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| Written by Rich Handley |
As teenagers in the 1980s, we had our fill of great comedies. Better Off Dead, One Crazy Summer, Weird Science, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Vacation, Beetlejuice, Ghostbusters, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off—the list was endless. But few movies define a generation like Back to the Future did. When you think about music from that era, Prince, Cyndi Lauper, Duran Duran, Michael Jackson and Culture Club come to mind—they are the ’80s scene. And when it comes to movies, Back to the Future is at the top of the list.
I was in high school when Back to the Future debuted in 1985—and it had me at “Hello, McFly.” That first film blew me away. The concept, the cast, the humor, the recurring gags, the costumes, the stunts, Claudia Wells (hey, I was a male teen)—I was hooked.
This sucker was electrical.
When the sequels were released back to back, I was finishing up college. Sadly, we lost Claudia as Jennifer and, worse, the brilliant Crispin Glover as George. In any other series, such changes might have proved catastrophic. All too often, comedy sequels tend to be cringe-worthy cash-grabs, unworthy of the celluloid on which they’re filmed—but that wasn’t the case with Back to the Future. That same giddy feeling I experienced from the first movie, at age 17, returned for both Parts II and III, and I walked out of each viewing with a big grin on my face, as though I, too, had traveled back in time to my high school days.
It’s rare that comedy sequels manage to re-capture the magic of their progenitors, as anyone who paid to see the disastrous Police Academy, Revenge of the Nerds and Look Who’s Talking follow-ups knows all too painfully well. But the Back to the Future trilogy indisputably pulled it off. Between the multi-colored sci-fi future of 2015, the dark Biff-controlled alternate 1985, the nostalgic revisiting of the first film’s 1955 sequences, and the sentimental Spaghetti Western riff in 1885, the sequels hit it out of the park, time and again.
How can someone not be charmed by Back to the Future?
Doc and Marty were like Kirk and Spock, Butch and Sundance, Han and Chewie, or Apollo and Starbuck (new or old). Their friendship wasn’t just a concept on paper; it was alive, brimming with electricity, due in no small part to the phenomenal performances of Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd. And the trilogy’s secondary cast—Biff, George, Lorraine, Jennifer, Clara, Strickland and even Einstein—were equally beloved characters.
I love time-travel stories when they’re done right, and it really doesn’t get more right than the Back to the Future movies. All three reside on the top tier, alongside Time After Time, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Somewhere in Time, Escape From the Planet of the Apes, Looper, Time Bandits, 12 Monkeys and the first two Terminator flicks, as the best of the genre. No matter what era Doc and Marty visited, every individual they encountered was hilarious and well-acted, every joke spot-on, every observation keen, and every parallel and payoff from one generation to the next brilliant.
I discover something new with each viewing, even after all these years. Watching the Back to the Future trilogy, I wonder what drug Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis were on while writing it—because I want some. I can’t think of a single trilogy as consistent in quality. There’s no Highlander II, Godfather III, Alien IV or Star Trek V in the bunch. How many film series can make THAT claim?
A few years ago, while writing a pair of Back to the Future reference books with Greg Mitchell, I immersed myself in the mythos, repeatedly watching and reading the films, cartoons, comics, scripts, video game and novelizations.
Revisiting the trilogy reminded me how much fun it is to laugh my ass off. Even during the more ridiculous shenanigans of the animated series (and there were some major doozies—scenes in which Einstein drove a car or cooked hot dogs were not its silliest moments), I cracked up regularly. The true gem is Telltale Games’ video game, which is a worthy successor to the trilogy—I think of it as Back to the Future Part IV. Like the films themselves, it’s uproariously funny, the storyline is complex and well-conceived, and the voice actors are perfectly cast. I defy anyone to listen to A.J. Locascio’s astoundingly accurate impression of Michael J. Fox and not fall over laughing.
Back to the Future remains just as brilliant to this day, and the Part II sequences set in October 2015 (now!) were among the most enjoyable. Sure, we don’t yet have hoverboards, automatic dog-walkers, double-neckties, self-drying jackets or flying cars that run on garbage, and no one uses pay phones or fax machines anymore… but the writers did accurately predict wall-mounted large-screen televisions, voice-over-IP services, instant-messaging clients, gesture-based computing, and the integration of computers, phone service and television—as well as dehydrated foods, smart clothing, video glasses, voice-activated homes, biometrics and drone devices. Great Scott! Many have joked about what the film got wrong, but what’s heavy is how much it got right.
Ultimately, what made the films so great were the people who brought it to life. If there’s a finer comedy troupe from the ’80s than Gale, Zemeckis, Fox, Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover and Tom Wilson (not to mention Wells, Elisabeth Shue, Donald Fullilove, Mary Steenburgen and James Tolkan), I surely can’t think of one. These immensely talented individuals have given fans countless hours of enjoyment throughout the past three decades, reminding us what it was like to be a teenager in 1985, with our futures not yet written.
