Convince me that I'm wrong about Back to the Future

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You know what really bothers me about Back to the Future?

WARNING: spoilers below
For some reason, all these major events in Marty's life happen in the SAME EIGHT DAYS.

November 5, 1955:

1. Marty's parents met.
2. Doc Brown bumps his head and thinks up the flux capacitor which would enable time travel.

November 12, 1955

1. Marty's parents kissed and fell in love.
2. The clock tower is struck by lightning.

And on a related note, why does it take about a week for people to get erased from existence when time is immediately changed, hence Marty's actions in replacing his father as the one Lorraine fell in love with once he got hit by the truck?



Am I being a bit cynical about this since it's another 80's Spielberg-produced movie, and those have a little bit of a childish streak about them? Goonies and Gremlins are good examples. To me, the time-related elements are driven like a Nickelodeon cartoon. The time-travel logic in this movie seems hardly different than the Fairly Oddparents episode where Timmy tried to stop his dad from winning a track race as a kid.



So you don't believe Back to the Future is a serious and logical treatise on the possibilities and paradoxes of time travel?

You're really going out on a limb with that unpopular opinion.
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So you don't believe Back to the Future is a serious and logical treatise on the possibilities and paradoxes of time travel?

You're really going out on a limb with that unpopular opinion.

A plot's a plot, and it should be judged as one.



Well, the only scientifically accurate time travel film is Primer, which goes to show it’s either spectacle or good science. As far as I’m aware, some quantum scientists say nothing in Primer contradicts theoretical physics. But lots of people find it boring.



A plot's a plot, and it should be judged as one.
A ton of time travel plots involve people arriving at days/times that are incredibly significant. Just from a storytelling/efficiency point of view, it doesn't make sense for someone to travel back in time . . . and then hang out for 3 months for a significant event.

I don't take Back to the Future's time travel much more seriously than I take something like Bill and Ted. The time-travel is a device used to generate the conflict in the plot, but the mechanics of the time travel itself are not the point of the plot (unlike something like Primer where those nuances are important).

You could just as easily say, "Hey, why didn't everyone immediately get really sick because of the more modern germs that Marty brought back with him?".



Well, the only scientifically accurate time travel film is Primer, which goes to show it’s either spectacle or good science. As far as I’m aware, some quantum scientists say nothing in Primer contradicts theoretical physics. But lots of people find it boring.
How dare you type the thing I was typing before I finished typing it!

Exactly. In a film about time travel you can have "accuracy"/realism or you can have spectacle, but you probably can't have both.



How dare you type the thing I was typing before I finished typing it!

Exactly. In a film about time travel you can have "accuracy"/realism or you can have spectacle, but you probably can't have both.
Ha, I’m sorry, I know how annoying that is! But you’ve done it before with something I was about to say, so we’re even



Way 2 serious look at BTTF, KC. Has your 'inner child' died?
No, it's just that my inner child finds it too easy to compare BTTF to several episodes of The Fairly Oddparents. The reason I'm criticizing it is because my inner child is completely intact and recognizes the similarities. Did BTTF ever really market itself as a kid's movie? I felt this way since I was a kid.

But to those who mentioned Primer, thanks for the recommendation.

You could just as easily say, "Hey, why didn't everyone immediately get really sick because of the more modern germs that Marty brought back with him?".
That's way too specific of a semantic. It's not even worth considering.



No, it's just that my inner child finds it too easy to compare BTTF to several episodes of The Fairly Oddparents. The reason I'm criticizing it is because my inner child is completely intact and recognizes the similarities. Did BTTF ever really market itself as a kid's movie? I felt this way since I was a kid.
Not familiar with TFO came out in 2001 I just read, I thought the target audiences for BTTF were kids/family/teens.

Primer has good elements, but it gave me a headache. And Predestination doesn't make any sense science wise.



No, it's just that my inner child finds it too easy to compare BTTF to several episodes of The Fairly Oddparents. The reason I'm criticizing it is because my inner child is completely intact and recognizes the similarities. Did BTTF ever really market itself as a kid's movie? I felt this way since I was a kid.

But to those who mentioned Primer, thanks for the recommendation.



That's way too specific of a semantic. It's not even worth considering.

Considering BTTF outdates Fairly Odd Parents by 15 years, shouldn't you really be saying FOP bares similarities to BTTF?


It's like saying you don't like BTTF because it's too similar to Rick & Morty.
Or LOTR because it's totally borrowing from Harry Potter.



On a slightly more serious note...


The dates in BTTF are addressed in the second movie when Doc explains it's remarkable that Old Biff from 2015 chooses the exact same date of the first movie to go back and give his younger self the Almanac.
Can't remember the line but it's something like: "Incredible Biff chose that date of the lightning strike and your parents falling in love... maybe that date has some sort of cosmic significance... or just some sort of cosmic coincidence."



Also, November 5th 1955... is exactly 350 years, to the date, after the Gunpowder Plot.


Doc is obsessed with Jules Verne... who wrote La Conspiration des Poudres (The Gunpowder Plot).


Doc was also hired before the movie started to manufacture a bomb.



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Not familiar with TFO came out in 2001 I just read, I thought the target audiences for BTTF were kids/family/teens.

Primer has good elements, but it gave me a headache. And Predestination doesn't make any sense science wise.
I really like Predestination, science be darned.

That's way too specific of a semantic. It's not even worth considering.
Every viewer has their own personal metric about what is or isn't too specific to nitpick. You never thought to nitpick the germs, I never thought to nitpick the dates aligning.

Fantasy/sci-fi films often involve some degree of suspension of disbelief. The coincidence of two significant events happening on the same day isn't too much of a stretch for me. Back to the Future is, for lack of a better word, a romp. Using a handful of coincidences to move along the narrative is incredibly common in blockbuster films.



Don't worry about it. Nobody who knows physics goes to silly time-travel movies and nobody who goes silly time-travel movies knows physics. If we did get a cosmologist to write the script, nobody would understand it anyway.

Check your rationality at the ticket booth.



Considering BTTF outdates Fairly Odd Parents by 15 years, shouldn't you really be saying FOP bares similarities to BTTF?


It's like saying you don't like BTTF because it's too similar to Rick & Morty.
Or LOTR because it's totally borrowing from Harry Potter.

You completely misread this. I'm not saying "Back to the Future ripped off Fairly Oddparents." Influence has nothing to do with it; it's just about how both stories are handled. THere's nothing in my posts that hint at the possibility of influence. I used The Fairly Oddparents as an example of cartoon-writing because it has a lot of time travel episodes.



It’s a really weird one, but I’ve found myself rewatching it too.
I think that both performances are excellent, and I've been a fan of Snook's ever since. Character-driven sci-fi is a subgenre I really love.\

Don't worry about it. Nobody who knows physics goes to silly time-travel movies and nobody who goes silly time-travel movies knows physics.
I'd slightly tweak this and say that people who know physics are perfectly capable of enjoying silly sci-fi because they don't take it seriously.

This is true of any profession. My college roommate is a doctor and she's perfectly capable of enjoying medical-based TV shows, even if she can point out a thousand and one inaccuracies. Heck, once you know basic CPR and how an AED works, you will never be able to unsee how totally inaccurate every "CLEAR! *shock*" scene is.