..a kind of hyped-up H.G. Wells, with a lot of "The Time Machine" dumbed down but the results turning out surprisingly well.
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" ...when time travelers go back to the past, they enter alternative histories which differ from recorded history. Thus they can act freely, without the constraint of consistency with the previous history. Steven Spielberg had fun with this notion in the 'Back to the Future' films.
One might hope therefore that as we advance in science and technology, we would eventually manage to build a time machine. But if so, why hasn't anyone come back from the future and told us how to do it?" --Stephen Hawking, "A Brief History of Time"
Yeah, but what does Hawking know? He's only a scientist, not a filmmaker. Besides, while Hawking ridiculed the idea of time travel for years, he's only just recently made some hedges on his claim and conceded that maybe, just maybe, time travel is possible.
Possible or not is beside the point, of course, when you're talking about fantasy, and the "Back to the Future" trilogy of 1985-1990 is purest fantasy of the most delightful kind. Director Robert Zemeckis, executive producer Steven Spielberg, screenwriter Bob Gale, and stars Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd combine to produce over five-and-a-half hours of mostly inspired and only a little tired nonsense.
The "Back to the Future" films were enormously popular among young people in the late eighties and early nineties, and they have retained much of their support ever since. They represent a kind of hyped up H.G. Wells, with a lot of "The Time Machine" dumbed down but the results turning out surprisingly well. As with so many of these multi-sequel affairs, the first movie in the series is the most innovative and entertaining, with the others tending to be more than a bit imitative. The Wife-O-Meter positively hated the second movie and refused even to watch it again, but, then, everyone will have a favorite among the trio, hers being the third. The advantage of having all three films in a single boxed set for a reasonably low price is that everyone gets a choice.
The first film, "Back to the Future," made in 1985, follows the adventures of a Hill Valley teenager, Marty McFly (Fox), and his friend, Dr. Emmett Brown (Lloyd), a crackpot inventor, as they zigzag through time in the doc's latest creation, a time machine. Seems the doc got some plutonium for his contraption, a converted DeLorean automobile, from Libyan terrorists who attempt to kill him for ripping them off (not so funny, anymore). Marty is almost killed, too, but hops in the car to make his escape and inadvertently winds up thirty years earlier, in 1955. There he meets his own parents before he was conceived and meets his family's arch nemesis, the muscle-headed Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson). Complications arise as Marty tries to get his parents together so that, in fact, he can be born.
The next two films, Parts Two and Three, were made concurrently in 1989 and released in 1989 and 1990. They form a complete story unto themselves, a tale that is clearly indicated "To be continued" at the end of Part Two. In Part Two Marty and the doc head off thirty years into the future, run into some problems with a sports almanac that gets stolen by the wrong person (Tannen, naturally) and taken into the past, causing all kinds of problems and resulting in an alternative 1985; the heroes have to go back to 1955 to reverse the damage. In Part Three the doc is transported and left a hundred years in the past, where he is quite content, but Marty goes after him, anyway, when he learns the doc is in danger of being gunned down by a no-account varmint, Mad Dog Tannen.
Most of the same leading actors appear in all three films and play various ages and various relatives of themselves. In addition to those I've mentioned, there are Lea Thompson and Crispin Glover as Marty's mom and dad; Claudia Wells as Marty's girlfriend, Jennifer; and James Tolkan as Marty's unyielding vice principal, Mr. Strickland. Also, watch for performances by a young Billy Zane as a Tannen henchman, Match, in Parts One and Two; a very young Elijah Wood as a video game player in Part Two; Mary Steenburgen as doc's love interest in Part Three; and old-time cowpoke actors Dub Taylor, Harry Carey, Jr., and Pat Buttram as poker pals in the finale.
As I mentioned, I think the first movie works quite well. The gags are inventive and clever, the relationships are warm and friendly, and the adversarial conflicts are largely comical. The comedy is sometimes subtle but usually fast paced, occasionally screwball and verging on slapstick. There are times when you wish the characters would behave a little more rationally, but overall their behavior generates a fair number of humorous payoffs.
After the initial entry, I have to agree with my wife that Part Two is something of a letdown. Its tone is darker than its predecessor's, its temper crueler, its characters less agreeable, and its gags repetitious. The future envisioned in 2015 is gaudier, sillier, and more excessive than is probably necessary to make its point and the alternative 1985 is far nastier than the comedy deserves. Fortunately, Part Three lightens the mood considerably and brings us back to the fun and excitement of the original, especially in the film's playful spoofs of cowboy heroes like Clint Eastwood and of clichéd Western movies in general.
Over the years the three films have generated a lot of metaphysical questions about time travel, the only one that ever intrigued me being the matter of visiting one's own self in the past or future. If a person did meet himself, say, in the past, could the person also interact with himself, shake his hand and talk to him? If so, which self would be the "real" self? Would the two be like clones, and if so, which would be the "original"? Worse, taken to its logical illogical conclusion, could the two copies of oneself both get into the time machine and go back ten minutes to meet yet a third copy of themselves, and two minutes before that a fourth and then a fifth copy in each prior minute? Do duplicate copies of ourselves exist in every split second we've ever lived, infinite numbers of ourselves in infinite numbers of worlds?
At any rate, a more literal question is one maybe a reader can answer for me: Where are these stories set? At first, I thought of Hill Valley as a small Midwestern town. In Part II, however, Biff's convertible clearly sports a California license plate (dated 1951). Then, in Part III the "Western" Hill Valley appears to be located in the middle of Utah's Monument Valley! OK, maybe we need to remember it's a fantasy, after all.
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