I have to say, I love the movie Back to the Future, It’s not the most thought-provoking, mind-bending TT story, but it’s great entertainment. Michael J. Fox is wonderful in the movie, as is Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson and even Crispin Glover in his twisted, eerie way. The guy who played Biff Tannen in all three movies was in an episode of House recently and though it took me a few minutes to place him (he’s 20 years older, after all), it was great to see him. He did such a great job with that character.
There’s not much technical zowie in any of the three movies, though except for the bit in the first movie with the fading photographs, and Marty having what looked like either a stroke or the effects of an inflamed gall bladder, when it looked like his parents wouldn’t get together at the "Enchantment Under the Sea" dance, the basic rules of single universe / cause and effect timelines were pretty well maintained. It all makes sense to our human brains, if we try hard enough to stretch them and understand how the universe may work.
Of course, our puny human brains and even smaller minds may not be able to grasp the reality of the space/time continuum and how it deals with cause and effect and multiple versions of the same timeline. That’s something we have to work out, if we can.
The first Back to the Future movie came on cable this past weekend, and I called my daughter in to watch it. "This is great!" I explained to her. "Why doesn’t he want to kiss her?" she asked, when Marty and his future mother were in the car outside the dance.
"She’s going to be his mother," my wife answered, which didn’t really help.
I jumped in, "see, he’s gone back in time to see his parents before they were married." She looked puzzled, but then inspiration came.
"It’s like Meet the Robinsons!" I said.
"Oh!" Now, armed with the proper reference (one of her favorite movies – she especially likes strong karate-chopping Mother in that particular animated movie), she got it.
Enough said.
Thanks for writing this.