Back to the Future Day Musings

This film is all timey-wimey. It opens on Saturday, October 26, 1985—only the movie was released in 1989. Then they travel to a version of October 21, 2015, but trigger events there that change the events of the first film (back in 1955) that change the reality of 1985. So, they have to go back to 1955 and revisit the first film to fix things—yet again. And the whole thing ends with a message from the further past—1885—but that is another story…

Where was I in October of 1985? Well, for one thing I had just moved from Costa Rica to Chile, so I hadn’t seen the first “Back to the Future” yet. Movies took a year or more to get to South America in those days. But none of that matters because this film came out in 1989.

Now that was a year for movies! “The Burbs,” “Honey I Shrunk the Kids,” “Three Fugitives,” “Her Alibi,” “The Abyss,” “Glory,” “When Harry Met Sally,” “The Last Crusade,” “Batman,” “Dead Poet’s Society.” I think the only reason we are making a big buzz about this movie is because we have survived to the future it was trying to predict.

What an 80s vision of the future! At least their version of today doesn’t have the flat-bill craze. But all the hats in their world are pretty stupid looking. Who would have thought that the Cubs joke would still work today—not like they are going to win though. They got video chat right, big screens right, the return of 3-D sort of right, but where did the HD quality go? And someone really thought fax technology was the way of the future. Had they not gotten the tiniest hint of the internet?

But remember, all of these predictions are a moot point. Even as we see the events changed in the hover board incident, the whole future is rendered void with the changes Biff sets off, compounded by our heroes’ actions. Not to mention the events and changes of the third part.

But we don’t really return to this movie for the 2015 stuff. The amazing and fun thing here is the retelling of the 1955 stuff, all while the events of the first movie are taking place. It is a genius sequel idea. We get to enjoy the plot of the first film—not retold, but as it happened—all the while enjoying a new story about another challenge happening at the same time but having to avoid interfering with the old events. Whew!

So enjoy this movie that came out 26 years ago about a boy from 30 years ago coming to our day only to travel back 60 years and the 100 more, all in an effort to fix problems that he caused himself by traveling in time.