Back to the Future
- This article is about the first film in the Back to the Future trilogy. For information on the series as a whole, see Back to the Future trilogy.
| Back to the Future | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Robert Zemeckis |
| Produced by | Bob Gale Neil Canton Kathleen Kennedy Frank Marshall Johnny Colla (uncredited) |
| Written by | Robert Zemeckis Bob Gale |
| Starring | Michael J. Fox Christopher Lloyd Lea Thompson Crispin Glover Thomas F. Wilson |
| Music by | Alan Silvestri |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) | July 3, 1985 (USA) |
| Running time | 116 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | US$19,000,000 |
| Followed by | Back to the Future Part II |
| IMDb profile | |
Back to the Future is an American science fiction/comedy film directed by Robert Zemeckis and released in 1985. It is about a young man who is accidentally sent into the past and jeopardizes his own future existence. The film was followed by two sequels, Back to the Future Part II (1989), and Back to the Future Part III (1990), forming a trilogy.
Back To The Future was written by Bob Gale and Zemeckis, and starred Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd. The movie opened on July 3, 1985 and grossed $210 million at the US box office, making it the highest grossing film of 1985. On December 17, 2002, Universal Home Video released Back to the Future: The Complete Trilogy on DVD and VHS.
Following the completion of the film series, two more spin-off projects surfaced. CBS TV aired an animated series, Back to the Future: The Animated Series, while Harvey Comics (publishers of Casper the Friendly Ghost) released a handful of similarly styled comic books, although their stories were original and not merely duplicates of the films.
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Synopsis
On October 25, 1985, Marty McFly, a 17-year old high school senior, visits the home of his friend, an eccentric local scientist named Dr. Emmett L Brown, only to find that "the Doc" is not home. Marty soon receives a call from Doc himself asking him to meet him at 1:15 AM at Twin Pines mall. Just as Marty agrees, all the clocks in Doc's basement chime the hour. When Doc Brown remarks that the clocks are 25 minutes behind, proof that an experiment of his was successful, Marty realizes that he is late for school.
After school, Marty plays lead guitar for the "Pinheads" in an audition to play at the school dance; but the judges cut his song off early for being "too darn loud". Afterward, Marty confides in his girlfriend Jennifer, worrying that he will never get a chance to play for an audience. They are interrupted when a woman hands Marty a flyer and solicits money for a campaign to save the city clock tower, which was struck by lightning at 10:04 PM on Saturday, November 12, 1955.
When Marty gets home he finds that the family car has been totaled by his father George McFly's supervisor, Biff Tannen, who blames the accident on George, on the grounds that George had not told Biff that the car had a "blind spot". He then coerces George into writing all of his work reports while making rude comments about Marty's mother Lorraine.
The family then has dinner. As Marty's father watches a Jackie Gleason rerun, the viewer discovers that Marty's older brother has a job at a fast food restaurant, his sister has no love life, and his mother disapproves of girls chasing boys. She remarks that fate brought her and her husband together from her father hitting George with a car, and eventually having their first kiss at the "Enchantment Under the Sea Dance".
As planned, at 1:15 AM Marty meets Doctor Brown at the mall to witness a demonstration of Doc's latest invention: a time-machine made from a modified DeLorean sports car, which must reach 88 miles-per-hour in order to travel through time. Doc tests the car by sending his dog Einstein one minute into the future.
Overjoyed by this success, Doc demonstrates to Marty how the time machine works, entering several significant dates into the keypad, followed by November 5, 1955. Doc explains to Marty that this was the day that he came up with the idea for the flux capacitor, the device in that makes time travel possible.
After Doc refuels the time machine, a group of Libyan terrorists arrive, from whom he stole the plutonium necessary to power the time machine. The Libyans kill Doc, but Marty escapes in the DeLorean, and inadvertently travels thirty years back in time to November 5, 1955. The plutonium necessary to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity required to make one jump in time is left in 1985.
Marty encounters many differences between 1985 and 1955: different music, Ronald Reagan still an actor listed in a movie marquee at the local theater, exemplary service at the gas station, and a cleaner, less run-down ambiance in the town square. While searching for a younger Doc Brown, he meets his father and accidentally interferes with the first meeting of his parents--being hit by his grandfather's Chevy in his father's place. (His father had been in a tree watching Lorraine undress through her window.) Lorraine then falls in love with Marty instead, calling him Calvin Klein because she sees the name on his underwear. He has dinner with Lorraine's family, claims that he has seen the episode of The Honeymooners on TV even though it is brand new, and meets his Uncle Joey, a future "jailbird" who loves being in his crib.
Marty finds Doc, who disbelieves his story until Marty tells him that today is the day he conceived of the flux capacitor. Doc tells Marty that his encounter with his parents jeopardizes Marty's own existence. A snapshot Marty carries of himself with his sister and brother, documents this peril: part of Dave, the eldest, appears to have been "erased" from the photo, soon to be followed by Linda, and finally, unless disaster is averted, Marty.
Doc does not know where to acquire plutonium, and the only other source of the necessary "1.21 gigawatts" of electricity needed would be a bolt of lightning: but one never knows when or where they will strike. Marty shows him the fundraising flyer from 1985 that gives the exact time and place of a lightning bolt, one week away. Doc will build the device that will let them channel the lightning bolt into the flux capacitor, sending Marty back to 1985. But in this time he must also manipulate his parents into falling in love, so that they will still have their first kiss at the dance--coincidentally also one week away, on November 12.
Marty tries to get George to ask Lorraine to the dance, but George is too nervous. They also have trouble with a younger Biff Tannen (the school bully), who is after Lorraine and forces George to do his homework. At one point, Biff and his friends chase Marty in their car while he rides a makeshift skateboard, and they crash their car into a manure truck. Another time Biff picks a fight with George, and Marty defends him. Most of these events only makes Lorraine even more attracted to Marty. Finally Lorraine asks Marty to the dance.
Marty accepts, and tells George his plan is to 'take advantage' of Lorraine in the car, so that George can rescue her, which would put him in a good light. On the night of the date, Lorraine reveals that she is more than willing to let Marty take advantage of her, having snuck out some liquor for the event. (When Lorraine and Marty kiss, however, she is suddenly uncomfortable and says that it was like "kissing my brother".) Then Biff arrives instead of George, gets in the car with Lorraine, and tells his gang to take Marty "around back," where they lock him in the trunk of a car. When George arrives, expecting Marty, he finds Biff harassing Lorraine instead; Biff gets out of the car and almost breaks George's arm. When Biff pushes Lorraine to the ground and laughs at her, George becomes infuriated, and knocks Biff out with a punch. George and Lorraine head off to the dance just in time for Marty to see them together, having just been freed from the car he was locked in.
- Performed by Marvin Berry & The Starlighters
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- Performed by The Starlighters
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Marty returns to 1985 ten minutes before he left, but the car stalls and he has to run to the mall, where he sees Doc being shot and himself driving the DeLorean back in time. The terrorists crash into a photo booth and either are killed or then leave; they do not reappear. Marty rushes down to Doc's body and turns away in tears, but Doc sits up. He reveals he wore a bulletproof vest under his radiation suit. Doc then pulls out the letter Marty wrote him, taped back together from the shreds he tore it into 30 years before.
Doc drives Marty home, then heads 30 years into the future. In the morning, Marty discovers his house is different; there is a new blue BMW in the driveway (in place of the wrecked Nova), Linda has an active social life and Dave has a good office job. Lorraine and George arrive home from playing tennis, both more fit and attractive, and more far affectionate to one another, than when Marty left. A humble Biff, who instead of being George's supervisor, now runs an auto detailing service and defers to him, runs in with the delivery of George's first novel, a work of science fiction called A Match Made In Space. Marty finds that the Toyota pick-up truck that he previously coveted is now his. As Marty and his girlfriend Jennifer are about to take a ride in the truck, Doc reappears in the DeLorean, telling Marty that they have to come with him to the future, that something has got to be done about their kids, and hurries him and Jennifer into the car. Marty points out that there is not enough road to accelerate to 88 mph, but Doc says "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads," and flies off in the now fusion-powered and hover-converted car.
Cast
Michael J. Fox is, in fact, only ten days younger than the actress who plays his mother, Lea Thompson, and is almost three years older than his on-screen dad, Crispin Glover.
Production
Script
The inspiration for the film largely stems from Bob Gale, who discovered his father's high school yearbook and wondered whether he would have been friends with his father as a teenager.
Robert Zemeckis pitched the idea to several companies. Disney turned it down because they thought that a story involving a mother falling in love with her son was too risqué, even if it was a twist of time travel. All other companies said it was not risqué enough, compared to the other teen comedies at the time (see Porky's, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) and Revenge of the Nerds (1984)).
Sid Sheinberg, the head of Universal Pictures, made many changes to the movie. "Professor Brown" was changed to "Doc Brown" and his chimp Shemp to a dog named Einstein. Marty's mother had previously been Meg, then Eileen, but Sid Sheinberg insisted that she be named Lorraine after his wife Lorraine Gary. According to one of the DVD commentaries, Sheinberg also did not like the title, insisting that no one would see a movie with "future" in the title. In a memo to Robert Zemeckis, he said that the title should be changed to "Spaceman From Pluto", tying in with the Marty-as-alien jokes in the film.[1] Steven Spielberg replied in a memo thanking him for the wonderful "joke memo" and told him everyone got a kick out of it. Sid Sheinberg, too proud to admit he was serious, let the title stand.[2]
In the original script, Marty's rock-and-roll caused a riot at the dance that had to be broken up by police. This, combined with Marty accidentally tipping Doc off to the "secret ingredient" that made the time machine work (Coca-Cola) caused history to change. When Marty got back to the 1980s, he found that it was now the 1950s conception of that decade, with air-cars and whatnot, all invented by Doc Brown and running on Coca-Cola. Marty also discovers that rock and roll was never invented (the most popular musical style is now the mambo), and he dedicates himself to starting the delayed cultural revolution. Meanwhile, his dad digs out the newspaper from the day after the dance and sees his son in the picture of the riot.[3]
In the film's script the word "gigawatt" is spelled and pronounced "jigowatt". Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis had been to a science seminar and the speaker had pronounced it "jigowatt".
Doc Brown's "man hanging off a clock face" reprises the famous scene in Harold Lloyd's Safety Last! (1923).
Casting and filming
As Back to the Future's producers scouted locations on a residential street in Pasadena, Michael J. Fox was elsewhere on that street, filming his first starring feature role, Teen Wolf. The producers became interested in having Fox play Marty McFly. However, Fox initially had to turn down the part because another actor in Family Ties, Meredith Baxter-Birney, was pregnant at the time, and so Fox's character (Alex Keaton) had to "carry the show".[4]
Production of the film began on November 261984 with actor Eric Stoltz portraying Marty McFly. Eventually, however, the filmmakers came to the conclusion that Stoltz was not right for the part. Stoltz had played it seriously, and they wanted a lighter touch on the character. They returned to the idea of Michael J. Fox, who this time worked out a shooting schedule that would not interfere with his television commitment. Fox spent his days rehearsing and shooting Family Ties, and then drove to the movie's set to film Back to The Future all night. The movie's day shots were filmed on weekends. Fox reportedly averaged only an hour or two of sleep each night during production, which was completed on April 201985, less than three months before the film's release.[2]
Footage with Stoltz as Marty McFly still exists, according to Zemeckis and Gale. One notable scene that was kept in the final film is the one in which Stoltz as Marty drives the DeLorean in the mall parking lot. Since the shots were fairly distant, with the driver's face not particularly visible, the footage was retained.
Michael J. Fox had to learn to skateboard for the film. To find a coordinator for the skateboarding scenes, Bob Gale went to Venice beach and approached two skateboarders. One turned out to be European skate champ Per Welinder. The skater he was with became the stunt double for Eric Stoltz, but was later replaced in order to match Michael J. Fox's height.
Christopher Lloyd reportedly based his performance as Doc Brown on a combination of physicist Albert Einstein and conductor Leopold Stokowski.[2]
Several key scenes were filmed on the Universal Studios backlot in what is now known as Courthouse Square. The setting of hundreds of other productions, including the current television show Ghost Whisperer, it has suffered major fire damage on two occasions since Back to the Future was made.[5]
The DeLorean time machine
The time machine went through several variations during production. In the first draft of the screenplay the time machine was a laser device that was housed in a room. At the end of the first draft the device was attached to a refrigerator and taken to an atomic bomb test. Director Robert Zemeckis said in an interview that the idea was scrapped because he did not want children to start climbing into refrigerators and getting trapped inside. In the third draft of the film the time machine was a DeLorean, as Zemeckis reasoned that if you were going to make a time machine, you would want it to move. However in order to send Marty back to the future the vehicle had to drive into a nuclear test. Ultimately this concept was considered too expensive to film, so the power source was changed to lightning.
The DeLorean used in the trilogy was a 1981 DMC-12 model, modified to accommodate a more powerful and reliable Porsche engine. The base for the nuclear-reactor was made from the hubcap from a Dodge Polara. In the 2002 Special-Edition DVD of the BTTF Trilogy, it is incorrectly stated that the DeLorean had a standard 4-cylinder engine. The only engine available on this car was a 130 HP V6. Also, the production ultimately used three real DeLoreans: one for external drive/race scenes, one with a modified interior for entering/exiting the DeLorean, and one stripped down model for interior scenes only.
The DeLorean time machine is a licensed, registered vehicle in the state of California. While the vanity license plate used in the film says "OUTATIME", the DeLorean's actual license plate reads 3CZV657.
Music
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- Performed by Huey Lewis and the News
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Cultural impact
The series was very popular in the 1980s, even making fans out of celebrities like ZZ Top (who appeared in the third film) and President Ronald Reagan, who referred to the movie in his 1986 State of the Union address when he said, "Never has there been a more exciting time to be alive, a time of rousing wonder and heroic achievement. As they said in the film Back to the Future, 'Where we're going, we don't need roads.'"[6] He also considered accepting a role in the third film as the 1885 mayor of Hill Valley but eventually declined.
Critical reception
Reviews were generally positive. Roger Ebert complimented the direction, writing that Zemickis:
shows not only a fine comic touch but also some of the lighthearted humanism of a Frank Capra. The movie, in fact, resembles Capra's It's a Wonderful Life more than other, conventional time-travel movies. It's about a character who begins with one view of his life and reality, and is allowed, through magical intervention, to discover another.[7]
Even the sequences where Marty's mum has the "hots for him" is regarded as "up-beat... without ever becoming uncomfortable."[8] The BBC applaud the intricities of the "outstandingly executed" script, remarking that "nobody says anything that doesn't become important to the plot later."[9]
This movie ranked number 28 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 Best High School Movies.[10]
Series continuity
Sequels were not initially planned. Zemeckis later stated that the original ending to the first film would have been rewritten so that Marty's girlfriend would not have been included. In addition, the "To Be Continued..." caption was not added until the film was released to video[9] by which time plans for a sequel (eventually two sequels) had been announced (the filmmakers chose to omit the caption from the 2002 DVD release).
Ultimately, the sequels did not fare as well at the box office. While the first installment grossed $210 million (making it the biggest-earning movie of 1985), Parts II (fall of 1989) and III (summer of 1990) made roughly $118 million and $88 million, respectively (still making the movies hits, but not major hits).
See also
- Back to the Future timeline
- Back to the Future trilogy
- Grandfather paradox
- 1980s in film
- 1950s Nostalgia Films
References
- ^ Haflidason, Almar. Back to the Future DVD (1985). Retrieved on 2006-11-29.
- ^ a b c Robert Zemickis and Bob Gale, Q&A, Back to the Future [DVD], recorded at the University of Southern California
- ^ Back to the Future: FIRST DRAFT (24 February 1981). Retrieved on 2006-11-26.
- ^ Frequently Asked Questions. bttf.com. Retrieved on 2006-11-29.
- ^ Universal Studios Hollywood History File: November 6 1990. thestudiotour.com. www.theatrecrafts.com/. Retrieved on 2006-12-01.
- ^ PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN'S ADDRESS BEFORE A JOINT SESSION OF CONGRESS ON THE STATE OF THE UNION (February 4, 1986). Retrieved on 2006-11-26.
- ^ Ebert, Roger (July 3, 1985). Back to the Future. Retrieved on 2006-11-29.
- ^ Panton, Gary (1st May 2003). Back To The Future (1985). Movie Gazette. Retrieved on 2006-11-29.
- ^ a b Back to the Future (1985). bbc.co.uk. Retrieved on 2006-11-29.
- ^ The 50 Best High School Movies. Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved on 2006-11-26.
External links
These links were last verified 5 September 2006.
- Official Universal Pictures site
- BTTF.com
- Back To The Future Trilogy Argentina
- BTTF Frequently Asked Questions written by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis
- Back to the Future at the Internet Movie Database
- Movie Locations Guide.com - Maps and Directions to Back to the Future Filming Locations
- Temporal Anomalies in Time Travel Movies - Back To The Future
| Back to the Future trilogy |
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| Back to the Future | Back to the Future Part II | Back to the Future Part III |
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Categories
Best Science Fiction Film Saturn | 1985 films | Adventure films | American films | Back to the Future | Films directed by Robert Zemeckis | Universal Pictures films | Hugo Award winning works | English-language films | Time travel films