A retrospective of the introspectiveness of Back to the Future

How Back to the Future wakes me up in the middle of the night with a cold sweat

I am Master Freight Train and my Nostalgia Kung Fu is strong.

Last week the internet was flooded with a fake picture from the movie Back to the Future, which showed the current date of July 6, 2010 displayed on the time displacement readout. The majority of us, that spend our days crawling through the seedy underbelly of the internet, are quick to spot photo shopped pictures. However, this one slipped by and spread across the globe. The dissenters tried to control the spread by pointing out the actual date was October 22, 2012, when Marty McFly and Doc Brown traveled to the future. We were simply overwhelmed by the speed and idiocy of the internet. Honestly, we had a better chance of stopping a freight train while standing in front of it without our superman underwear.

I do not recall them going back to the year, ‘Happy birthday’ but the 80’s were crazy.

Why did it spread so quickly? Is it a weird fascination with Hollywood movies using specific dates and matching said dates to our real lives to give us a connection? Is it the sudden realization that, “Holy Crap we are in the future!” Perhaps the picture reminded us all of the futuristic possibilities that were promised, and never delivered. I believed it reminded us all of a time when the only thing you needed to changed your destiny was 1.21 gigawatts or is it jigawatts? (God bless you if you got that joke)

There are few movies that transcend generations and ages as gracefully but Back to the Future pulls it off, in ways that make you want to take it out to a nice seafood dinner and actually listen to how its day went. But why? Why does this movie have such a strong place in our hearts? Is it the futuristic technology? Our first look at the time machine rolling down from the trailer, will forever be ingrained into my memory. I still consider it as one of history’s most bad ass moments, along side the first time we saw the time machine fly, awesome! What about the other technology we saw in the future, holographic Jaws 15, robot gas stations, weather control, date rape guns that Doc Brown totally used on Marty’s girlfriend to get her to shut up. (Leave her on that paper blocks Doc and send Marty to Café 80’s, to confront Griff. While you leave to take care of God knows what, I’m sure you did not double back the instant Marty turned that corner, Doctor Love.)

Those are some serious rape eyes.

Of course, let’s not forget, the hoverboards. Perhaps you are not a Techie person and like to focus on the characters. All of us can relate to Marty’s coming of age story, dealing with your father’s bully, fending off your sexually aggressive teenage mother, inventing Rock n’ Roll, fighting the Libyan terrorist, creating and destroying your own personal Hill Valley hell, and fighting a gunslinger in the old west. I am sure we can all relate to as least three of those life changing experiences. Lastly, our favorite topic of discussion, time travel paradoxes. Let’s face it, this movie is so full of paradoxes that it looks like Charlie Brown’s Halloween ghost outfit, full of holes, not fooling anyone, and honestly Creepy!

I will come right out an say it: I have a love/hate relationship with the hoverboard. I will be the first person to tell you screw the hoverboard! It is a pink baby’s toy. Then I’ll secretly apologize to a poster of it hanging above my bed, as soon as I got home. When any kid first sees Back to the Future 2, they wanted a hoverboard. Period. Anyone saying anything different is a liar or was emotionally dead as a child and should not be trusted. Watch your back.

You know what’s lacking in this picture? Lusting over a hoverboard.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Inside our kid brains we knew it was not real. Movies were not real. Hollywood was a crock, full of light and ‘magic’ and we are not falling for it. Then you go to school that Monday and you sit down with your sloppy joe. Your friends all talk about Back to the Future 2, with meat juice running down your 3rd grade chin. Then in all seriousness for a 7 year old, Chad looks at you and says his dad knows a guy that works for a toy company and that hoverboards are real. The whole table goes silent and everyone is leaning in listening. He goes on, regaling everyone with a tale of an overheard phone conversation, between his dad and said friend at the ‘toy company’. His dad said the other parents thought it was too dangerous; that kids could get hurt. They did not want the toy companies to produce dangerous toys. You knew it! Parents were always getting in the way of your fun. No hoverboards!? Are you serious! They were always up to this type of crap. They clearly did not see the possibilities. I would beg Chad every day at lunch during 3rd grade to tell us more about the hoverboards. Could we write a letter to the company? Send the money directly to purchase one? Steal them!? Chad always had a big mouth and told huge stories that no one took seriously. (Think Chunk from the Goonies) We desperately wanted to believe in the hoverboard story. Sometime towards the end of 3rd grade the slow realization dawned on us all, Chad was full of it. We turned on him that day, vowing never to forget the mind games he put us through that year and I never have Chad!

GET HIM!

Forget the hoverboards; they will plague my fantasy for the rest of entirety. Perhaps it was not the technology and those sweet hoverboards (Stop thinking about it!) that attract us to Back to the Future. Perhaps it is that little scamp Marty Mcfly; an average guy who has just been dealt a bad hand. All he wants is to play the prom with his band, “The Pinheads,” and go up to the lake for the weekend, with this girlfriend Jennifer. We have all been there. Then your friend calls you up at 2 in the morning to meet him at the mall and to bring a video camera. You go, to be a good friend. Then 20 minutes later, he is dead, you are being chased by Libyan terrorists, wearing a radiation suit, in a time machine. You see if the bastards can do 90, then BAM! You are history. (Pun totally intended). Marty’s struggles are not unlike our own. We have all felt, ‘out of time,’ a stranger in a strange land. We have all had to stand up to bullies, perhaps not our own, but our friend’s. Very few of us have the skill to take them down in a high speed car/skateboard action sequence that ends up with them covered in manure. Or heck, I would settle for a good one-line to deliver to my bully. Then walk away as everyone clapped and walked out with me and then the host girl would put her arm through mine and we would get on my hoverboard and ride off. (The hoverboard is part of all my fantasies now. Reading on will be easier if you just accept it.)

It consumes me.

Marty’s struggles are not our favorite topic of discussion, nay. Our favorite topics of conversation with Back to the Future are time travel paradoxes. Everyone loves a good time paradox, because each time travel adventure has its own rules, “Time Rules.” In Back to the Future, there is clearly one time line, hence Marty and his siblings being erased from history. But what if past Marty from 1985 came into contact with future Marty from 1985? Could the same matter occupy the same space, vis à vis Time Cop or would a time paradox occur that would unravel the very nature of the universe as Doc Brown predicted!? Another question that keeps me up at night; how many time machines are there total? I have counted and come up with no less than 7, throughout the trilogy. (I had a time paradox section planned but it has become its own article. I will dive back time paradoxes at a later date.)

It will be posted next week.

Perhaps Marty’s biggest obstacle to overcome is not a bully or time paradoxes, it is himself. I believe this is why the movie continues to resonate with us after the 100th viewing, just as well as it did the 1st time. With each time watching the movie people connect to Marty’s character differently. The teenage youth struggling with the life he was dealt. The coming of age story as Marty deals with the bigger issues than his own desires. Finally to Marty’s understanding that he does not need to prove anything to anyone else, despite what others think. That his destiny is not bound up in other’s opinion of him, but of the opinion he has of himself. Marty does not change, it is us who have changed with each viewing. The first time we watched Back to the Future and went on Marty’s time travel adventure, it was a retrospective of the past, of our parent’s past. We were introduced to the theme of time travel as a developmental tool by Marty going back and connecting with his teenage parents and seeing how their relationship grew through time.

I too would shake the man’s hand that went back in time and had his hot teenage mom take his pants off in her bed. Calvin Klein nothing, more like Calvin’s first time, am I right!?

This made us look at our own lives, probably for the first time as children, and realize that past events affect the future! This means that things I do today can not only affect tomorrow but things a year from today. (Big stuff for a kid that was afraid of the Ghostbusters 2 movie poster) Re-watching Back to the Future now, plucks our heart strings in a nostalgic way, which makes us yearn for a more innocent and simpler time. A time when we were younger and watching Back to the Future for the first time and did not have to worry about reflecting on our choices and decisions and how they have affected us and our present circumstances and ultimately any future consequences. The trilogy ends on a happy note and we still love to hear it today because we are understanding it better all the time. None of our futures are written yet; there is still time to make the best of it.