garish array of ticking clocks greets the viewer as the credits roll. At first, these symbolical devices seem merely the whimsical collection of some fussy old lady, perhaps. But as the camera pans around the home in which they are assembled, it is revealed to be the untidy and dangerous workshop of some possibly demented inventor. Robotic gadgets misperform their chores and a sense of something wrong is immediately engendered. Enter our hero, 17-year-old Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox), seen initially only from the knees down. When presented to the camera entirely, Marty is revealed as an amiable, intelligent-looking fellow. He calls aloud for the home's owner, Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), to no avail. After a mishap with a giant amplifier, the phone rings. Doc Brown is on the line, arranging to meet Marty after 1 a.m. at a local mall. Marty agrees.
We are next given a succinct introduction to Marty's school life and home life, meeting his pleasant, sexy girlfriend, Jennifer (Claudia Wells); as well as his dweeby father, George (Crispin Glover); alcoholic mother, Lorraine (Lea Thompson); and loser siblings. Marty seems a misplaced ugly duckling in this environment, his true spiritual mentor Doc Brown.
In the mall parking lot that night, Marty at first encounters only a large anonymous truck. It opens automatically to disgorge a supercharged DeLorean automobile and Doc Brown himself. The doctor explains that he has invented a time-travel device embedded in the car and powered by stolen plutonium, ripped off from Libyan terrorists. Doc intends to visit a time 30 years into the future, but he first sets the controls for 30 years into the past, as a tribute to the moment he conceived of time travel. Having just refueled the car for a single trip, Marty and Doc are interrupted by the arrival of the angry Libyans, who promptly gun down Doc and threaten Marty. Marty's only escape from death is into the car and into the past.
Marty's arrival in the Hill Valley of 1955 precipitates many crises. He interrupts the destined meeting of his mother and father, thus dooming himself to eventual nonexistence. Teaming up with the younger Doc, Marty must re-engineer his parents' love affair and seek a means to return to his native time, all the while contending with the foreign culture of Eisenhower America, exemplified most threateningly in the figure of Biff (Thomas Wilson), his father's high-school nemesis, familiar to Marty from his similar role in 1985.
What's past (and Future) is prologue
Impeccably contrived, witty, visually arresting, perfectly cast, thought-provoking, respectful of its cinematic and literary predecessors and intermittently poignant, Zemeckis' first big hit has classic written all over it. Seventeen years down the line—halfway to the future Doc Brown set out for, where "Mr. Fusion" devices are apparently as common as coffeemakers—this SF film plays as fresh and exciting as it did in the midst of the Reagan era.
Admittedly, the film reads a little differently now than it did on its debut. Not only does its 1955 milieu now seem even stranger and more distant and more improbable than ever, but the 1985 "present" of the film is itself a retro setting full of nostalgia-evoking properties. The music of Huey Lewis and the News, the vaguely Flashdance stylings of Marty's girlfriend Jennifer, the whole DeLorean riff—these minor oddments ground the film firmly in its own decade. And yet other elements—the terrorists, Marty's desire for a big SUV-type vehicle, skateboarding—are surprisingly contemporary, illustrating if only inadvertently the continuity and longevity of American pop culture.
But putting aside such cosmetic issues, the underlying core of this film is eternal. The interplay between past and present, the ripple-like impact one's actions can have both on one's own life and on those of others, the desire to remake one's own destiny—all these issues have deep philosophical roots and constant appeal. And Zemeckis and posse provide beautifully tangible instances that embody all of these issues in easily apprehensible forms. There are no info-dumps here, no boring lectures, just shorthand bursts of data that the viewer must quickly capture, internalize and react to. No one's intelligence is insulted. It is taken for granted that we can understand time paradoxes and also that we will get all the sight gags, such as Marty, used to twist-off tops, struggling to open an old-fashioned soda bottle. Historical japes, such as Chuck Berry learning his style from a white boy from the future, also come fast and furious.
Twenty-four years old at the time, Fox makes a believable teenager. His earnest insouciance is charming, not smarmy, and his mobile face presents a wide gamut of emotions endearingly. But Crispin Glover in a dual role as young and old George McFly almost steals the show, with his unduplicatable snorting laugh and his gawky movements. That George is an SF fan and eventually a successful SF author just enlarges the joke. Lloyd's lovable nutty professor makes one think of pure Carl Barks, in the person of Gyro Gearloose, or of Henry Kuttner's Galloway Gallegher. And Lea Thompson makes a superb '50s teenager, a kind of "Princess" from Father Knows Best who's fascinated by the bad part of town.
