Back to the Future Day: Christopher Lloyd talks Michael J. Fox, sequel

In 1985, Christopher Lloyd’s eccentric inventor Dr. Emmett Brown and Michael J. Fox’s earnest teenager Marty McFly hopped into the plutonium-fueled DeLorean and screeched into pop culture history. Now, some 30 years later, the time-traveling duo is back together for Back to the Future Day.

“We had such a good time,” Lloyd tells EW about reuniting with Fox. “There’s a really strong mutual admiration between us, and I love Michael and the work he does and his whole personality. He’s an extraordinary person. We really enjoy our time together. It was fate.”

In Back to the Future Part II, Doc and Marty venture forward 30 years to Oct. 21, 2015 to a world of flying cars, hoverboards, a continued love of neon colors, and dope shoes. Turns out real-life 2015 looks a lot different, and the pair joked about how much from the film came to be in a Toyota spot.

In an extended video, out now and viewable above, Doc and Marty explore an alternative to the car that can run on refuse: the hydrogen-fueled Mirai, also out now. Lloyd believes in the car — “A car that doesn’t pollute and is efficient — I think it’s going to be a huge breakthrough,” he says — but there were plenty of other reasons for him reunite with Fox on screen. (Again.)

Lloyd says he relishes each opportunity to don the coat and wild hair and dig into Doc’s mind — even for small cameos. “[Doc Brown] is always excited about new things, thinking of new ideas, new inventions he might make … that’s his passion,” Lloyd says. “Whether it’s a trailer in a film … all I have to think about is that excitement.”

And out of all the characters Lloyd has played, he says Doc Brown is the only character who has endured.

“There’s no other character that has come up, that keeps going for 30 years,” he said. “They all have their time, and then they fade away. Back to the Future refuses to fade away. I saw it last night, and I have to say it seems fresh and contemporary, not 1985, 1986. It has a lot of laughs.”

Given the occasion, and the possible prescience of the film’s prediction of a Chicago Cubs World Series, talks have bubbled about a possible fourth film. But Lloyd sees it as a long shot. “[Director] Bob Zemeckis and [writer] Bob Gale, they kind of thought the third completed the story, and that was that,” he tells EW. “It would have to be really, really innovative and match the quality of the first films, and that’s a tough thing to do. Usually sequels don’t measure up to the quality of the original. It’d be tough at this point.

“But if it happened,” he adds, “I would love to be Doc Brown again.”