MovieChat Forums > Back to the Future Part III (1990) Discussion > How accurate was 1885?

How accurate was 1885?

posted 3 years ago by enriquesingh (1811)
10 replies | jump to latest

I'm not American... and obviously none of us were alive back in 1885... but what's your opinion regarding how accurate the production team was able to recreate the era?

The town buildings, costumes, the way characters spoke...

Something that caught my attention is that many of the characters were clean shaven, I would have expected more beards, even though men would use razors I doubt they had those lubricated thin triple blade technology.

To me everything looks too pristine and just built, I thought the West was 'dirtier'... but I may be wrong. But idk, I have the perception that the movie looks in many aspects regarding 1885 unrealistic.

[–] Hummusboy1 (473) 3 years ago

Not very. They nailed the 1950’s without many cliché stereotypes. But 1885 was very much a movie western.

[–] space1999 (725) 3 years ago

Most film critics of the time (and probably now) complained that the sets looked like something out of a film studio.

[–] AmeriGirl26 (14488) 3 years ago

From what I can see, it was partially accurate. They got the look of the era, much of the clothes, and some aspects of the culture right, but half of it was just a re-creation of old western films too. Remember, they pretty much took the town of Hill Valley, and translated everything you had seen in previous films into an Old West setting.

[–] Furienna (3345) 3 years ago

Then again, you have to expect that a movie can't be 100 % accurate.
So I'm glad as long as they got the general athmosphere right, which they did.

[–] mikethemartian (6779) 3 years ago

Men used straight razors then when they shaved. So I would expect whatever percentage that did shave daily had very close shaves.

[–] contreras (470) 3 years ago

Maybe Hill Valley was a boom town so everything was new and there was money being spent there.

[–] RoboReCop (3327) 2 years ago

That's the way I took it too, especially with the courthouse being constructed.

[–] MikeCable (1860) a year ago

I thought the same when reading this thread... they were still building major facilities so it must have been a relatively new town.

[–] liscarkat (18589) a year ago

It was a fairly accurate recreation of 1950s recreations of the Old West on U.S. tv shows.

[–] whynotwriteme (7725) a year ago

You wouldn't have huge war parties of Plains Indians on the warpath in 1885 anywhere in the USA, let alone in California, whose natives were primitive hunter/gatherers.