Back To The Future [1985]

As a serious movie buff, I’ve watched plenty of them. And if there’s one that come close to the perfect movie in my mind, it would probably be the 1985 teenage scifi comedy, Back to the Future.

I watched it in the cinema as a kid, and a couple of time on video and reruns on TV2, and just last night thanks to axxo. After 25 years, its still funny, exciting, and the dialogue still fresh.

For those who don’t know about this 80’s classic, Michael J. Fox plays Marty McFly, 17 year old teenager who goes back 30 years in a time machine Doc Brown builds out of a Delorean. Back in 1955, he bumps into his dad, and accidentally prevents his parents from meeting, thereby jeopardizing his future existence. He then seeks out the younger version of his good friend Doc Brown. After some convincing the eccentric doc, they set out to send Marty back to the present (1985) by harnessing the power from lightning striking the town clocktower. In the meantime, Marty’s mother had become infatuated with him, fueling a hilarious Oedipal-complex situation.

Marty and the doc succeed, and when he returns to the future, he realizes a lot of things have changed in his family due tohis intervention of the past 30 years before.

Of course looking back now its easy to spot all the plot holes (we’re talking about time travel here), but the whole premise is deliciously appealing to me – if we could go back in time to see how our parents lives were, and how things would be different had some small little change took place. Or, in a more extreme premise, what would I tell myself 20 years ago that I know now that would change my life?