Although no one has formally commented on the blog yet, and please let nothing stop you from doing so, I do get emails from friends who say "Why are you watching such obscure trash? I have never heard of the last five movies you wrote about. Where the hell is [insert movie everyone knows]?"
The answer, of course, is this: That's what's on TV! I cull most of my picks from a handful of channels that play '80s movies with some regularity - most often, MGM and Encore with a sprinkling of other channels. I also tend to prioritize movies I may never see again - I'll always be able to find E.T., but when will Slaughter High come around again?
That said, tonight I'm covering possibly the most beloved single film of the entire decade and its fairly well-liked sequel: Back to the Future and Back to the Future II, released in '85 and '89 respectively. I would cover the third installment (which I actually detest, and hated from the day I saw it as a kid in the theaters) except it snuck across the border into the No Man's Land of the '90s (even though it was filmed back-to-back with number two).
So, here we are. The first movie, of course, is a mega blockbuster (8th highest grossing in the decade) and is also completely saturated in the '80s - the look, the ideas, the actors, everything. For the uninitiated, here is the basic rundown. Our protagonist Marty McFly is played by Michael J. Fox, known best at the time the move was released from his iconic role as Alex P. Keaton on the huge TV hit show Family Ties.
Now, I love Michael J. Fox. I like him as much in his duds (Light of Day; The Hard Way) as in his hits (Back to the Future series; Teen Wolf; Doc Hollywood). But I freely admit he largely plays the exact same personality in each movie. I'd estimate about 85% of every role is just his natural perky wise-ass personality with the squeaky voice and 15% is whatever character he's supposed to be.
Luckily that is a good thing here. In this movie, director Robert Zemeckis (Romancing the Stone; Who Framed Roger Rabbit?; Forrest Gump; Cast Away) uses Fox to absolutely maximum potential. Just maxes him right out. It's like the role was written just for him. And it shows: the movie made $383 million in combined theater and rentals.
Here's the plot: Marty McFly (which is just a great freaking name) lives in Hill Valley, California. His dad (the immortal Crispin Glover in his most famous role) is a wimp, his mom (the sexy Lea Thompson at her peak of fame) is a lush, and his dad's boss Biff (played by the fantastically hateable Thomas F. Wilson) is a horrific bully. Luckily, Marty has an escape: he is good friends with mad scientist Emmett "Doc" Brown, played by Christopher Lloyd in what is probably his most recognizable role. It's either this or Taxi, take your pick.
Doc Brown meets with Marty in the parking lot of a mall to show him his newest invention: A TIME MACHINE. This is, of course, the most '80s touch of them all - time machines were a BIG topic back then. Movie from '80s featuring time travel include:
- Star Trek IV
- The Philadelphia Experiment
- Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
- Trancers
- Flight of the Navigator
- The Terminator
- Time Bandits
- Young Sherlock Holmes
- The Final Countdown
- Peggy Sue Got Married
- Somewhere in Time
- Cocoon (sort of)
- Howard the Duck (sort of)
I'm not sure why the time travel motif blew up so much in the '80s, but it sure did. And this movie is the undisputed king of them all; the time travel is the main conceit and is also hovering in the background waiting to emerge again and twist things once more when you least expect it.
Getting back, Doc Brown has not only created a time machine, but he has immortalized it in one of the most '80s of all automotive icons: The DeLorean DMC-12. The car is INCREDIBLE. The gull wing doors, the unpainted stainless-steel finish, the wedge nose shape, everything about it screams 1980s. The only other car I might consider would be the Ferrari 308 GTSi that Tom Selleck rocks in Magnum P. I.
OK, so the DeLorean has a time machine for a power plant ("1.21 Gigawatts!"). Unfortunately, to power the machine Doc Brown has stolen plutonium from terrorists ("Libyans!"). They hunt him to the parking lot and gun him down - Marty uses the car to escape and travel back to 1955 ("88 miles per hour!") and set things right. Unfortunately this actually creates several more problems - he meets his young mother, who falls for him (!) at the expense of his future father (!!), and he is trapped in 1955 until a young Doc Brown can figure out how to generate the 1.21 gigawatts needed to get back to 1985.
As Marty attempts to set his parents back up, fix his time machine, ward off the horrendous bully Biff, and save future Doc from the terrorists, he discovers that as he alters the past, he alters the future. In an ingenious twist, as he changes events people in the photos he has from the present begin to fade out of the photograph - out of existence. Even he is eventually imperiled and begins to fade out. As a kid I found this mesmerizing and it adds a real sense of urgency and compulsion to the whole movie. There is always a clock ticking and Marty is under a lot of pressure to get everything done.
The immortal theme, done by Alan Silvestri, is very exciting and memorable. The plot is clever and intermixes the '50s and '80s with great effect - kudos to writer/producer Bob Gale, who surprisingly did not write many other movies outside the Back to the Future universe. It's too bad; of course, with the success the franchise, he is probably rich beyond counting and doesn't need to write anything else. He's probably being carted around in a platinum hovercraft right this moment.
I don't want to write much more, or else I will spoil the movie entirely for anyone who hasn't seen this yet. Instead, I'll move on to the sequel, made four years later. I was nine when the second movie was released and remember vividly that it was released sometime in the autumn, and was almost as big a hit as the original, and that it spawned more talk among my friends than any other movie. Everyone was talking hoverboards and holograms and whatnot.
The premise is that Doc comes back to 1985 from 2015 and says that Marty has to go to the future with him to save his future children. Marty does so, and successfully defeats Biff's grandson Griff. However, their departure is witnessed by Biff, who sees Marty again in 2015 as an old man, and which sets into motion a long chain of events that leads to Future Biff taking a sports almanac back to 1985, betting on various sports events and becoming the richest man in the world... much to the detriment of the McFly clan.
The second movie is a lot more gimmicky than the first, and very honestly, is about 3/4 as good. The plot isn't as tight, the characters are more broad (and therefore less focused and interesting), and the whole thing feels less urgent - maybe because the idea isn't as new anymore. The neatest thing the second movie comes up with is its dystopian view of the Biff-centric future, which is really decayed and horrifying in that neon tech-noir '80s way.
When I was growing up I had a number of friends who preferred the second movie to the first one - but I think this has to do with being older when it came out and the stronger memories it generated. I've never met anyone, and probably never will, who prefers the botch-job of the third movie, which takes place in the Wild West and has approximately one successful joke per hour. Approximately.
So it's really the first two, and especially the first one, that shines. The first movie just gets everything right - the look, the gags, the characters, the actors, the music, the pacing, the works. It's perhaps semi-famous for the best screening of any movie in Hollywood - usually they preview a film and the audience hates something and the producers change something and so on. Not here - the audience blew up in a frenzy of adoration.
I'm not sure what other bases to cover here. There was a mass production of merchandising tie-ins, very common, but I really only remember the atrocious Nintendo game. There was a cartoon, I think, and maybe another related TV version, but I remember neither very well. What I would be most interested in knowing is what later movies were directly influenced by the series - anyone know? Can think of any characters drawn straight from Doc Brown and Marty McFly? The fading polaroid effect? Etc.? Any input most welcome.
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