Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Back to the Future "Huh?" Moments

I bought the complete Back to the Future trilogy on DVD for my husband's birthday. We've had a blast watching them the last couple of nights.

I LOVE these movies. They are fabulous fun, and of course totally nostalgic for me :). But watching them this time, I couldn't help picking up stuff I've never noticed before. Stuff that made me think, "Did the writers check facts at all?" and "Why did they choose that?"

The time machine / DeLorean left trails of fire...in the part of the road *past* the point at which it disappeared, but not where the tires actually touched the pavement.

In the scene at the end of the first movie, when Doc is at the top of the clock tower, he tells Marty they only have four minutes left. Marty takes two minutes to get in the car, drive it to the starting point, turn around, stall the car, and struggle to get the car started again. Then it takes him two minutes to drive the *same distance* at top speed, barely making it to the wire in time.

After that, Doc uses the street in front of Marty's house to take off in the DeLorean, hitting 88 miles/hour with no problem within the length of the street. But after Doc comes back moments later to get Marty, Marty points out that the street isn't long enough, and they have to fly the now-converted DeLorean.

In Part 2, they go into the future:

TVs are now wall-size, but the resolution is still crappy. Same for printers. The whole house is computerized, with pizza re-hydrators, yet the printer is this dot-matrix dinosaur.

There are no cell phones--but there are hover-boards and flying cars.

Books have dust-resistant paper. This cracks me up. They didn't even conceive of the idea of electronic books! I'm not dissin' 'em. I just think it is funny how our thoughts of what would be don't line up with where technology actually leads.

And finally, two things that just popped out at me and made me go, "Hey, cool! I didn't remember that!"

George McFly ends up a sci-fi author and gets a box filled with copies of his first book :). I wanted to high-five him!

The guy that played Needles is FLEA from Red Hot Chili Peppers.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the cool, weird, and messed up stuff in Back to the Future. Just a few things that popped out at me this time around. And there will be many more times around watching these movies.

So...what's the most memorable odd, cool, or "what were they thinking?" thing you've noticed in a movie?

4 comments:

Victor Travison said...

You're right, Kat, the technology is more highly imaginative than practical. A future theater also advertised Jaws 19, complete with holographed shark, but where are the videotapes and DVDs?

I wrote a blog post about some of the time-travel problems (http://victortravison.webs.com/apps/blog/show/1468930-disappearing-ink-). I found in the trilogy. My usual philosophy with things like this is: It's okay to enjoy the shows, just don't mistake it for reality. Too many think sci-fi ideas are our future.

~ VT

Kat Heckenbach said...

I read your post, Victor. You definitely caught some serious inconsistencies. Of course, as you state in your blog and I do in mine, the movies are mainly fun. Definitely not to be taken as serious peeks into the future.

The holographic shark had me cracking up, too. Funny that they "predicted" Jaws would continue on. So glad it didn't!

Kessie said...

Did you ever watch the McGee and Me series by Focus on the Family? You know the bully kid in that series? He's the little kid in the first BTTF who Marty takes his scooter thing and makes it into a skateboard to escape Biff.

Also, the guy who played Biff is a Christian with his own comedy act. In fact, here's his song to answer all the questions he constantly gets about Back to the Future:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwY5o2fsG7Y

I just love those movies. I just can't watch them with my munchkins because I don't want them picking up on the language. :-p

Kat Heckenbach said...

Haven't seen the McGee and Me series. Will have to check it out.

That video of the Biff question song is hilarious! Thanks for sharing!