The question “if you had a time machine, what would
you do?” has generated a lot of entertaining conversations. The team behind Back
to the Future (1985) took that question and added “what if you met your
parents when they were young?”. The result is one of the best time travel stories
ever made, which catapulted Michael J. Fox to stardom and gave Christopher Lloyd
one of his most enduring roles. There were plenty of ways it could have gone
wrong, but with this one lightning hit, sending a DeLorean back to the future.
Given the film’s relationship with time, when you see it
can impact your relationship with the story. I first saw it in the late 1990s,
about 15 years after it came out, and about 15 years before Marty McFly would travel
to the future in the second movie. For me the 1980s and the 1950s are foreign
eras to which I have no emotional connections, but I was still fascinated by
the movie’s story of a young man travelling back in time and meeting his
parents. It also helped that the story is very funny, the special effects are
still outstanding, and that score by Alan Silvestri pulls you into the action.
Executive-produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by
Robert Zemeckis, the story is set in 1985 in the fictional California town of
Hill Valley and features an unlikely friendship for the ages. By today’s
standards it is rather odd that high schooler Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is best
friends with middle-aged inventor Doctor Emmet Brown (Christopher Lloyd), but
these two have an undeniably wholesome chemistry. Film fans will know that originally
Eric Stoltz had the Marty role until the crew realized the chemistry just wasn’t
there. In came Michael J. Fox, somehow working two jobs as both Marty and Alex Keaton
on hit sitcom Family Ties. The replacement worked as Fox is now forever
associated with the role.
Marty is a teenager with a lot of ambition, dreaming of
having a big car to drive around his girlfriend Jennifer (Claudia Wells) and hopefully
having a lot of success in the future. His parents are definitely not a source
of inspiration, as his father George (Crispin Glover) is a meek man constantly
belittled by his bully on a boss Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson). As for his
mother Lorraine (Lea Thompson), she is being practically steamrolled by middle
age and looks down at the idea of teenagers having anything resembling fun. In
Marty’s eyes, these two people can’t possibly have ever been anything but lame.
Marty’s perception is forever altered the evening he
helps Doc Brown with a mystery scientific experience. The good doctor has
cracked the key to time travel, with a device dubbed the flux capacitor
(awesome sci-fi name) placed inside a DeLorean car. Following an armed
encounter with angry Libyans that supplied the time machine’s much needed
plutonium, Marty performs the machine’s first manned test drive, landing in 1955
Hill Valley. This leads to many cultural clashes as Marty navigates his hometown
30 years in the past, with everyone assuming he is a sailor on leave due to his
puffy 1980s jacket.
Marty’s biggest shock is encountering his young
parents, George harboring creative aspirations as a writer, and Lorraine much
wilder than expected. Unfortunately, by being at the wrong place at the wrong
time Marty alters their first romantic encounter, putting his very existence in
jeopardy. Over the course of a week, he not only needs to work with a 1950s
version of Doc Brown to get the time machine working again, but also play cupid
for his parents. A major hurdle is that Lorraine is infatuated with him, completely
unaware she is lusting after a future version of her own son. That is of course
very disturbing, yet the movie somehow gets away with this incest subplot. It
helps that Michael J. Fox is very good at making disturbed facial expression
every time Lorraine makes a move on him.
Christopher Lloyd meanwhile dominates the screen as
Doc Brown. Sporting wild white hair and often displaying manic energy, Lloyd
has said he drew inspiration from Albert Einstein and conductor Leopold
Stokowski for the character. It is a joy to see him explaining science-fiction
concepts as he flings his arms in between expressions of “Great Scot!” and “Marty!”
This scientist paired with a high schooler somehow resulted in one of cinema’s
greatest duos.
Because of the chemistry between the two leads, the
fantastic music, and the rollicking sense of adventure, the Back to the
Future trilogy ranks as one of my favourite film series. The first one
imagines what it would be like to meet a young version of your parents, the
second one sees the protagonists travel to see their future (now our past) and
the third goes full Western. It was once futuristic and is now a huge slice of
1980s nostalgia. Every movie in the trilogy warrants repeat viewing, if only to
spot various Hill Valley landmarks and characters throughout the decades.
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