Tomorrow is yesterday with ‘Back to the Future’

With media in a state of perpetual flux and the inherently fleeting nature of pop culture in general, it’s tough to find films (much less film series) that are able to transcend the decade of their creation. With entertainment properties now being cranked out faster than you can say “franchise,” most of today’s so-called epics, events, and blockbusters have neither the staying power nor the substance to linger in the memory past their first week of release.

“Back to the Future” has no such problem. Telling the story of guitar-playing teenager Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox, in the role that made him a movie star), his mad scientist friend Doctor "Doc" Emmett Brown (funnyman Christopher Lloyd), and their adventures in a time-travelling DeLorean sports car, the film (which spawned two sequels) was a classic almost from the get-go.

The first film featured Marty accidentally traveling to 1955, where he juggled facilitating his parents’ love story (at the risk of never having been born), dodging fistfights with local bully Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson, the coach from “Freaks and Geeks”), and teaming up with the Doc of that era to try and find a way home. Striking a cord with critics and audiences of all ages with its memorable, well-realized characters, sharp writing, and all-around fun vibe, the film was an instant classic.

“Part II” took Marty, Doc and Marty’s girlfriend Jennifer to the (then-) future world of 2015 as seen through an astonishingly prescient 1980s lens, and dealt with the consequences of meddling with history for personal gain.

Worth a viewing if only for the tongue-in-cheek future sequences that gave us the best hoverboards ever seen on film, “Part II” mixed high concept science fiction with state-of-the-art filmmaking techniques in order to deliver an experience that paid tribute to what had come before (sometimes literally) while pushing the narrative forward to create a bigger world.

For “Part III’, director Robert Zemeckis (who would later go on to make “Forrest Gump”) and writer Bob Gale set the action primarily in 1885, showing how the town of Hill Valley, the setting for the series, got its start, while giving Doc a mini arc of his own: a love interest in the form of Clara, a local schoolteacher. With Marty taking on the Doc’s traditional role of being the (somewhat) sensible one, and Doc letting his emotions get the better of him, our heroes struggle in their quest to reach the destination implied by the series’ title.

At this point, “Back to the Future” has become so iconic that pretty much everyone involved will forever be associated with the roles they played. A prime example is series lead Michael J. Fox. While he may have made his name on 80s sitcom “Family Ties”, it was “Back to the Future” that made him a superstar. Playing the part with the right mix of enthusiasm, bewilderment, and self-confidence, McFly was the perfect character to introduce the cinema-going world to Fox’s effortless charm.

As Doc Brown, Christopher Lloyd is the definitive wild-eyed, big-haired inventor, straddling the line between mentor and co-conspirator. Lloyd would go on to reprise the character in name or spirit across every conceivable medium, with the most recent being a cameo (complete with DeLorean) in Seth MacFarlane’s “A Million Ways to Die in the West.”

Naturally, with three decades under its belt, the series has spawned all the ancillary merchandise and spinoff media that we associate with modern blockbusters, including, in no particular order, a theme park ride (sadly replaced by “The Simpsons Ride” in North America, you can still ride the DeLorean in Universal Studios Osaka), an animated series, books, and toys (with DeLoreans to fit any size of shelf).

With the 30th anniversary at hand, many of the companies featured in the films have jumped on the bandwagon, putting out “future” versions of their products, such as Pepsi Perfect and the self-lacing Nikes Fox wore in “Part II”. A video game featuring most of the original cast is being re-released on current-gen consoles, along with a slew of new toys, comics, homages, parodies (I’m looking at you, “Rick and Morty”!). Even companies that didn’t play a role in the series, such as Toyota, Mercedes, and Ford, have new ads that pay tribute to “Back to the Future”, with Lloyd and Fox actually appearing in one of the ads. Lloyd even stars in a newly-produced Doc Brown short film to commemorate the anniversary!

Thinking of the trilogy as a whole, it is almost impossible to conceive that it was never designed to be a series. While the final scene of the first film does do a handy job of setting up “Part II”, the filmmakers have stated in multiple interviews that they never would have put Jennifer in the car if they’d known they were ever going to make a second movie. Considering what she actually ends up doing in the sequels, their lack of sequel-seeking hubris actually isn’t all that hard to believe – but I digress.

As Doc Brown and Marty, Christopher Lloyd and Michael J Fox made the perfect pair of mismatched time travelers in 'Back to the Future'.

In telling an introductory story with a clear beginning, middle, and end, Zemeckis and Gale were able to attract audiences to subsequent entries through the characters and situations they had fallen in love with, not an obligation to understand the movie they had just seen. With modern studios now going out of their way to create franchises based on the flimsiest of premises, this dedication to character-building over world-building is old-fashioned to the point that it now seems refreshing.

Of course, based on that first film’s unexpected success, “Back to the Future Part II” and “Part III” became such a priority for Universal Studios that they actually ordered them to be shot simultaneously and released only a few months apart. Fortunately, Zemeckis, Gale, and executive producer Steven Spielberg wielded enough clout by then to guarantee that proper time and effort be taken to ensure the quality of their follow-ups. The result: sequels of such imaginatively-designed continuity and countless plant and payoff gags that continue to yield new details with every viewing.

Today, science is still trying to catch up to the wonders of the 2015 that “Back to the Future” promised us (Lexus’ hoverboard experiments come to mind). In the meantime, the films as they exist do a fine job of taking us there (and back). Whether taken as a comedy, a love story, or a nostalgia trip, “Back to the Future” stands tall in this writer’s opinion as being the closest to a perfect trilogy (not based on previously-existing material or sullied by prequels) as has ever existed. As fans the world over take October 21st to celebrate and pay tribute to these films, there’s never been a better time to see just what all the fuss about.

Now all we need are flying cars. — BM, GMA News