Back to the Future

They'll be upgrading them with more powerful engines, bigger tires and better brakes, but they're basically making replicas of the original 1981-82 DMC-12. It will have to meet current emissions standards, but that's about it. Under the regs for replicars, a 25+ year-old design doesn't have to meet the criteria for a new model car, like mandatory safety standards. So I think it can kiss the IIHS awards goodbye.

edited 9th Feb '16 5:57:23 PM by pwiegle

I'mma pass on ever being a passenger in one of them, thanks. Good information, though. Cheers.

Re-watched the first movie, and I have these questions:

1. Are Dave and Linda's (Marty's older siblings) respective birth years of 1963 (from the Card Game) and 1966 (novelization of first film) canon?

2. Would Lorraine's lecturing prior to Marty changing things be attributed to the fact that she hopes her children do better than she did because she married George?

Linda's birthdate is probably canon. Remember in the film when Marty showed 50s!Doc the photo, and pointed out her "Class of 1984" sweatshirt? 1984 - 18 = 1966, so yeah.

edited 15th May '16 7:24:03 AM by pwiegle

Well, I recently re-watched the trilogy on Netflix. Now it's time for some BTTF parodies.

• Terminator - How It Should End
• How Back To The Future 2 Should Have Started
• Back To The Future In ACTUAL 2015
• When Marty Realizes Trump is President

Was the bear in Part III who owned the cave Marty hid the Time Machine in actually a live bear?

I don't know, I never assumed that it was an animatronic.

Topical thread bump.

edited 8th Nov '16 11:48:30 PM by AHI-3000

"I said I wish I could go back in time, bet some money on the Cubbies!"

edited 9th Nov '16 1:23:35 AM by KnownUnknown

Funny how the last post is about the moment prompting Marty to get the Almanac, cause yeah this year Universal and Doctor Collector release an official Grays Sports Almanac prop.

Has sports stats, the dust jacket cover, Blast From the Past bag and receipt.

And the quote is even on the box the stuff comes in.

Oh thank God.

When I saw this thread up again, I feared if this franchise too is getting an unwanted sequel/reboot/etc again.

Yeah that's what I thought too lmao

How's the rest of the cast? I know what's up with MJF and Lloyd.

Edited by Ookamikun on Aug 21st 2023 at 9:44:46 PM

But yeah, got my copy of the Almanac last week for the fun of it. I mean I'm no sports fan still and I obviously can't use it to bet on some matches on the past. And yeah, hardly recreational reading material indeed.😉

Anyway, as much as it wouldn't do him any good, does anyone ever imagine Marty taking a child's pony during the early part of III when he's fleeing the Palace Saloon as he did the scooter and hoverscooter? All for nothing of course and makes him look like a butthead.🤣

No reboot, but apparently there's a stage musical that got made, and the actor playing Marty looks like Eric Stoltz which amuses me.

I went to see the musical in London West End (twice). I found it quite good, and the effects are impressive for a stage show (though I have not yet much experience with London musicals, so they may all be like that). Of note is that the whole theater has been decorated like Hill Valley. It was a very pleasant surprise to discover that show when visiting London again for the first time after COVID. Can't really comment on the Stoltz likeness as I'm not familiar enough with the actor.

Anyone read the IDW Comics or unlike me, the Harvey Comics based off the Animated Series?

Enjoyed the IDW Comics as while I was entirely satisfied with the trilogy after seeing it in the 90s, the Telltale Game actually did leave me wanting more.

And yeah while we didn't get a follow up to that, the comics were still a nice read. Especially getting a crossover with Transformers several years back.

Incidentally as far as Gale and Zemeckis' reluctance to show the future in the first place, honestly I think BTTF's 2015 being as it is makes sense.

I mean as big a deal as hover vehicles and the like goes, it's not that much out there from say Doc coming up with the means of time travel in 55 then finishing the device to make it possible in 85.

I love how the comics added the Internet to the movies 2015. On the whole they were a great read, too bad there was not more of them.

You wonder if a reboot of this ever could work. Like the first film is a masterpiece and an icon of cinema.

But in curious if they tried again whether it would work with a modern framing.

I'd do a soft reboot versus a full remake.

Like Ghostbusters: Afterlife.

It’s a tricky situation.

BTTF was made in a very unique time and speak to the zeitgeist of that time. America was coming off of an era that drastically effected everything going forward culturally: era of the nuclear family, of Jim Crow, of sanitized morals and paranoia and perceived suburban perfection, a time that was super idealized by both the people of that time and by the media in general, and was then going into an era built around rebelling against everything from that era, trying to build it into something that felt more real.

But at the same time, there was a lot of fear for the future, dystopian media was on the rise of popularity, and there was an influx in cynicism that the mistakes of the past were never going to be fixed.

The 80’s were a very important pivot point in American history, and BTTF is all about that pivot: having a character comically explore a past that’s usually sanitized in a semi-sitcom parody, run around in a parody of the cyberpunk futures popular at the time, and find that the present is more important. It would be difficult to make a BTTF that runs exactly the same because the culture shift of today isn’t the same as the culture shift of that time, and you’d have to alter the plot accordingly, but a reboot wouldn’t want to do that.

And that’s before getting into how much of a personality piece it was for the actors involved.

Tbh, I’d argue the best example of a work that takes what BTTF was trying to do and adapts it to a more modern cultural shift are things like Idiocracy or Pleasantville, and those came out forever ago.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Aug 23rd 2023 at 10:56:40 AM

I mean, the obvious remake would be a guy who goes back in time from 2020s to the 1980s.

That’s just every single nostalgic franchise series of the past decade.

I feel that Back to the Future is one of those stories that has so heavily influenced culture and perception that any remake or continuation is near impossible. It was a perfect storm of a creative original idea with the right people involved to make it legendary. I was thinking that Happy Death Day 2U, Avengers: Endgame and The Flash all reference BTTF as a shorthand on comprehending time travel. So it's in a category like Casablanca, Citizen Kane and Star Wars where remaking it has no hope to beat what was already done.

My point is that doing the exact plot again probably wouldn’t play well with audiences, because the original idea was built to appeal to a social vibe the 2020s doesn’t share.

The whole reason “go back thirty years”/“go forward thirty years” worked so well as an 80’s period piece is because people were already going that in the 80’s: it was a period of examining one of the most heavily nostalgia-ridden eras in modern times, and was the first era where cynical fear for where the future was headed really because a major part of pop culture.

A good modern take on BTTF should have an almost completely different plot that better fits the social vibe of the 2020s (again, Pleasantville is a good example of this from the 90s) but a reboot probably wouldn’t do that because it’d be focused on just doing the plot everyone remembers again.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Aug 23rd 2023 at 1:41:07 AM