Back to the Future

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This article is about the first film in the Back to the Future trilogy. For information on the series as a whole, see Back to the Future trilogy.
Back to the Future

Back to the Future film poster
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Produced by Bob Gale
Steven Spielberg
Neil Canton
Kathleen Kennedy
Frank Marshall
Johnny Colla (uncredited)
Written by Robert Zemeckis
Bob Gale
Starring Michael J. Fox
Christopher Lloyd
Lea Thompson
Crispin Glover
Thomas F. Wilson
Music by Alan Silvestri
Cinematography Dean Cundey
Editing by Harry Keramidas
Arthur Schmidt
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date(s) July 3, 1985
Running time 116 min.
Country Flag of the United States United States
Language English
Budget US$ 19,000,000
Followed by Back to the Future Part II
Official website
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Back to the Future is a 1985 science fiction–comedy film directed by Robert Zemeckis and produced by Steven Spielberg. Zemeckis wrote the story, along with Bob Gale. It stars Michael J. Fox as teenager Marty McFly and Christopher Lloyd as mad scientist Doctor Emmett L. Brown. Accidentally travelling thirty years back in time in a De Lorean time machine, Marty inadvertently interferes with his parents' courtship and is forced to try to make them fall in love, or he will never be born.

The film opened on July 3, 1985, and grossed U.S. $210 million at the U.S. box office, making it the highest grossing film of 1985.[1] The film was followed by two sequels, Back to the Future Part II in 1989 and Back to the Future Part III in 1990, forming a trilogy. On December 17, 2002, Universal Studios Home Entertainment released the film on DVD and VHS as part of Back to the Future: The Complete Trilogy.

Due to the film's success, three spin-off projects were made. CBS TV aired an animated series, Back to the Future: The Animated Series and Harvey Comics released a handful of similarly styled comic books, although their stories were original and not merely duplicates of the films. In 1991, Universal Studios Theme Parks opened a simulator ride based on the series called Back to the Future: The Ride. The ride closed on March 30, 2007 in Orlando, FL, and September 3, 2007 in Hollywood, California. The ride remains open at Universal Studios Japan.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Marty McFly (Fox) is a seventeen-year-old living in Hill Valley, California. On the morning of October 25, 1985, his eccentric friend, scientist Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown (Lloyd), calls him, asking to meet at 1:15 a.m. After school that day, a solicitor approaches Marty and his girlfriend Jennifer (Claudia Wells), asking for donations to preserve the town's clock tower which has not run since it was struck by lightning thirty years before. Upon arriving home, Marty finds the family car wrecked in the driveway. Inside the home, he finds his neurotic father George (Crispin Glover) being bullied by his supervisor Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson), who wrecked the borrowed car. At dinner that night, Marty's mother Lorraine (Lea Thompson) recounts how she and George first met when her father hit George with his car.

"Doc" Brown, (Christopher Lloyd) and Marty McFly, (Michael J. Fox) watch as the time machine vanishes.
"Doc" Brown, (Christopher Lloyd) and Marty McFly, (Michael J. Fox) watch as the time machine vanishes.

That night, Marty meets the Doc as planned in the parking lot of Twin Pines Mall. Doc presents a De Lorean DMC-12 which he has modified into a time machine. As Marty videotapes, Doc then explains that the car travels to a programmed date and time upon reaching eighty-eight miles per hour using plutonium in a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of power it requires. Demonstrating how to program the machine, Doc enters in November 5, 1955 as the target date, explaining that it was the day he conceived the idea of the flux capacitor; the device which "makes time travel possible." Before Doc can depart for his planned trip twenty-five years into the future, a pair of Libyan terrorists, from whom he stole the plutonium, arrive in a Volkswagen van and ruthlessly gun him down. Marty jumps in the De Lorean and is pursued by the Libyans until he hits eighty-eight miles per hour and is instantanously transported to 1955.

The car stalls shortly after his arrival, so Marty hides it and makes his way into town, finding that the town square now reflects the popular culture of the 1950s. He runs into his own father, then a teenager, being tyrannized just as he was in 1985 by Biff, then the school bully. Marty follows George, and as he is about to be hit by Lorraine's father's car, Marty saves his father by taking the hit himself resulting in Lorraine becoming infatuated with Marty instead of George. Marty is disturbed by her sexual advances which contrast her prudish attitude in 1985. He leaves to track down the Doc of thirty years ago. After managing to convince the scientist that he is from the future, Doc learns of the power requirements of the De Lorean from Marty's videotape. He tells Marty that aside from plutonium, which is unobtainable, the only possible source of that much power is a bolt of lightning, which is unpredictable. Marty realizes that the lighting strike at the clock tower will occur the following Saturday, and Doc concocts a way to harness the bolt's power.

However, Doc deduces that Marty has prevented his parents from meeting. Since Marty will not exist unless his parents fall in love, he finds that Marty is in danger of being erased from time. After several failed attempts at playing matchmaker, Marty eventually works out a plan to have George appear to rescue Lorraine from his own advances on the night of a school dance. When Biff shows up unexpectedly and attacks Lorraine, George manages to defend her for real, knocking Biff out with a single punch. Lorraine and George return to the dance together where they kiss for the first time, ensuring Marty's existence. Doc, meanwhile, has used cables to connect the clock tower's antenna to two lamp posts, which he plans to have Marty drive under in the De Lorean, now sporting a lightning rod, at eighty-eight miles per hour the moment the lightning strikes.

The clock tower gets struck by lightning at 10:04 P.M. on November 12, 1955
The clock tower gets struck by lightning at 10:04 P.M. on November 12, 1955

Before Marty can leave, Doc finds a letter in his coat pocket that Marty had written, warning him about his future assassination. Doc rips up the letter without reading it, knowing the dangers of learning about the future. Marty adjusts the time machine to take him back to 1985 ten minutes early, giving him time to prevent the shooting. Upon his arrival, however, the car stalls and Marty arrives at the mall too late to save the Doc. When the coast is clear, Marty runs to Doc's body and finds him alive. Doc unzips his radiation suit to reveal a bulletproof vest, and shows Marty the letter he had written in 1955, taped back together.

The next morning, Marty finds his family has been changed for the better. Most notably, Lorraine is no longer prudish, and George has become self-confident, ordering Biff around. Just as Jennifer and Marty reunite, Doc arrives from the year 2015, appearing frantic about a problem with the couple's future children. Marty and Jennifer climb aboard the De Lorean and, aided by the technology of thirty years hence, the car lifts off into the sky.

[edit] Production

[edit] Script

The inspiration for the film largely stems from Bob Gale, who discovered his father's high school yearbook and wondered whether he would have been friends with his father as a teenager. His father was class president and pretty much the "big guy on campus," while Bob was on the other end of the social barometer—more of a nerd. [2] Gale and Robert Zemeckis originally wrote the script in September 1980 but struggled to find the time to make it. Steven Spielberg read it when Gale first had the idea and asked Zemeckis a number of years later what had happened to it. The year 1955 was chosen because it was the era that teenage culture was born.

Zemeckis pitched the idea to several companies.[3] Disney turned it down because they thought that a story involving a mother falling in love with her son was too risqué, even if in a twist of time travel.[3] All other companies said it was not risqué enough, compared to other teen comedies at the time (such as Porky's, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Revenge of the Nerds).

Sid Sheinberg, the head of Universal Studios, made many changes to the movie. "Professor Brown" was changed to "Doc Brown" and his chimp Shemp to a dog named Einstein. Marty's mother had previously been Meg, then Eileen, but Sheinberg insisted that she be named Lorraine after his wife Lorraine Gary.[3] Sheinberg also did not like the title, insisting that no one would see a movie with "future" in the title[3]. In a memo to Robert Zemeckis, he said that the title should be changed to "Spaceman From Pluto," tying in with the Marty-as-alien jokes in the film.[4] Steven Spielberg replied in a memo thanking him for the wonderful "joke memo" and told him everyone got a kick out of it. Sheinberg, too proud to admit he was serious, let the title stand.[5]

In the original script, Marty's rock 'n roll performance caused a riot at the dance that had to be broken up by police. This, combined with Marty accidentally making the Professor (Doc) aware of the "secret ingredient" that made the time machine work (Coca-Cola) caused history to change. When Marty got back to the 1985, he found that it was now the 1950s conception of the future, with air-cars and other electronic devices, all invented by Doc Brown and running on Coca-Cola. Marty also discovers that rock and roll was never invented (the most popular musical style was the mambo), and he dedicates himself to starting the delayed cultural revolution. Meanwhile, his dad opens a scrapbook containing newspaper clippings from the day after the 1955 dance and sees his son in the picture of the riot. The time machine is not built around a De Lorean DMC-12, and the power source for Marty's trip back to 1985 comes from atomic testing, rather than a lightning strike.[6]

Doc Brown's "man hanging off a clock face"-themed clock reprises the famous scene in Harold Lloyd's Safety Last! (1923). The fact that Christopher Lloyd and Harold Lloyd have the same last name, however, is merely a coincidence.

[edit] Pronunciation of "gigawatt"

In the film's script the word "gigawatt" is spelled and pronounced "jiggawatt" (/dʒɪgæwɑt/). Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis had been to a science seminar and the speaker had pronounced it in such a way. This is an uncommon although accepted pronunciation of the word "gigawatt," which is usually pronounced with a hard g, and not an error.

[edit] Casting and filming

As Back to the Future's producers scouted locations on a residential street in Pasadena, Michael J. Fox was elsewhere on that street, filming his first starring feature role, Teen Wolf. The producers became interested in having Fox play Marty McFly. However, Fox initially had to turn down the part because another actor in Family Ties (in which he was starring at the time), Meredith Baxter-Birney, was pregnant at the time, and thus the show's producers were looking to Fox's character (Alex Keaton) to "carry the show."[7]

Production of the film began on November 26, 1984, with actor Eric Stoltz portraying Marty McFly, and reportedly shot for more than four weeks, until the return of executive producer Steven Spielberg, who was out of the country at the time.[citation needed] After seeing a rough cut, Spielberg and the writer/directors agreed that Stoltz was a fine actor, but he was unfortunately not right for the part. Stoltz had played it seriously, and they wanted a lighter touch on the character. They returned to the idea of Michael J. Fox, who this time worked out a shooting schedule that would not interfere with his television commitment.[2] Fox spent his days rehearsing and shooting Family Ties, and then drove to the movie's set to film Back to The Future all night. The movie's day shots were filmed on weekends. Fox reportedly averaged only an hour or two of sleep each night during production, which was completed on April 20, 1985 [citation needed], less than three months before the film's release.[5]

Much of the original footage was retained for the film, for shots in which Eric Stoltz was not visible. Bob Gale later explained that some dialogue scenes with other actors were from the original shoot. A few long shots with Stoltz as Marty McFly still exist in the film, according to Zemeckis and Gale, and there was at least one "teaser" movie poster released with Stoltz's name and face visible. One notable scene that was kept in the final film is the one in which Stoltz as Marty drives the De Lorean in the mall parking lot. Since the shots were fairly distant, with the driver's face not particularly visible, the footage was retained.[citation needed]

Michael J. Fox had to learn to ride a skateboard for the film. To find a coordinator for the skateboarding scenes, Bob Gale went to Venice Beach and approached two skateboarders. One turned out to be European skate champ Per Welinder. The second skater became the stunt double for Eric Stoltz, but was later replaced in order to match Michael J. Fox's height.[3]

Christopher Lloyd reportedly based his performance as Doc Brown on a combination of physicist Albert Einstein and conductor Leopold Stokowski.[5] The extreme difference in height between Lloyd (6'1") and Fox (5'4") meant Doc's character was given a distinctive hunched-over look.

To play their roles at the age of 47, Lea Thompson (Lorraine), Crispin Glover (George), and Thomas F. Wilson (Biff) had several hours' worth of make-up and extra layers of skin added to their faces; all three actors were therefore able to play their characters' younger selves as well.[8]

Several key scenes were filmed on the Universal Studios backlot in what is now known as Courthouse Square. The setting of hundreds of other productions, including the current television show Ghost Whisperer, it has suffered major fire damage on two occasions since Back to the Future was filmed.[9] The Courthouse Square backlot at Universal Studios was used for both time periods, with the 1955 scenes filmed first so that the location could be "trashed down" for the 1985 scenes.[3] The scene where Marty McFly discovers that Doc Brown has a time machine was filmed in front of the Puente Hills Mall in Puente Hills, California.

[edit] Music

The film's musical score was composed by Alan Silvestri, who later wrote music for Forrest Gump and numerous other films, many of them directed by Robert Zemeckis. The themes in his Back to the Future Suite have since been heard in Back to the Future Part II and Part III, which were also scored by Silvestri, in Back to the Future: The Ride and as ambient music at the Universal Studios theme parks. The hit, upbeat Back to the Future Soundtrack, featuring two new songs by Huey Lewis and the News, also contributed to the film's popularity. "The Power of Love" became the band's first song to hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for an Academy Award. Huey Lewis portrayed the high school band audition judge that rejects Marty's band, The Pinheads, as they perform "The Power of Love," for being "too loud." Lewis had an additional cameo appearance as a man wearing a fedora who walks past Marty upon his arrival in town in 1955.

The film's soundtrack, which was available on CD, also included songs by Eric Clapton, Lindsey Buckingham, Etta James and others. It used the largest orchestra ever assembled by Universal Pictures.[8] Two 1950s hits Marty encounters when he arrives in 1955 ("Mr. Sandman" by The Four Aces and the Fess Parker recording of "The Ballad of Davy Crockett") were not included on the CD release.

The material ostensibly performed by Marty McFly, and by Marvin Berry and the Starlighters, was recorded by Harry Waters, Jr. as Marvin Berry and Mark Campbell as Marty McFly, with the guitar solo played by Tim May (Campbell and May received a "special thanks" acknowledgment in the film's end credits, with the recording credit going to the fictional characters). Berry's group also plays the song "Night Train," first recorded by Jimmy Forrest in 1951.[10]

[edit] Reaction

The film opened on July 3, 1985 and grossed U.S. $210 million at the U.S. box office, making it the highest grossing American film of 1985.[11] The film was followed by two sequels: Back to the Future Part II in 1989 and Back to the Future Part III in 1990, forming a trilogy. On December 17, 2002, Universal Studios Home Entertainment released the film on DVD and VHS as part of Back to the Future: The Complete Trilogy.

[edit] Critics

Reviews were generally positive. Roger Ebert complimented the direction, writing that Zemeckis "shows not only a fine comic touch but also some of the lighthearted humanism of a Frank Capra." Even the sequences where Marty's mom has the "hots for him" are regarded as "up-beat... without ever becoming uncomfortable."[12] The BBC applauded the intricacies of the "outstandingly executed" script, remarking that "nobody says anything that doesn't become important to the plot later."[13]

This movie ranked number 28 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 Best High School Movies.[14] As of December 2006, Back to the Future had received a very respectable 95% overall rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 98% rating from the users.[15] In 2006, Back to the Future was voted the 20th greatest film ever made by readers of the Empire.[16]

[edit] Cultural impact

The series was very popular in the 1980s, even making fans out of celebrities like Huey Lewis and the News (Lewis appeared in the first film) and ZZ Top (who appeared in the third film) and President Ronald Reagan, who referred to the movie in his 1986 State of the Union address when he said, "Never has there been a more exciting time to be alive, a time of rousing wonder and heroic achievement. As they said in the film Back to the Future, 'Where we're going, we don't need roads.'"[17] In fact, when he first saw the joke about him being president, i.e. "Ronald Reagan? The actor? Ha! Then who's Vice President, Jerry Lewis?", he made the projectionist of the theatre stop the reel, roll it back, and run it again.[2] He also considered accepting a role in the third film as the 1885 mayor of Hill Valley but eventually declined.


[edit] Series continuity

Sequels were not initially planned. Zemeckis later stated that had sequels been envisioned, the first film would not have ended with Jennifer traveling in the De Lorean with Marty and Doc, which created logistical problems in plotting the other films. In addition, the "To Be Continued..." caption was not originally in the film (the filmmakers chose to omit the caption from the 2002 DVD release to remain true to the original theatrical version), and was added for the home video release.

Ultimately, the sequels did not fare as well at the box office. While the first installment grossed $210 million (making it the biggest-earning movie of 1985), Back to the Future Part II (Fall 1989) and Back to the Future Part III (Summer 1990) made roughly $118 million and $88 million, respectively. Part III received generally more favorable reviews than Part II.

[edit] Home video release history

[edit] See also

Part of the article series on
Back to the Future trilogy
Films
Back to the Future
Back to the Future Part II
Back to the Future Part III
The McFly Family
Marty McFly · George McFly
Lorraine Baines · Jennifer Parker
Seamus & Maggie McFly
The Brown Family
Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown
Clara Clayton · Jules Brown
Verne Brown · Einstein
The Tannen Family
Biff Tannen · Griff Tannen
Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen
Related articles
Other characters · Hill Valley
Animated series · The Ride
Video games · Timeline
De Lorean · Soundtrack
The Power of Love
v • d • e

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Top grossing movies for 1985 in the USA." The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). 9 December 2006.
  2. ^ a b c Gale, Bob. Back to the Future, The Complete Trilogy - "The Making of the Trilogy, Part 1" [DVD]. Universal Home Video.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Zemeckis, Robert Gale, Bob. (2002). Back to the Future: The Complete Trilogy DVD commentary for part 1 [DVD]. Universal Pictures.
  4. ^ Haflidason, Almar. Back to the Future DVD (1985). Retrieved on 2006-11-29.
  5. ^ a b c Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, Q&A, Back to the Future [DVD], recorded at the University of Southern California
  6. ^ Back to the Future: FIRST DRAFT (24 February 1981). Retrieved on 2006-11-26.
  7. ^ Frequently Asked Questions. bttf.com. Retrieved on 2006-11-29.
  8. ^ a b Zemeckis, Robert Gale, Bob. (1985). The making of Back to the Future [VHS]. Universal Pictures.
  9. ^ Universal Studios Hollywood History File: November 6 1990. thestudiotour.com. www.theatrecrafts.com/. Retrieved on 2006-12-01.
  10. ^ Dahl, Bill. Song Review: Night Train - Jimmy Forrest. AllMusicGuide. All Media Guide, LLC.. Retrieved on 2006-12-17.
  11. ^ "Top grossing movies for 1985 in the USA." The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). 9 December 2006.
  12. ^ Panton, Gary (1 May 2003). Back To The Future (1985). Movie Gazette. Retrieved on 2006-11-29.
  13. ^ Back to the Future (1985). bbc.co.uk. Retrieved on 2006-11-29.
  14. ^ The 50 Best High School Movies. Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved on 2006-11-26.
  15. ^ "Back to the Future." Rotten Tomatoes. 9 December 2006.
  16. ^ "201 Greatest Movie of all Time", Empire, March 2006 (Issue 201), pp. 97. 
  17. ^ PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN'S ADDRESS BEFORE A JOINT SESSION OF CONGRESS ON THE STATE OF THE UNION (February 4, 1986). Retrieved on 2006-11-26.

[edit] External links

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