The Great Movie Re-Watch
Director:
Robert Zemeckis
Writers:
Robert Zemeckis
Bob Gale
Starring:
Michael J. Fox
Christopher Lloyd
Lea Thompson
Crispin Glover
Thomas F. Wilson
Blurb:
Marty McFly, a 17-year-old high school student, is accidentally sent thirty years into the past in a time-traveling DeLorean invented by his close friend, the eccentric scientist Doc Brown.
Thoughts:
Would I like Back to the Future as much if there was no nostalgia attached to it? I don’t think so. However, it’s impossible for me to separate the two. Time travel stories always get an extra point from me because I love the idea of time travel and people out of time. That love is in big part because I watched Back to the Future at a young age. See the problem? It’s always been there and so the two are tied together.
Marty is a fucking idiot. At least he’s consistent though. He starts the film cranking a giant speaker up to the highest settings and then having it explode in his face causing what is going to be lifelong hearing damage. From there it’s just downhill. Doc has just shown him time travel is possible in the DeLorean if he reaches 88 mph. So naturally when he’s running from the Libyan terrorists (yikes) he decides to hit 90 mph all the while with a date to the 1950s set and ready to go. Then he acts surprised that he time traveled. Moron.
The list goes on with regards to the times Marty doesn’t take things to their logical conclusion. He can’t possibly make things easy for himself, the entire story is fixing his screw ups. I get it, it’s supposed to be entertaining, but it wears after the first few times he screws up his parent’s potential relationship. After meeting his parents as teenagers all you can really say, though, is at least he’s not a pervert.
George McFly is a peeping tom. He’s a cute kid with a great face, but he climbs trees and watches women undress. Meanwhile, Loraine needs to be taught how to masturbate cause damn girl is thirsty. She not only strips a man of his pants but studies his underwear enough to know what’s written around the band. She’s also so ready to fall in love that if any kind of meet cute approaches her she starts the process. She’s infatuated with Marty until George gives her an obvious line and you can see her switching her interest when Marty then gets into a fight with Biff bringing her attentions back on him.
I get why Loraine would be attracted to Marty when he confronts Biff for basically sexually assaulting her in the middle of the cafeteria. (Seriously, Strickland you have no issues with sexual assault of one of your students but god forbid they get into a fight??? Slacker.) Of course she’s going to be attracted to the person that saves her.
Side note, after all Marty had seen how could he not know his plan at the dance to get his parents back together would fail? She was so clearly into him that there would be no assault if he did anything. There would have been no hesitation on her part. He ends up failing so much that things work out for him. *cough* white men fail up *cough*
Biff is one of the worst villains in film history. He has no redeeming traits and nothing from his past could justify his behavior. The man quite possibly raped Loraine in the parking lot. That’s all it took to push George to live up to his potential, though. He needed to unwittingly stumble upon a rape in progress. *rolling eyes*
When I list it all out like that it’s difficult to see why I like Back to the Future. The time travel is really the only thing. Even Doc is a bit suspicious. Why is he hanging out with a teenage boy, really? The first movie was never my favorite. I’m hoping that my issues with the first movie aren’t in the second one as well. I’ll find out in a couple of years.
And now it’s time for Random Facts from the Wikipedia Article!
-A couple reviewers at the time of release compared Back to the Future to It’s a Wonderful Life. All I’ve got to say to that is what the fuck where these people smoking?
– Eric Stoltz was originally cast as Marty and had filmed several weeks’ worth of material before they replaced him. He still got paid, though.
– Jeff Goldblum was considered for the role of Doc Brown (wtf)
-Chuck Berry did not give them the rights to use “Johnny B. Goode” until the day before filming.
And that’s the end of another edition of Random Facts I Learned from the Wikipedia Article!
Next up, The Goonies.
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