Back to the Future (1985)

Science fiction is a very broad genre. It can encompass a great many things, from global disasters to alien invasions to robots. But of all the different sub-genres, one of my favorites is time travel. I'm a sucker for a time travel story, as long as it's pulled off right. And in 1985, one of the best time travel stories ever told hit theaters. Produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Robert Zemeckis, Back to the Future combined comedy and sci-fi in what is one of my favorite movies of the '80s.

Welcome to Hill Valley, California. Among the town's citizens is Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox), a high school student with dreams of becoming a rock star. But unfortunately, things haven't really been working out his way. His band is rejected at a big audition for being "just too darn loud," he can't get ahead at school, and worst of all, his family sucks. His siblings are living dead-end lives, his mother (Lea Thompson) is an alcoholic, and his dad (Crispin Glover) is a loser who even in adulthood is still tormented by his high school bully, Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson).

Little does Marty know that he's about to embark on the adventure of his life. He gets a call from his best friend, local scientist Emmett "Doc" Brown (Christopher Lloyd), who asks Marty to meet him at the local mall in the middle of the night. When he arrives, Doc unveils his latest invention: a DeLorean DMC-12 he's converted into a plutonium-powered time machine. Just where do you get plutonium? You steal it from some terrorists who think you're using it to make them a bomb, naturally. How else would you score a cache of plutonium?

His initial experiment — sending his dog one minute into the future — is a success. But immediately thereafter, the terrorists (having finally figured out they've been conned) arrive and shoot Doc dead. Marty jumps into the DeLorean and escapes, accidentally activating the time machine and sending himself back to 1955 in the process. And thanks to having used up all the plutonium during his trip, he's stranded there.

Marty naturally seeks out the only person who can help him, a thirty-years-younger Doc. He's naturally skeptical that Marty is from the future, and is only convinced when Marty tells him the story of how the time machine was conceived, something only Doc himself would have known at the time. Unfortunately, Doc's unable to help due to plutonium's scarcity. The only thing that could conceivably duplicate the necessary electrical charge would be a bolt of lightning. And thanks to his knowledge of the town's history, Marty reveals that they can exploit the lightning that will strike Hill Valley's courthouse the following Saturday. So all they have to do is find a way to funnel the lightning into the DeLorean by the end of the week.

It'll be an interesting week, however. Not long after his arrival in 1955, Marty accidentally prevented his parents from meeting for the first time. Subsequently, his teenage mother has fallen head over heels in love with him instead. This creates a ripple effect that is slowly erasing him and his siblings from existence. To rectify this, Marty must ensure that his parents meet and fall in love before he goes back to the future.

It's weird thinking that Back to the Future is now twenty-five years old. Seriously, 2010 marks Back to the Future's 25th anniversary. The franchise has been such an indelible part of pop culture for so long that I never really considered how long it's been around until the dates were staring me in the face. A lot of it is because of just how timeless the original movie is. It never feels dated or old, and remains as funny and as entertaining as it was two and a half decades ago. The movie hasn't aged one bit, and to tell you the truth, I have no problems calling Back to the Future a true classic.

Piloting this ship is director Robert Zemeckis, who had just made a name for himself with the success of Romancing the Stone a year prior. Zemeckis's direction here is stellar, maintaining a sense of wonder and whimsy throughout the movie's entirety. He keeps the movie's energy going strong, and never once lets it grow tiresome or wear out its welcome. It's evident that Zemeckis knew exactly what he was doing behind the camera, and though he never gets flashy in his efforts, he has crafted an awe-inspiring piece of cinema.

Zemeckis's direction is made even more epic by Alan Silvestri's absolutely amazing music. The score for Back to the Future is without a doubt some of the best movie music I've ever heard. Hell, it's some of the best music I've heard, period. It's fantastic in every sense of the word, and deserves to be as iconic as the movie itself. And while we're talking music, I have to admit that I love the two songs contributed by Huey Lewis & The News. Yeah, I'll agree that "Back In Time" is inferior to "The Power of Love," but both songs are really catchy and a lot of fun to listen to (and to sing along with). But then, I'm a sucker for Huey Lewis & The News, so any movie that has one of their songs on the soundtrack is okay with me.

And I've gotta admit, the script — written by Zemeckis and co-producer Bob Gale — is great too. While stories about modern people finding themselves stranded in the past date as far back as the publication of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court in 1889, the way that Zemeckis and Gale handle it is what makes Back to the Future stand out. The best part of their script, at least in my eyes, is the characters. Back to the Future has some of the most fun, most entertaining characters I've seen in a movie. Zemeckis and Gale, with help from the actors playing them, make us care about the characters. They make you want to see what happens to them next and hope that everything turns out okay. And when the characters are combined with all those memorable scenes and great lines of dialogue, you end up with a screenplay that becomes one heck of a great movie.

The weird thing about Zemeckis and Gale's script is that it all could have been very different. Find some of the early drafts of the script online, and you'll see what I mean. The time machine wasn't even a DeLorean at first. It was initially a customized refrigerator fueled by Coca-Cola. One draft saw Marty return to 1985 and discovering that rock and roll hadn't been invented yet (and it was up to him to do so). The movie even had an ending where instead of lightning hitting the clock tower, Marty was sent home by the detonation of an atomic bomb at the government's nuclear weapons testing site in Nevada. It boggles my mind knowing that such a classic movie could have been so drastically different from what people have come to know and love over the last two and a half decades. I'm just happy that Zemeckis and Gale arrived upon the final script they ended up working with, because I can't imagine Back to the Future being any different.

But the whole thing would have been shot if it hadn't had a group of actors giving it everything they had. Luckily, Back to the Future features actors who were committed to putting forth the best performances possible. In the lead role is Michael J. Fox, who was still involved his prior claim to fame, the TV show Family Ties, at the time. The summer of 1985 saw the release of his first two big movies, this and Teen Wolf, and Back to the Future especially shows that he was bound to be more than just a TV star. Fox is fantastic here, showing a charm and charisma that really breathes life into Marty McFly. He's funny, likable, and ultimately believable in the role. And to think, the movie almost starred Eric Stoltz instead.

Fox's performance is made better by the awesome supporting cast that backs him up. To tell you the truth, he's nearly overshadowed by some of his costars. One in particular is Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown. Doc himself has become as popular as the franchise, and it's all because of Lloyd's madcap performance. Watching Lloyd play Doc as if his brain operates on a completely different level than everybody else's is a lot of fun. He's probably the most entertaining mad scientist ever captured on film, and I honestly couldn't imagine Back to the Future without him.

That's not to say the rest of the cast isn't great too. Lea Thompson is engaging as Marty's mom, playing her with a simultaneous doe-eyed innocence and understated wild streak. I also really liked Crispin Glover as Marty's dad. I usually enjoy Glover's work anyway, but he's all aces in this one. His exasperated dorkiness makes him very amiable and sympathetic. And as one of the greatest cinematic bullies ever, Thomas F. Wilson is nothing short of awesome. Biff Tannen is one of my favorite movie characters ever, largely due to Wilson's performance. He plays Biff as such an irritating jerk that you can't help but cheer when he finally gets what's coming to him.

It's weird to think that Back to the Future is as old as it is. But age has only made it even more fun and entertaining. The movie is a tremendous experience from start to finish, no doubt about it. I'll even go as far as to say that anyone who calls Back to the Future a bad movie is either an idiot or a liar. It's one heck of a movie that only gets better every time I see it. So yeah, I'm giving Back to the Future the full monty with five stars. If you haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favor and do so now.

Final Rating: ****