Story time. This is the movie that replaced Land Before Time as my favorite movie. My process with Land Before time had been I watched it once or twice a day. I learned every line of every character and would recite it along wiht them. I think I got the video via Pizza Hut. Back to the Future, I think we got it through a McDonalds promotion. I thought it was so cool, I recall asking my dad to speed up to 88mph, while driving on the highway, I think. He declined. :-p I began watching Back to the Future every day, learning all the lines to the movie and reciting with it. Mostly this was free 'not in my hair' time for my mom, so she pretty much left me alone. I picked up the word inventor, figured out what it meant and determined that's exactly what I wanted to do. I drew sketches of things that needed to be invented. First of all, you needed a cassette that could morph from CDs to cassette tapes to VHS to microcassette (so you could carry a lot of them) that you could use anywhere and you needed a TV that could fold up and be used in the car--my inspiration was transformers. I think I also had some idea of making a 'rainbow lipstick' that would let mom select any color at all she wanted in a single lipstick case.
I was five I think.Anyway I worked on memorizing the movie as it was my favorite and I watched it most every day. One night my dad wanted to watch a movie and I suggested Back to the Future. That's what we wound up watching. I hadn't yet memorized all the lines, mostly I focused on the exciting parts that I liked. Anyway I was quickly told to be quiet. But when it got to the exciting part I couldn't help myself. I shouted, "you bastards!" right along with Marty at the evil Libyan terrorists. And I was spanked, and the movie was banned from my watching it for about a month or so. After which I think my mom caved to my incessant whining. But that was fairly the end of my watching a movie over and over again, in any event. but I still watched it many a time over the years as it's a family, and personal favorite. I loved the sequels too, particularly part III.
Anyway, watching this now, it's still wonderful, I'm really appreciating the technique and craft that went into the film, especially on the production design side of things. and being older and wiser, for the first time I'm seeing stuff like the Plutonium box hidden in Doc's shop/home when Marty walks in. It's also a treat to be watching it in widescreen for the first time.
Anyway, Doc and Marty are friends, Marty's Dad is a puss and pushover by the old highschool bully Biff, His Mom is a run down overweight alcoholic. they eat bowls of peanut brittle for supper, his brother works at burger king and his sister is the definition of frumpy. Marty is the youngest, the cool one, he's in a band so naturally he's got a knockout girlfriend who's ready to go off for a lost weekend with him. He's in trouble at school but for the most part, things are good.
And then Doc asks him to videotape an experiment at the Twin Pines Mall parkinglot at 1:15 AM. The Good Doctor has finally realized his vision of time travel and he's transformed a steel-framed Delorean model car into a time machine. They send the dog on the first trip, success. Doc packs up to head into the future (a year from now, give or take), and pauses when he realizes he almost forgot to take spare plutonium with him for the return trip. Oh yes, this is an electrical time machine with a nuclear power generator, and Doc has liberated some plutonium from some Libyan terrorists who wanted him to make them a bomb.
And right on queue, the terrorists show up. things go bac and Marty jumps into the time machine, and before you know it, he's back in 1955, witnessing his parents as his age, Doc is suspicious of him (and doesn't know him) and his blundering changes the past, to the point where he's in danger of no longer existing if he doesn't set the time lines back towards the right course. (theoretically, he should probably cease to exist as soon as he alters some event that could affect his birth, but I think Terry Pratchett explained it away as "history has inertia" sort of thing, meaning it's hard to change, in this BTTF universe, and it wants to/tends to try to get back on the right course.
In any event Marty must undo his blundering, find a non-plutonium way out of this trap in the past, convince Doc to help him, and subtly change his family's history forever.
Love this movie. a treat to revisit it.
