Ah, the greatest movies ever made: Back to the Future and Back to the Future 2. Of course, the role of Jennifer Parker was originally played by Claudia Wells. However she refused to come back to do the sequel for personal reasons. She was replaced by, in my opinion, the inferior Elisabeth Shue. That meant that they had to re-film the opening on BttF2 replacing Wells with Shue. How well good did they do?
Jennifer Jane Parker is a fictional character in the Back to the Future motion picture trilogy. The character has been played by two actresses in the movies and voiced by a third in the spin-off series. Jennifer is always a secondary character in the stories, the girlfriend of the protagonist Marty McFly.
The character of Jennifer Parker was called Suzy Parker in the original script of Back to the Future. Movie director Robert Zemeckis changed the character's name to Jennifer after attorney Larry H. Parker's daughter, in gratitude, as Mr. Parker was instrumental in settling a copyright infringement suit in favor of Mr. Zemeckis.
The character was played by Claudia Wells in Back to the Future. Wells was not available to film the sequels for personal reasons, and the role was recast to Elisabeth Shue (coincidentally, Shue's mother Anne Harms' maiden name is Wells). Consequently, the final scene of Back to the Future, which leads to Back to the Future Part II and which is shown at the beginning of that movie, had to be re-shot with Shue taking Wells' place. Finally, in the spin-off Back to the Future: the Animated Series, Jennifer was voiced by Cathy Cavadini.
Melora Hardin was at first chosen to play Jennifer Parker, but had to be let go because she was found to be taller than Michael J Fox, who replaced Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly. The producers felt that Marty McFly's girlfriend needed to be of equal or shorter height or the pairing would not look aesthetically appealing. Hence, she was replaced with Claudia Wells, who had no such height issues compared to Michael J Fox.
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