#40 Back To The Future

In Summary

A film about the dangers of travelling back in time and accidentally dating your mother, it's Back To The Future.

A fun and highly-efficient, film, Back To The Future is both a wondrous tour of nostalgic 50's America and along with a version of science-fiction that seems quaint by today's standards. Back To The Future takes a complex concept but presents it charmingly enough to enable the audience the follow the story.

If you have somehow never seen this film, Back To The Future is the story of how Marty McFly accidentally travels to the past in a DeLorean and has to find a way to return within the technological limits of the 50's - hence, Back To The Future.

Along the way, he stumbles across the lives of the younger versions of his parents and has to avoid altering the past so much that he no longer exists. It is this understanding of the rules of time travel that is the film's key theme - that, to the time traveller, the present is malleable.

The hopefulness of use is the other key theme of Back To The Future. Marty McFly stands out from his family as having hopes and dreams - mainly to do with shredding on his guitar - only to discover that his parents were similar at his age.

There is something quite sad about how Marty's parents' ambitions were crushed as they moved into adulthood, however, it is Marty's positive attitude as he goes into their past that ultimately allows them to find happiness.

Back To The Future is an iconic, optimistic, and deeply nostalgic film.

A Memorable Quote

Marty McFly: Wait a minute. Wait a minute, Doc. Ah... Are you telling me that you built a time machine... out of a DeLorean?
Dr. Emmett Brown: The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some *style?*

Things You May Not Know

• The script for Back To The Future was rejected 44 times before the film was finally made.
• Doc Brown's pronunciation of Gigawatt (with a soft 'g') was the standard pronunciation at the time the film was made.
• The rights to Back To The Future are owned by Robert Zemeckis and writer, Bob Gale. Zemeckis has stated that there will be no reboot or remake of the franchise while Gale is alive.

One of the Greatest of All Time?
Back To The Future was a film that I somehow managed to avoid seeing until I was 23 years old. Nonetheless, it is a film that felt instantly iconic.

There was clearly a lot of hard-work and affection that went into making this film. It manages to be nostalgic without being cliche, funny yet takes itself seriously enough to engage the audience, it is family friendly while bold enough to briefly explore some more adult themes.

For all the analysis you could do on Back To The Future, it is one of those films that very simply just works.