1985

DIRECTOR: ROBERT ZEMECKIS PRODUCERS: BOB GALE AND NEIL CANTON SCREENPLAY: ROBERT ZEMECKIS AND BOB GALE

STARRING: MICHAEL J. FOX (MARTY MCFLY), CHRISTOPHER LLOYD (DR. EMMETT BROWN), LEA THOMPSON (LORRAINE BAINES), CRISPIN GLOVER (GEORGE MCFLY), THOMAS F. WILSON (BIFF TANNEN), CLAUDIA WELLS (JENNIFER PARKER), MARC MCCLURE (DAVE MCFLY), WENDIE JO SPERBER (LINDA MCFLY)

Back to the Future

UNIVERSAL • COLOR, 116 MINUTES

A teenage boy is sent thirty years back in time, accidentally threatening his own existence by interfering with the meeting of his parents.

Time travel has never been more fun than in Back to the Future. In the days when dark, dystopian science-fiction movies were common, Robert Zemeckis (and executive producer Steven Spielberg) brought light and laughter to the genre with an exhilarating exploration of what can go wrong when destiny and the space-time continuum are tampered with. Every line of dialogue in the tightly wound comedy—in addition to often being laugh-out-loud funny—is carefully planned to make repeat viewings rewarding. Even the film’s paradoxical title makes complete sense in the context of the narrative. It all fits together like clockwork.

The story is a wonderfully inventive yarn by Zemeckis and Bob Gale that received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Taking the snappy tone of small-town American comedies, like the ones Frank Capra and Preston Sturges used to make, and adding a swirl of science fiction and a revved-up 1980s sensibility, Back to the Future uses time-travel conventions to tell a fresh, character-driven story. The film opens with a variety of clocks ticking on the mantle of our inventor, Dr. Emmett “Doc” Brown, played by Christopher Lloyd. This shot not only pays homage to George Pal’s The Time Machine (1960) but establishes the most important element in the film: time. When Doc perfects the “flux capacitor,” creating the coolest time machine ever—a silver DeLorean DMC-12—Michael J. Fox as teenage slacker Marty McFly ends up at the same high school with the two teens who will someday become his parents. Figuratively, the clock is ticking: if Marty doesn’t repair history in one week, he will cease to exist.

Robert Zemeckis (far right) directs a scene with Marc McClure, Wendie Jo Sperber, and Lea Thompson.

Crispin Glover and Michael J. Fox in an outtake from the film

Lea Thompson as Lorraine Baines

Reflecting the can-do optimism of the Reagan era, the film takes a positive, empowering view of time travel. In 1985, Marty can’t win. His mom and dad are miserable underachievers, he’s always late for school, and his rock band isn’t allowed to play at the dance on account of being “just too darn loud.” But by cruising to 1955 in Doc’s plutonium-fueled DeLorean, Marty can be the big man on campus, and can even change the present for the better by bolstering the confidence of his geeky father, George. Because the audience shares Marty’s secret, his visit to the past is rich with humor of all varieties, from slapstick to verbal gags. When Marty slips and calls George “Dad,” he quickly corrects it to the slang of the era, “daddy-o.” Exploiting George’s fondness for science-fiction tales to get his attention, Marty decks himself out in a radiation suit and poses as “Darth Vader,” “an extraterrestrial from the planet Vulcan.”

Zemeckis brings the mid-’50s to life in affectionate detail, complete with corner-drugstore jukeboxes and episodes of The Honeymooners. And the film’s humor isn’t at the expense of the past; jokes about the 1950s are balanced with jokes about the 1980s. When Marty informs him that Ronald Reagan later becomes the president, Doc retorts, “Who’s vice president? Jerry Lewis?” Marty knows a few guitar licks those ’50s folks haven’t heard yet, but is clueless when it comes to using a bottle opener to pry the cap from his Pepsi. He also discovers that the era was not so innocent. Dad’s a peeping tom, and Mom drinks, smokes, and parks in cars with boys—everything she tells her kids she never did “when I was your age.” The flirtation between Marty and his teenage mother, Lorraine, played by Lea Thompson, was “always the trickiest part of the story,” Zemeckis revealed. “We spent the most time trying to shake that one out.” The implications made the film too risqué for Disney. They rejected the script for this reason back in 1981.

Michael J. Fox rehearses his performance at the dance.

Supported by a bouncy soundtrack of early rock ’n’ roll classics and two original hits from Huey Lewis and the News, Back to the Future not only clicked with the public as the highest-grossing movie of 1985, but won a Saturn award for Best Science-Fiction Film of the year, raked in multiple Oscar and Golden Globe nominations, and was added to the National Film Registry in 2007. It crosses an array of genres—sci-fi, adventure, comedy, coming-of-age, period piece—putting it in an unforgettable class by itself.

After shuttling Marty and Doc to the year 2015 in Back to the Future Part II (1989) and zapping them into the Old West in Back to the Future Part III (1990), Robert Zemeckis would again play with American pop-culture history in the Oscar-winning Forrest Gump (1994) before exploring the serious side of science fiction with 1997’s Contact.

FAR-OUT FACTS

In an early draft of the script, the time machine was a refrigerator that derived its power from an atomic bomb testing site in Nevada. Steven Spielberg later borrowed the nuclear fridge idea for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008).

Fox was Zemeckis’s first choice for Marty. When the actor had trouble breaking free from his steady gig on the sitcom Family Ties, Eric Stoltz was cast and several scenes were shot. Finally, Fox convinced the producers to allow him to shoot the movie at night and work on the TV show during the day, and he replaced Stoltz.

The vents on the back of the souped-up DeLorean are for nuclear exhaust—the same principle as cooling towers on a nuclear power plant. “It really needed to look dangerous,” said Zemeckis of the modifications to the car, “and look like it was built in somebody’s garage.”

MIND-BLOWING MOMENT

Doc demonstrates his invention to Marty in a mall parking lot in the middle of the night, promising that when the DeLorean hits eighty-eight miles per hour, “You’re gonna see some serious shit.” As promised, the car crackles with electric sparks and races into the fourth dimension in an explosive burst of energy, leaving a trail of flames in its wake.

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