Back to the Future

Back to the Future +1

As I saw pointed out last night, Back to the Future got it right (from a certain point of view). Since the '94 strike caused the World Series not to be played Back to the Future correctly predicted which edition of the World Series the Cubs would win, they just got the year that edition would be played wrong.

I'm not a big sports fan, but I was watching the game last night. When the cubs won my first thought was "Hey! Bttf was only off by one year!"

Bob Gale finally revealed who dreamed up nuking the fridge.

"The idea that the DeLorean was nuclear powered, literally they needed to harness nuclear energy to send the time machine back to the future. Bob [Zemeckis] and I had seen The Atomic Café documentary, a movie called The Atomic Kid which we pay homage to on the marquee of the town theater in 1955 – one of the most perverse movies ever made… We were obsessed with the idea of ‘Hey wouldn’t it be cool if we could recreate one of these towns and blow it up?’ And you know, hey, okay yeah you’re a writer, you can write anything in the script that you want. So we wrote this elaborate sequence in and in the original version, the time machine was built into a refrigerator which was a time chamber. And that was where Marty was gonna be when the nuclear blast went off."

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"When it came time to cut the budget – and this was before we cast Eric Stoltz – the studio said, ‘Hey you guys can make the movie, but cut $1 million out.’ Bob and I looked long and hard at the script and said, ‘What do we cut? How do we save $1 million?’ And the most expensive thing was going on location and building this town. And we said well, if we can cut that out – if we can cut going on location and building a town and do something on a location that we already have, namely the backlot, that would save us $1 million easy. Over a weekend we spent time walking around on the backlot going back and forth to our offices, and we came up with the whole clock tower sequence. Flash forward to Indiana Jones 4 and you’ll see that Steven Spielberg was inspired by the original ending to Back to the Future."

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The tv show Mr. Robot wrapped in December 2019, and the alternate reality last 3 episodes are strongly inspired by BTTF II. (The show ran out of Fight Club plot elements to cannabalize and had to turn elsewhere.)

Finn said:

Dilemma #3

Oh, and if Marty's mom has known Marty in '55, she doesn't wonder at all how her son is an exact copy of the love of her youth? Explain that!

[Edited by Finn on 05-15-2003 at 04:15 am]

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Marty was only in 1955 and did not spend all that time with his mum. Probably not long enough to develop real feelings. It is conceivable that she has forgotten 30 years later.. especially as she watched Marty grow up.. he did not just appear to her in 1985.

Finn said:

My biggest pet peeve with the trilogy is that when in Part II, old Biff takes the book to his younger self, he returns to the same future reality he left from, not the one he altered (unless, of course, this future was the one Marty and Doc managed to re-alter but oh well).

Another minor one is Doc not remembering his past self dressing up Marty as a "cowboy" in Part III, but that one can be allowed to slip the mind as human mind does work in mysterious ways...

Anyway, the above one has still bothered me, and this far I've yet to find an explanation that would fully explain it.


This doesn't, however, explain how exactly are you able to travel into past...

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With regards to Doc not remembering dressing Marty as a cowboy in 1955 or, indeed, Marty not remembering his 'new' alternate family at the end of BTTF1 I always assumed that once a time traveller in those films enters a time that was changed by a time travellers actions in the past such as BTTF1's alternate 1985 they only remember the original timelines they inhabited because they were outside of the time period when it was altered.

Indeed, I think its pretty self explanatory given that Lorraine, George, 1955 Doc etc 'forget' the original timelines in the trilogy before time travel occurred because they had not travelled in time but remained in their times as it was altered.

The reason 1885 Doc didn't remember dressing Marty as a cowboy in 1955 is because, for him, that event never happened because he was outside of 1985 when Marty was dressed like that.

Interesting to think about because it means a time travellers conscious memory is immune to altered pasts and futures within the trilogy.