what’s most hurtful to him is how his image was used in the sequel without taking his permission.
So basically, after Weissman replaced him to play George McFly, there was a heavy prosthetic used to make him look like Glover, at least as closely as possible.
This was very discomforting for Glover. There was a consideration about killing off the George McFly character before Weissman was casted for his role but his character was too important to do so.
However, his character was surely almost negligible in the sequel. And then they used him mostly in the background with Glover-like face prosthetics.
And to make it less obvious, he was in fact literally dangled upside down in the introductory scene in the sequel. All of this becomes quite aggravating for Glover.
He even went on to criticze Weissman’s performance in the sequel and took offense even in the comparison of the performance of both actors in these two movies.
Later on, Grover went for a legal action against the producers of the movie and walked away as settlement with a six-figure sum.
Although he is still bitter with Gale, his relationship got mended with the director Robert Zemeckis as he forgave him as he played a role of Grendel in CGI action movie Beowulf in 2007.
And recently again, in an interview on BBC Radio 5 Liv, Glover talked about how he is proud of himself for taking a stand, winning the lawsuit and even getting Screen Actor’s Guild taking action against such things to prevent it from happening to others.
Source : AV Club | THR | SiriusXM | MTV | BBC Radio 5 Live