Back To the Future

By Reggie's Take on July 3, 2013

Back to the Future a 1985 science fiction comedy. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, produced by Steven Spielberg, and stars Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover and Thomas F. Wilson. The film tells the story of Marty McFly, a teenager who is accidentally sent back in time from 1985 to 1955.

He meets his future parents in high school and accidentally attracts his future mother’s romantic interest. Marty must repair the damage to history by causing his parents-to-be to fall in love, and with the help of scientist Dr. Emmett “Doc” Brown, he must find a way to return to 1985.

-PLOT-
Marty McFly lives with his unambitious family in Hill Valley, California. His father, George McFly, is bullied by his supervisor, Biff Tannen, while his unhappy mother, Lorraine Baines McFly, is an alcoholic. Marty’s underachieving older siblings, Dave and Linda, also live in the household.

When Marty and his band audition to perform at the high school dance, they are rejected. Despite this setback, Marty’s girlfriend, Jennifer Parker, encourages him to pursue the dream of being a rock musician. At dinner that night, Lorraine recalls how she and George first fell in love when her father hit George with his car.

Marty meets his friend, scientist Dr. Emmett “Doc” Brown, late at night in the parking lot of a deserted shopping mall where Doc reveals a time machine made from a modified 1981 DeLorean DMC-12; the vehicle’s time displacement is powered by plutonium, which supplies the 1.21 gigawatts of power to a device he calls the “flux capacitor.” Doc explains that the car travels to a programmed date upon reaching 88 miles per hour, using the date November 5, 1955, as an example destination.

Before Doc can make his first trip, the Libyan terrorists, from whom he stole the plutonium, arrive in a van and shoot him. Marty attempts to escape in the DeLorean and inadvertently activates the time machine. He is transported back to November 5, 1955, and finds himself without the plutonium needed for the return trip.

While exploring the 1955 version of Hill Valley, Marty meets his 1955 father who is being bullied by Biff. As George is about to be hit by Lorraine’s father’s car, Marty pushes him out of the way and is knocked out by the impact. Consequently, a 1955 Lorraine becomes infatuated with Marty instead of George. Marty is disturbed by her flirtations and leaves to find the 1955 Doc.

Marty convinces Doc that he is from the future, and asks for help returning to 1985. Doc explains that the only available power source capable of generating 1.21 gigawatts of energy is a bolt of lightning. Discovering the “Save the Clock Tower” flyer that Marty received in 1985, indicating that lightning will strike the courthouse clock tower the following Saturday at 10:04 pm, Doc makes plans to harness the lightning strike to power the DeLorean’s flux capacitor. When they examine a fading photograph of Marty with his siblings, they learn Marty has prevented his parents from meeting, jeopardizing his family’s existence.

Marty attempts to set George up with Lorraine. To make his parents fall in love, Marty plans to have George “rescue” Lorraine from Marty’s inappropriate advances on the night of the school dance. A drunk Biff unexpectedly shows up, pulls Marty from the car, and attempts to force himself on Lorraine. George arrives to rescue her from Marty, but instead finds Biff, who humiliates George and pushes Lorraine to the ground. Standing up to him for the first time, George knocks Biff out. A smitten Lorraine follows George to the dance floor, where they kiss for the first time, ensuring Marty’s existence.

Marty arrives at the clock tower where Doc is making final preparations for the lightning strike, and tries to warn Doc of his impending 1985 murder in a letter, but Doc tears it up, fearing it will lead to altering the future. A falling tree branch disconnects Doc’s wiring setup, but Doc repairs the connections just in time to send Marty and the DeLorean back to 1985. Although Marty arrives too late to prevent him from being shot, Doc is still alive and admits to reading the letter anyway and wearing a bulletproof vest.

Doc drops Marty off at his house and uses the time machine to travel 30 years into the future. Marty awakens the next morning to find his family changed; Lorraine is happy and physically fit, a self-confident George is a successful science fiction author, Dave is a white-collar worker, and Linda no longer has trouble finding boyfriends. George and Lorraine now have a closer relationship than ever, while Biff has become an auto detailer who is on good terms with the McFly family. As Marty reunites with Jennifer, Doc arrives, insisting they accompany him to the future to sort out a problem with their future children. Marty and Jennifer enter the upgraded DeLorean, now a hovercar powered by nuclear fusion, and Doc flies the time machine into the future.

-NOTES-

– Back to the Future was released on July 3, 1985

– Grossing more than $383 million worldwide, Back to the Future became the most successful film of the year.

– The film marked the beginning of a franchise, with sequels Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Back to the Future Part III (1990)

– When Doc Brown first sends Einstein “one minute” into the future, the time elapsed between when the DeLorean disappears and reappears is actually 1 minute 21 seconds, just as the reappearance occurred at 1:21am, and the flux capacitor required 1.21 gigawatts of electricity.

– Ronald Reagan was amused by Doc Brown’s disbelief that an actor like him could become president, so much so that he had the White House projectionist stop and replay the scene.

– In the opening sequence, all of Doc’s clocks read 7:53 (25 minutes slow) except for one clock. It is on the floor next to the case of plutonium and it reads 8:20. There’s also a black and white picture of a man hanging on the town hall clock of Hill Valley, the way it happened right before the lightning strikes it in 1955.

– When Marty pretends to be Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan, he plays a tape labeled “Van Halen” to scare George out of his sleep. It is an untitled Edward Van Halen original written for a movie called The Wild Life which featured Lea Thompson.

– The Twin Pines Mall is, in fact, the Puente Hills Mall in City of Industry, California.

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