Hopefully, it’s still a closely guarded secret that sometimes inspiration doesn’t hit me until pretty late in the game as far as this rag is concerned. What’s that? You guys have known that for quite a while? Okay then, moving on… Well it’s true. And often times, it hits me in some weird ways. I love doing this little series because it really gives me an opportunity to dig down deep into the nostalgia of my childhood and adolescence and reminisce about some of the highlights that made that period in my life wondrous and fun. I find that a few decades of life living has left me feeling somewhat jaded and hollow in terms of emotion, and I definitely have a harder time seeing the wonders of the world around me with the same kind of excitement that I felt as a kid. Don’t worry too much, I’ve mostly just become more difficult to impress. So these walks down memory lane are a fantastic opportunity for me to relive all of that to an extent.
To that end, I was listening to the score to Back to the Future on my way to school earlier this week, and I realized that it appears to have had a pretty profound effect on my upbringing. I found myself recognizing musical cues and instantly remembering what what happening in the film as I had heard that particular piece of music during viewings of the movie. If you exclude Star Trek movies, this is a pretty rare thing for my brain to do. I love film scores, but usually I get hung up on how the actual music makes me feel, and what it makes me think. I don’t usually find myself drawn back to the actual film and doing those things so that says a lot about how highly I regard this particular movie, and the franchise in general. Most kids had Star Wars growing up. I had Back to the Future. It’s not a film that made an impression on me during my adolescent years, but it did have an impact so let’s take a look at this marvelous piece of cinematic treasure!
Back to the Future starts out a bit on the abstract side. I like it, but we’re seeing a bunch of stuff that relates directly to Doc Brown, who is one of our main characters. In the background, and almost imperceptibly, there’s a news report going on about a plutonium theft. Right around the time that the news report mentions it, we see a case of plutonium. This really is a benchmark scene in my opinion because everything that we need to know about Doc Brown going forward is relayed here, but we don’t have to slog through boring exposition to get all of that information. It’s presented in a subtle way that may require a few watchings to really catch, but it’s done in an imaginative and fun kind of way. The door opens and we see someone walk in. Then we see them plug a cable into an amplifier, a really big one. A hand adjusts a bunch of knobs, and the hum of the amp can be heard quite easily, and you know that whatever is about to happen, it’s going to be loud. Finally, we see Marty McFly, our other main character, as he prepares to strum on, quite frankly, one of the weirdest guitars that I’ve ever seen. He does so, and the amp just explodes. It tosses Marty like a rag doll into some refuse behind him, and it takes a few moments for him to shake off the shock.
The phone rings, and it’s the Doc. Marty asks Doc what happened to Doc’s dog, the dog is safe, and oh yeah, don’t use the amp, there might be a short in it that needs to be fixed first. The irony just seethes, and then the clocks all start going nuts. The Doc says something about an experiment, and the clocks are all 20 minutes slow and Marty realizes that he’s late for school. It’s at that point that he hurries out the door, slams down a skateboard and hitches a ride on a freakin’ sweet Jeep. I like a few things about this few minutes of the film. One, it establishes the relationship between Marty and the Doc. It doesn’t really explain how or why a 50 year old man would befriend a teenager, but it does at least give us a clue as to why the teenager would want to hang out with the fifty year old man. Two, it creates the illusion that the two men have been friends for a while before we jump into the story. But we don’t really need an entire prequel movie establishing all of the particulars for us. There’s enough given that the audience is able to draw some pretty accurate conclusions based on the information given. Last, I like that we’re establishing character traits for our two heroes, but they’re not having to simply explain what they’re like to the audience. I really feel like that’s a lost art these days. Movies have a tendency to spoon feed everything to the viewer, and they take the path of least resistance in deciding what a character is going to be. It’s all very shallow, and boring. But BttF takes interesting characters and uses the runtime of the film to allow us to get to know those characters is a fairly organic way. This has the fringe benefit of letting audience members grow stronger emotional bonds to the characters, which it turn, gets that audience more invested in the narrative stakes that the film brings to table. It’s really good is what I’m saying.
After Marty reaches school, we’re introduced to his girlfriend, Jennifer. She too is late, and trying to find a way into the school that doesn’t get her caught by Principal Strickland, who is the king of hard nosed people. She mentions that Marty is on his last tardy before getting detention, establishing that this is a pattern of behavior for Marty, and further building that character for us. They unfortunately get caught, and Strickland gives them a stern lecture. Next, we’re treated to auditions for a battle of the bands concert. Marty and his gang are gonna make it big and this is their big break. They do a fantastic instrumental rendition of “The Power of Love”, but Huey Lewis himself tells them that they’re just too loud. This leads into probably the most pandering scene that you’ll get out of this movie. Marty and Jennifer are sitting in the park, and Marty is fretting over never being able to get signed to a record label. The catch phrase here is, “I’m just not sure that I could handle that kind of rejection.” It may be pandering a little, but it is pretty crucial to the story, as you’ll see. Also, Marty sees this also freakin’ sweet Toyota pickup that, honestly, I would absolutely drive even today because it is amazing, and he vows that someday he’s going to be able to afford the finer things in life. Also, a woman harrasses them for a donation to save the clock tower, which tells us exactly when a bolt of lightning broke it thirty years ago.
Marty goes home to see a tow truck dropping off what’s left of the family car. Marty rushes in to see what’s going on, and we’re somewhat chaotically introduced to Marty’s family, as well as Biff, who will become the antagonist of the film. Marty’s dad, George, is meekly trying to explain that he’d never noticed that the car had a blind spot before as Biff is railing him for not giving warning about that ‘blind spot’. Through the dialog, we get that Biff is just a grade A douche who has bullied his way through life, and most of that has apparently been directed towards George, which is further reinforced by a conversation they have about George writing work reports for Biff. Marty’s mom Lorraine, sits at the kitchen table after dropping a cake that she had made for a brother that was in jail. She’s probably drinking. There’s a lot going on here, but the jist is that Lorraine has been a little disappointed by the way life has turned out, and she’s crawled into the bottle to forget some of that. You can tell that she absolutely loves George, she just also seems to long for a slightly better life.
Marty starts to whine about the car, and the big camping trip with Jennifer, and Lorraine starts talking about how when she was his age, she didn’t do all of that hinky stuff. She talks about meeting George, and how her dad had hit George with his car and Lorraine had nursed him back to health. She briefly mentions a school dance where they kissed for the first time, and in this 90 seconds or so, she’s given us all of the information we’re going to need for the rest of the film. It’s not super elegant, but it gets the job done. Marty goes to sulk in his room, and the Doc calls to ask him if he would meet the Doc at the mall at 1 am. Marty agrees. Next we see, Marty is rudely awakened by his alarm clock and he heads over to the mall.
At the mall, Doc is rambling, and it can be a little incoherent as he’s fiddling with things, and prepping things, but it all builds to the revelation that the Doc has built a bonafide time machine, and what’s more, he’s put it in a DeLorean. He pulls it out of a trailer, and Marty drools over it before the Doc starts prattling on about how the thing works. It’s actually somewhat important information, at least for Marty, but it’s done in a pretty nonchalant way that attempts to minimize and misdirect the audience a bit. I really like that we’re presented the information in much the same way as Marty would process it because it really helps me at least to better connect with that character. The big takeaway that Marty actually latches on to is that the car is powered by plutonium, which he understandably is curious about, specifically how the Doc managed to procure some of it. The Doc tells him about screwing over some Libyan nationalists and boasts about how they’ll never find out. The two then do, presumably, that universe’s first time travel experiment. They put the dog in the car, the set the time circuits for one minute into the future, and then they send the dog one minute into the future. Once he returns, they compare stopwatches that had been precisely calibrated in order to verify their findings.
After a bit of fanfare, the Libyans come to collect on the debt that the Doc has incurred. There’s a bit of a fire fight, but the Doc is killed. Marty jumps in the car and takes off, unaware that the fuel has been replenished, and as he’s driving, he arms the time circuits. The destination point is set for the day that the Doc invented time travel, which is 30 years in the past. Marty participates in a chase with the Libyans, and then decides that since he’s in a ‘sports car’, he’ll just smoke them with the speed of the car. He punches the gas, and it’s at this point that I start to wonder how the Doc made a remote controllable car out of a vehicle with a manual transmission. But I get over that pretty quickly as Marty reaches that fabled, and indelibly ingrained 88 MPH. The time circuits trip, and he rockets into the past. When he reaches said past, he crashes into a barn. There’s a family there, and the dad has a shotgun. Marty is trying to diffuse the situation, but the son has a comic with an alien on the cover that looks an awful lot like Marty at the moment. So Marty gets back in the car, takes off and runs over a pine tree in the process. He drives to where home should be, but finds that it’s just barely in the beginning stages of development.
He decides to park the car in a hiding place, and huff it into town. I really enjoy this sequence because the town square set is just so quaint, and “Mr. Sandman” is a great song. It all establishes everything so well. It’s definitely a pleasant slice of Americana. Marty is just in shock, and Michael J Fox does an incredible job acting the part. He fumbles around as he tries to make sense of what he’s seeing, and eventually ends up in the diner. The diner owner gives him a pretty hard time as they play a game of “Who’s on first?”. Once that’s sorted out, we’re introduced to Biff and George. Our assumptions are confirmed as we see Biff bullying George, and demanding that George write out a school report for him. George pretends to take it in stride, and Biff finally leaves, leaving an opportunity for a somewhat awkward exchange between Marty and George. After that, Marty tries to follow George as George takes off. In the next scene, we see George watching Lorraine change through her window. He’s got binoculars and he’s perched in a tree. You do the math. But George falls just as Lorraine’s dad is driving by the tree. Marty instinctively pushes George out of the way, and gets hit by Lorraine’s dad’s car.
Marty wakes up in an unfamiliar bed with a pretty good looking young woman doting over him. He starts asking questions to figure out what’s going on, and learns that the rather attractive young woman by his bedside is Lorraine. He then starts to get out of bed, only to realize that his teenaged mom has stripped him down to his underpants. Geez, Marty’s parents were sexually repressed pervs! Lorraine has concluded that Marty’s name is actually Calvin Klein on account of that’s what’s written on his underwear. Marty rolls with it, a pretty smart decision considering the circumstances. Lorraine then tries to get fresh with Marty, but she’s interrupted by the dinner call. At dinner, Zemeckis, the director, decides to reiterate everything that just happened by showing Lorraine playing footsie with Marty. There’s some awkward banter about reruns on TV, and Marty abruptly excuses himself to ‘head home’ very shortly after said footsie starts. Marty goes to the Doc’s house, and tries to convince him that he’s actually from the future. There are some great obscure foreshadowing lines here, and I think that it’s absolutely wonderful that they worked in. In the end, Marty has to show Doc the video that he took after they’ve retrieved the car.
Doc suggests that Marty just lay low until they can figure out how to get him home, but then Marty remembers that he screwed up his parents meeting for the first time. Doc expresses extreme concern over this unfortunate circumstance, and it’s decided that Marty needs to repair things. And so, the next day, Marty and the Doc show up at the school, and not surprisingly, Strickland is the principal. During lunch, Marty tries to talk George up to Lorraine, and get on board with the idea of going to the dance with George, but there’s a verbal altercation between Marty and Biff, and this just ingratiates Marty onto Lorraine even more. Sensing that he’s lost Lorraine, he goes to try and convince George to ask Lorraine to the dance. George is pretty adamant that he just can’t do it. We find out eventually that the reason is that George is a huge sci-fi nut, and his favorite radio, or TV program comes on at the same exact time as the dance happens. I have a buddy who uses this excuse a lot, and all I can say is that that is self-defeating quitter talk. Marty knows this, and finally is able to talk George into going, but the plan is that Marty is going to take Lorraine, and provide a way for George to be the hero. And, dammit, George has to swear! It’s just great! Also around this time of the film, the Doc concocts a plan that they can run a metal pole into the fuel chamber of the DeLorean, and use the lightning strike on the clock tower to give the time circuits the juice to get Marty back to the future! It’s pretty brilliant sounding in context.
Now, via a picture that Marty keeps in his wallet, he knows that because of the change to the timeline, he and all of his siblings are starting disappear from future history. This is how the film ups the stakes for the viewer. If Marty fails, he and his siblings will simply never exist, and by this point, we’re pretty attached to Marty so we absolutely want him to succeed. To that end, we see Marty and Lorraine have ‘parked’ outside the school. Marty is still trying to talk George up to Lorraine in an act of futility. Lorraine lights up a cigarette and whips out a flask of alcohol and Marty suddenly realizes that all the remarks that Lorraine had made about being their age were total BS. Things at least appear to be going as planned, except that Lorraine kisses Marty, and then there’s the awkward conversation about kissing one’s brother. It’s cool though. Biff shows up to rape Lorraine so at least George is really going to be a hero, assuming that he can muster the courage to confront Biff. Marty is taken off by Biff’s goons to get beat up behind the gym, and Biff gets seriously rapey. It’s not easy to watch. However, George shows up just like he and Marty had rehearse, only now it’s Biff. Biff tells George that if he knew what was good for him, he’d leave. George starts to move off despite Lorraine’s plaintive cries, but at the last minute, he decides that he’s not going to take it from Biff anymore, and he turns back and with as much confidence as a sci-fi loving recluse can muster he says, “Get your damn hands off her!” I’m always so proud at this moment in the film!
Biff gets out of the car and starts twisting George’s arm in a way that I well and truly believe could have broken said arm. Biff also continues the taunting. This is the moment when George makes the I’m-done-being-the-doormat face, and somehow lays Biff out in one punch. It’s pretty stinking awesome! Lorraine is saved, and George gets to take her to the dance! It seems as if the day is saved, but the movie has one last wrench for this part of the works. Biff’s goons locked Marty in the trunk of a car. Well, to be more accurate, they did so after some gangster looking musicians piled out of said car in a billow of smoke. Unfortunately, the keys are in the trunk so one of the musicians has to jimmy the trunk open. In the process the guy slices his hand. Oh no! Now they can’t finish their set because that was their guitar player! But wait! Marty plays guitar! He offers to play as a thanks for the backup, and they take the stage, probably stoned. It’s pretty tense as we ride the will-they-kiss-won’t-they-kiss train. And George almost doesn’t because some jerk tries to steal Lorraine away from him, but George asserts himself, and in the end the kiss. Marty is understandably overjoyed as he was starting to dissolve from the timeline, and as a victory celebration, he introduces George’s classmates to proper rock and roll. It’s one of my favorite parts of the movie because Marty gets so off track on his genre types, that by the end, everyone is just staring in a stupor.
Anyway, the happy couple take time to thank their matchmaker, and Marty rushes off to meet the Doc. He arrives just in time to move the car back to start line that the Doc worked out to give Marty enough space to get the car up to 88 MPH. Marty does this as the Doc is trying to get the metal cabling strung up. The storm begins to build as the Doc realizes that a snag on a tree branch has left him without enough cable to make a connection to complete his circuit. He tinkers, and in the end, winds up pulling the cable out of its plug at the top of the clock tower. I guess that sort of stuff just wasn’t terribly reliable back in the day. So the Doc makes the perilous decision to fix things at the top of the clock tower. It’s all very intense as he’s trying to get everything back together, but in true Hollywood fashion, he succeeds at the very last moment! Marty is able to get the car started at the last minute as well, and hit the cable at just the right moment to activate time circuits and make the jump back to his time. He’s pretty devious though. He put enough time on the clock that he would be able to drive to the mall and save the Doc.
He makes the jump, but in true DeLorean fashion, the car dies, again. And so Marty is left to hot foot it to the mall. Alas, he gets there just in time to see the Doc murdered again! On no! Marty rushes to his side only to find that the Doc has equipped himself with a bullet resistant jacket. Turns out, Doc is a bigger fan of being alive than maintaining the timeline. Anyway, Marty heads home and gets a little sleep before seeing some of the changes that his meddling has made. For one, his parents are a lot younger looking than they were at the beginning. Two, his dad is now a successful sci-fi author. On a related note, Biff is now a bumbling, snivelling tool. Oh, and Marty is now the proud owner of that freakin’ sweet truck from the beginning of the movie. He heads over to check on Jennifer, and as they’re reuniting, the DeLorean appears! The Doc starts prattling on again, and tells Marty that they need to go to the future to fix some issues with Marty and Jennifer’s kids because they’ve turned into brats. Then we get the, “Where we’re going, we don’t need.... Roads…” line, and they fly off into the great beyond with the proudly displayed words, “To be continued…”
Man, where to start with this movie? It’s just an all around awesome classic! I don’t really have any complaints with this film, but I’m almost certain that there’s some nostalgia glasses clouding my judgement there. I grew up on this trilogy. BttF 2 is one of the first movies that I remember seeing in theaters. This movie is just a fun watch no matter what age you are. It’s chock full of imagination, and excitement, and wonder, and it just taps into a part of my soul that takes me back to that innocent age when the universe was limitless, and I could accomplish anything I set my mind to. The cinematography is interesting. The acting is great. The soundtrack is awesome, and iconic. And it just hits all of those technical marks so well. For what it's doing, it handles the non-linear aspect of time travel really well, which speaks volumes to the talent of the writers and director. Does it have its flaws? Probably, but it packages everything so well that you don’t really notice them. It captures your attention from the very start, and doesn’t let up until the very end. It’s a triumph of cinematic accomplishment in my opinion, and I love watching it no matter how short a time it’s been since my last viewing. I can’t recommend it enough and I strongly encourage you to give it a watch if you’ve never seen it! And stay tuned for our last week of thanksgiving to see what I’ve got up my sleeve to bring us home!
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