I have to begin with my favorite.
I was in love with everything about Back to the Future when it came out in 1985. It was the perfect movie at the perfect age. The year before, I had tried with much failure to write my first two short stories, and they were both time travel stories. One was three pages long and the other I lost interest in after I ran out of notebook paper. It the movie of my childhood, even staying neck and neck with Star Wars. With one exception. BTTF occurred on Earth, the same year it released. Marty McFly wore red Nike hightops and dreamed of owning a Toyota 4x4 (?). It seemed, with my adolescent brain, that this time travel stuff could actually happen. I knew a light saber couldn’t really exist, but I knew DeLoreans existed. All you would need is a flux capacitor and some plutonium, right?
No one needs the plot retold. That’s what watching the movies and using Wikipedia is for. Doc invents a time machine, Marty goes back to 1955, meets his parents, hijinks ensue. Part II is a trip to the future and then the past. Part III is a trip to 100 years in the past, the Old West, and hey, there’s a train.
The time travel in BTTF is what I refer to as First Person, or Multi-String time travel. (Remember, my rules, my nomenclature.) Marty McFly alters the course of his own history by what he does in 1955. His dad gets confidence, Biff gets knocked down a peg, and the Twin Pines Mall is now the Lone Pine Mall. This format is how I always thought time travel would be. This is the time travel where you can go back and save Lincoln and when you came back you’d see a world where Lincoln was not assassinated. Other films, and I’ll cover a few at another time, are more like time loops, or Single String time travel. Basically, you can’t go back in time to save Lincoln because Lincoln would have never died if you accomplished your goal.
BTTF is an action/fantasy/comedy that truly came out of nowhere. There really was nothing like a summertime popcorn movie with this type of plot and a popular TV star at the helm. (Sorry, Eric Stoltz) Because it was Speilberg produced, Zemeckis directed and rated PG, the film was intended for the whole family. It would have been so easy to have a magic closet or a wish on a coin dropped in a well to induce the time travel elements in the movie. Instead , to serve as the time machine, they used a stainless steel car. A car that had to go fast enough to have a fucking nuclear lightning explosion that would blast the car into another time! Damn!
What thirteen-year-old boy doesn’t think that’s the shit? This wasn’t some cabinet spinning or some blurry dream sequence. This was a car. A car that really was out there in the world, suped-up with gadgets and doo-hickeys that hauled ass into the future. By the way, for good measure, they eventually made it fly.
The conflicts came from Marty as the time traveler, not Doc Brown the inventor, and his complete misunderstanding of what was happening. Let’s face it; Marty was a straight C student at Hill Valley High. He needed the 1955 version of Doc Brown to explain to him the time travel conundrum that Marty himself experienced and the young Doc only theorized. As far as the film goes, it succeeded because we bought the characters. Nice script, great actors. The sci-fi elements are classic because it was a story of a science experiment gone wrong. No one truly knows if time travel is possible, so why wouldn’t a flashing illuminated wishbone labeled ‘flux capacitor’ work?
The rules are set early. You change something in the past, it could change the future. Nice and simple. Marty goofs up and his parents don’t meet. Oh shit. As the likelihood of them meeting and falling in love fades, so does the picture of the guy who played Jimmy Olsen and Wendi Jo Sperber. Eventually, he has to right the ship or he will be erased…from existence. I personally forgive any glitches in the time travel details. It’s unlikely that the happy, successful version of the McFly’s would still live in that house, new furnishings or not. And, at pointed out to me once, there is a noticeable slip up in the third installment. For you nerds: The ravine Clara fell into was called Clayton Ravine. The only way she could have erected a tombstone for Doc is if Doc saved her from the ravine, because she would have died before he was killed. But, it was only when Marty showed up in 1885 that Doc saved her. According to the rules, no dice. Clara could fall in the ravine and Doc could get killed, but they never would have met nor had the chance for a tombstone dedication.
Ok?
The point is that the rules are established and respected. There are no last minute changes to add a plot twist, and most of the obstacles are overcome scientifically. They need the lightning to change the DeLorean to go back to 1985, they need the train to barrel through a non-existent bridge, etc. Also, there is little reliance on fate. The coincidences are acceptable within the world, and since the time travel is first person, Marty is our impetus for change, not the nature of time travel itself.
This is the greatest time travel story on film because it’s fun. Marty is a fun hero you root for and it all shakes out in the end, just like a summer movie should. They also covered all the bases in the series. The sports almanac that was brought back from the future, the regrets of creating the time machine in the first, and the destruction of the DeLorean in the end. Answering the ethical question: “Just because we can, should we?” is one of the jobs of fiction. Yeah, it’s cool to travel back in time and witness history is great and all, but you can really do some damage.
If you haven’t seen these movies there is something wrong with you and we also can’t hang out together. See them. They are also the basis for my love of all time travel fiction, and when the rules stray too far from Back to the Future, I tend to get squirmy.
-jim
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