Back to the Future

By
The Midnight Movie Crew
– December 30, 2009Posted in: Adventure, Comedy, Science Fiction

Back to the Future (1985)

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Starring: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson

Teenager Marty McFly is accidentally sent back in time from 1985 to 1955 by eccentric genius Doc brown. He meets his parents in high school and accidentaly attracts his mother’s romantic interest. Marty must repair the damage to history by causing his parents to fall in love, while finding a way to return to 1985.

You do realise that if Back to the Future was made today Marty McFly would be time travelling back to 1980 (that’s 30 years). That makes me feel very old indeed.

I never thought about it like that, I wonder if there would be as big a culture clash? I can’t imagine life without iPods and the internet. My idle time travelling fantasy would be to go back to even as late as 1990 with Wikipedia fully loaded on to my iPhone.

Forget sports books!! Imagine having the knowledge contained in wikipedia in the past!?

I think the culture clash would be lessened. Although you’re right – the absence of information at your fingertips is probabaly the biggest difference. That and the god awful music that the 80′s had. In fact I think “The Power of Love” may be the only decent song to come out of the whole decade (but what a song!).
It’s a great song, did you spot his cameo in the film too?
No, i didn’t realise he was in it
He’s the teacher who says “sorry guys you’re just too darn loud”
Ahh, well I suppose it’s hip to be square.
ZZ Top appear in the third film at the town dance and of course Flea from Red Hot Chilli Peppers appears in 2 and 3 as Needles.

Plus Madonna plays the waitress in number 2.

Actually she doesn’t, but I was feeling jealous of your astounding cameo knowledge

What about Mr Billy Zane?
Oh shut up.

I think Dan said in last week’s session regarding Scrooged that it was very hard to write something about the film because it was one of those perfect films and I’m finding the same thing happening this week with Back to the Future.

For me BTTF is an incredibly well rounded film that is perfectly cast, perfect pacing, great script, brilliant visuals and more than perfect soundtrack. So what more can you say than that? What is there to say that anyone who has watched this film doesn’t already know in their heart? Well hopefully something otherwise this week’s midnight movie club is going to be awfully bloody short!

So time for final thoughts then?…

Of course not! We’re the Midnight Movie Club! We can witter on about meaningless trivialities for hours without even drawing breath.

Hey, I just remembered some more cameos! Did you notice that Marty McFly’s uncle is the big brother from Wonder Years? Or that his sister is Ugly Betty?

I don’t think Ugly Betty was his sister, remember how old this film is.

I’ll prove it to you:

The actress is Wendie Jo Sperber, she was in 8 Simple Rules for four episodes, she’s actually been in a tonne of stuff apparently. But not Ugly Betty :P

Actually I’ve got to say that the BTTF wikipedia page is a little lacking.

Don’t those Wikipedia geeks know that we’re relying on them for our entire knowledge base? Come on you guys, get with the program!
There is a photo of the original Marty McFly there, because it wasn’t always Michael J Fox.

Is it me, or has Christopher Lloyd not aged at all in the 25 years since this was made? I saw him in the new Disney straight-to-DVD movie Snow Buddies recently and he looked exactly as old as he did in Back to the Future (*warning do NOT watch Snow Buddies if you can possibly avoid it*).

Perhaps it’s just testament to the skills of the makeup artists that they managed to age him realistically. But if it was then they certainly lost their skills by the time they got to Lea Thompson’s prosthetics. She looked just like Fat Bastard from the Ausin Powers films.

I am avoiding Snow Buddies now. I mean I was going to watch that tonight but now I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

You are completely right, Christopher Lloyd is timeless.

I found his aged makeup surprising actually, I never really paid attention until now that he had the makeup on in the 1985 time period. I’m glad they took care of that in the sequel with a rather clever plot device.

Lea Thompson’s prosthetics don’t hold up as well but are still passible in my opinion.

The problem is that she’s too young really to pass for a 40 year old (or whatever)
Yeah agreed, I think it’s easy to age a man.
It would be really cool if they made a Back to the Future 4 movie, with Michael J Fox as he is now reprising his role and using footage of the first three movies. It would be so intricate it would probably make your head explode.
It would NOT be cool if they did another sequel.
Yes it WOULD!

Dude we are so going to run a poll on this to confirm my absolute right’ness in this matter.

People will point and laugh at you in the street for saying something so absurd, your family will disown you, they will probably deport you… I hope they don’t do what they usually do and send you to Australia, we don’t need your ‘craving a BTTF part 4′ types here.

You know it makes sense man. Back to the Future 4: Back to the Past. I might even start putting together a script right now. I’ll even make sure there’s a part for Al Leong in it.

That’s what would have made BTTF more than perfect, some Al Leong in it.

Every film is better with Al Leong.

What do you think of the idea of doing Back to the Future Part 4?

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Something that completely took me by surprise as I watched this time (I’ve seen this film a lot) was that in the cold harsh light of reflection Biff is an attempted rapist.

I mean that’s what is going on in that car, he’s essentially attempting to rape Lorraine. It’s something that I’ve never really considered before.They make a joke about how if it hadn’t been for Biff they never would have gotten together… yeah because he tried to rape your mother!?!?!?

Oh look the dude who tried to date rape Mum is waxing the car and accepting our packages?!?!?

Yes, very odd. However in the 50′s (and even 80′s) there was a different attitude to date rape and sexual crimes in general. it’s not completely inconceivable that such things would have been swept under the carpet.

But even given the social norms at the time you are right, you wouldn’t have him waxing the car.

When choosing the auto detailing company you’d probably go with the one that has strangers over the one with your attempted rapist, I’m just saying.

Something else that struck me as a little flawed is the home made wooden scooter that Marty takes off that kid, that just happens to have perfect skateboard trucks and wheels and a convenient back pivot point thingie (there must be a proper name for that back pivot thingie).

I wonder what effect on skateboard sales this movie had. Quite a significant one I suspect.

I remember that Michael J Fox did a public service announcement advising that the skateboard stunts in BTTF were heavily supervised and that kids shouldn’t try it at home. I guess there must have been some parent outrage at the time.
I know that even now I’m idly thinking about heading out onto the main road with amy’s Dora the Explorer scooter and and catching a ride by grabbing onto the back of a passing bus. That should be ok shouldn’t it?
worked in part 2 just fine :)

I suppose we should talk about the absolutely bloody marvel that is the time machine in this film. The Delorean is just an incredibly cool looking movie car. It’s iconic, I love how it looks like a spaceship in the barn when he first goes back in time.

I had the opportunity to go see it in person this spring, as on one of my long distance walks we stopped in a town that had one of the promotional models in a motor museum. But it was a Sunday and the place had just shut. I was devastated . They even had a couple of Batmobiles and an original A-Team van. Oh why is life so cruel?

We could have taken a tour of the pencil museum instead, but it just didn’t feel the same.

I can’t believe you passed up a pencil tour. No wonder you want a BTTF 4.
We’d just walked 15 miles, so we were feeling a little too leaden for a pencil tour (“leaden”! “pencils”! I am a comedy genius!)

Something that adds to the experience of watching BTTF is the attention to detail contained within. Especially with the subtle changes to the timeline. I never noticed it before that the chunk of ledge where Doc Brown nearly falls on the clock tower is missing later in the future when Marty returns to 1985.

There are the more obvious but clever nonetheless changes such as the Lone Pine Mall name change. I assume there’s a bunch more that I can’t summon up as I think about it now.

There’s another neat little reference at the start of the film which always catches my eye. When we first open the movie and see all the clocks ticking away, one of the clocks has a character hanging off the hands of the clock in very much the way that Doc would do so later in the film. It’s a neat little nod.

Actually I did also note the perfection of the opening sequence, where we do see all of the clocks indicating the owner of the room is obsessed with time. We also find out that he has used his family fortune to pursue his research via the news clippings, although why anyone would frame such awful news surprises me. Finally when Marty first enters, on his skateboard, the board rolls over to hit the plutonium case under the desk (or it might be his bed now that I think about it).

There’s just a LOT of set up in that scene which is very well done.

Yes. In fact the exposition in this movie is handled extremely well throughout. There is only one scene where it clunks a bit – the one where they are walking into the school and it is so obviously overdubbed.

And you’re also right about how wonderfully planned it all is. I can envisage the plotting sessions involving a hell of a lot of index cards pinned to a board with string linking up the various references and plot points. The planning for Back to the Future II must have been even more complicated! I imagine that’s why they decided to set number 3 in just one time period – to give their brains a rest.

Number two must have been a nightmare for the editing team having to splice it all together. I’m particularly impressed with the way they reshot the Jennifer scenes in the beginning, in fact there is a video that compares the two scenes and it looks really cool, the timing goes out slightly but it wraps up at the exact same moment which is very impressive.
Are we ready for final thoughts on this one? I’ve got nothing else. As you say, what do you say about a classic that hasn’t been said before.

Yeah I guess final thoughts are in order, I keep feeling like there should be something else for me to write but the proof is there on the screen, maybe we shouldn’t watch such good films :)

I’m happily going to give Back to the Future ten double shot soy flat whites out of ten. Perfect film, easy to watch over and over, can’t wait for the blu-ray.

Back to the Future may well be the gold standard to which all other Midnight Movies are measured. As you said, perfect plot, perfect script, and perfect cast. I therefore agree with your score: ten Diet Cokes out of ten. Hey, what’s the point of having a top score if you’re not going to use it?

There are one or two films that I plan on breaking the system with :P

Next week:

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