Back to the Future Part 2 imagined plenty of crazy inventions for its vision of the year 2015, and effects like Marty McFly’s auto-adjusting jacket were achieved without the use of CGI. Directed by Robert Zemeckis and released in 1989, the sequel takes Marty 30 years into the future in order to save his son, Marty Jr., from participating in a robbery and going to prison. Though he’s successful in this goal, his actions set off a chain of events that change the course of history and create even bigger problems.
Fans had a lot of fun when the year 2015 finally came around, comparing Back to the Future Part 2‘s imagination with the reality. Though it never became fashionable for kids to wear their pants pockets inside-out and hoverboards aren’t yet a widespread commercial product, the movie did nail other details – like video phone calls, electronic payments, and drones. If Back to the Future 2 had been made in 2015, however, a lot of the special effects, including Marty’s jacket, would probably have been achieved using CGI.
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Zemeckis didn’t have the luxury of creating the auto jacket using a team of animators and mo-cap, so instead it was adjusted using practical effects. Specifically, four crew members who are lying out of sight on the ground during the shot, each of them holding the end of a cable attached to an element of the custom jacket that Michael J. Fox is wearing. Two of the crew members operated the pockets and two of them operated the sleeves, with each of them pulling on their cables simultaneously after Christopher Lloyd pressed the “auto-adjust” button on the front of the jacket. Here’s a behind-the-scenes photo showing how the effect was achieved:
Of course, the jacket isn’t the only piece of self-adjusting clothing that Marty wears in Back to the Future Part 2. He also gets a pair of light-up self-lacing Nike sneakers (which later became a reality when Nike announced its HyperAdapt sneakers in 2016). Though self-contained light-up sneakers became commonplace later on, at the time Fox had to wear a battery pack connected to the shoes in order to get the logo to light up.
The self-lacing effect was achieved in a similar manner to the self-fitting jacket. Fox set the sneakers down on the concrete, and the shot was then seamlessly combined with a shot of the shoes on fake concrete, with cables fed through holes in it and pulled in order to tighten the laces – no CGI required.
Nike’s real-world self-lacing shoes notwithstanding, self-adjusting clothing has yet to replace good old-fashioned tailoring when it comes to the clothes of the 21st century. Still, Marty McFly’s self-fitting jacket and self-lacing shoes still stand as a testament to the effectiveness of a good, simple practical effect.
