Back to the Future (1985) is a sci-fi fantasy movie that involves the challenge of time traveling. Given the period it was released, it must have taken a lot of effort and creativity for the production team to come up with such a thrilling and yet innocent movie. The film is about a young man called Marty McFly. It begins in the present, 1985. Marty’s parents are nerds. The father is fond of making lame jokes while the overweight mother guzzles vodka in the kitchen. Marty’s family is boring and the only source of consolation for him is Dr. Brown, an inventor with an eccentric character. Dr. Brown believes that he has invented the time machine. The time machine is a modified De Lorean car. The doctor stole the materials used to power the time machine from terrorists.
Marty and Dr. Brown set out to experiment the De Lorean-cum-time machine and find out that it works. The two are attacked by terrorists and in a bid to escape, Marty finds himself transported back in time to thirty years earlier. He is amazed at how much the town has changed. He comes across his parents who are now just teenagers. Without knowing it, Marty disrupts the past by saving his now teenage father from being hit by a car. He now has to find a way of making his mother and father meet and fall in love if he is to exist in the future. The stint in the past is full of surprises and paradoxes making this film extremely interesting (Maslin). He manages to find a way of bringing his parents together and is helped to find the right source of energy to transport him into the future by a younger Dr. Brown.
The film takes an interesting angle to a story considering that most teenagers can hardly believe their parents were once young. They also can hardly think of a time when their parents never knew each other. Some teenagers also wonder how their parents cannot understand them yet the parents were once children. This film provides the premise of a teenager who feels misunderstood and failed by the parents. The boy constantly wonders what the parents must have like when they were young (Maslin). He is given the chance to do that in the film and somehow correct whatever went wrong with the parents. The only source of reprieve for the young man is the entertaining Dr. Brown. When Marty travels back to the future, he finds a changed reality. The father is no longer a subordinate worker and the mother is fitter than she was before the time travel. These changes can be attributed to the changes in the past made by Marty when he time travelled. The argument of this film, therefore, is that it is possible to straighten out the present if only one could go back in time and change things at the right moment.
The film illustrates how teenagers feel about their parents and some of the aspects they wish they could change about them. However, the same cycle tends to repeat itself as the teenagers eventually become adults, settle in careers, and take up the attitudes of their parents. The film is too entertaining for a sci-fi movie. This is made possible by the fast-paced action scenes and the humorous dialogue (Maslin). The paradox of the younger version of Marty’s mother falling in love with him creates a good fodder for a plot twist. The film is very compelling yet very innocent. These attributes make it possible to watch it as a family, as there are no explicit scenes in it. The concept and execution of the film are simple enough to be understood by most viewers. There is no use of technical language despite the movie being about a technology that is expected to work in the future. Given the resources available to the production team in 1985, they did a wonderful job in the creation of the special effects for the film.
Back to the Future (1985) can be understood by everyone because it has utilized a very simple and understandable concept of time travel. There is no use of complicated technology and neither is the audience agonized with the finer details of time travel. The machine is a customized car, making it symbolic and relatable to the viewers. The top songs of the period that the movie was released such as Power of Love and the music theme by Alan Silvestri make the movie memorable. The movie remains a classic because of the charm and dedication exuded by the lead actors. The casting of actors in their present and younger versions is commendable. The inventiveness and excitement demonstrated and aroused by the film makes it get seared into the memories of the audience. The cast show involvement in the characters that they were given. These aspects make the movie interesting every time one watches it.
Work Cited
Maslin, Janet. “In ‘Future,’ Boy Returns to the Past.” Nytimes.com. N.p., 1985. Web. 14 Mar. 2019.