Scene Anatomy 101 03.26.08: Back to the Future Part II

Posted by George H. Sirois on 03.26.2008

The Space-Time Continuum and You: Part 2 of 3



This past Saturday, Cheryl and I were able to go the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City to see their "Spielberg" lineup: Back to the Future at 2pm, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial at 5pm and Jaws at 8pm. It was perfect timing since I had covered Back to the Future this past week, and it was the only one of the trilogy that I hadn't seen on the big screen. There were about 200 or so other people there as well, and all these families that had brought kids to see this 1985 classic. There was cheering when George McFly finally manned up and "laid out Biff with one punch." And there was plenty of cheering at the end of the film as well.

See, theaters??? Movies like these still hold up, and if you did these kinds of re-releases more often, not only would people keep coming to them, but if you put in a little effort to advertise it, you'll only wind up selling more tickets!

But that's not what this column is about. This is to continue the look at the space-time continuum from the point of view of a DeLorean.

Anyway, you know the last shot of the original film, when the DeLorean folded up its wheels and took flight? Well, most people aren't aware of it (unless you bought the trilogy DVD box set and watched the retrospective interviews), but that was intended to just be one last joke. They didn't mean to imply there would be a sequel, but after the success of the film, Universal Pictures was anxious to see one. In fact, they flat out gave Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale an ultimatum. We're going to make a sequel, and you can either be onboard or not.

Wisely, the two Bobs took Universal up on their "offer" and both Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd signed back on as well. The plan was to film two sequels back-to-back; raise the stakes in Part II, and then resolve the whole thing in Part III. Once Zemeckis and Gale came up with the two-film storyline, Bob Gale went on to write the two screenplays on his own while Zemeckis concentrated on directing Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

When December of 1989 came around, fans were finally given the second chapter of this eventual trilogy, the Robert Zemeckis hit film…



Just as the previous film ended, Marty, Jennifer (now played by Elisabeth Shue since Claudia Wells took a 20-year break from acting) and Doc all travel to 2015 because, as Doc said to Marty, "something's gotta be done about your kids." After Marty accomplishes his mission to keep both of his kids out of 15 and 20-year jail sentences, he gets an idea to purchase a sports almanac from an antiques store that tells the results of all sporting events from 1950 – 2000.

When Doc realizes this, he makes sure the book is put in the trash, but the one person who should have never heard this conversation – Biff – takes the book for himself and waits for an opportunity to steal the DeLorean. He gets that opportunity when Doc and Marty have to make a detour to the McFly house in Hilldale to rescue Jennifer. Biff takes the time machine and then returns at the same moment he left, but what we don't see (it's in the deleted scenes section of the DVD) is that as soon as he came back to 2015 to return the car, Biff fades away into nothingness. Something is terribly wrong.

When Marty, Doc, Jennifer and Einstein (Doc's dog) return to 1985, that feeling of something being terribly wrong becomes a fact when Marty comes home to find a completely different family living in his home. The Lyon Estates complex where he lives is completely trashed with various cars crashed into each other and left to burn. What was once a friendly community is now ravaged with graffiti, arson and drive-by shootings.

But when Marty gets to the courthouse and sees the famous Hill Valley Clock Tower, it's beyond his worst nightmares. Erected on top of the clock tower is a large glitzy casino and hotel called "Biff Tannen's Pleasure Paradise." And in the lobby is "The Biff Tannen Museum," where we get to see his old '46 Ford, newspapers telling of his fortunes and a video detailing his accomplishments through the years. His biggest one is the marriage of his "high school sweetheart," Lorraine Baines McFly.

So Marty has come back to a November 26, 1985 that has his hometown burned out, his family shattered, his father's bully now the "patriarch" of the family and his real father…

When Marty asks his mother where George McFly is, she gives him the worst possible answer he can imagine: Oak Park Cemetery. It's there where Marty sees his father's tombstone, and it's where Doc finds him to fill him in on what's been happening. Doc takes Marty back to his lab, which is just as burned out and broken apart as the rest of Hill Valley. Once they're safe inside, Doc shows Marty an archived newspaper from 1973. The headline says "George McFly Murdered: Local Author Shot Dead."

DOC: I went to the public library to try and make sense of all this madness. The place was boarded up and shut down, so I broke in and borrowed some newspapers.

Marty can't pull his eyes away from the newspaper talking about his now-dead father.

MARTY: I don't get it, Doc. I mean, how can all this be happening? It's like we're in Hell or something.

DOC: No, it's Hill Valley although I can't imagine Hell being this much worse!

Doc looks around his destroyed lab and hears the whimpering of Einstein. He walks over to him and turns over his bed that is surprisingly still intact.

DOC: Oh, Einie. I'm sorry, boy. The lab is an awful awful awful awful mess! There ya go. Attaboy.

Einstein jumps into his bed and lies down. Doc continues to walk around the room, trying to come up with some kind of explanation of what is going on.

DOC: Obviously, the time continuum has been disrupted, creating this new temporal event sequence resulting in this alternate reality.

MARTY: English, Doc.

Doc quickly walks over to an overturned chalkboard and puts it right-side up. As he prepares to illustrate what he said, Marty rips the headline about his father out of the book of archived newspapers.

DOC: Here, here, here. Let me illustrate.

Once the chalkboard is ready, Doc then goes into full-on "exposition mode." Just like in the previous film when Marty had to explain to the 1955 version of Doc who he was and where he came from, the 1985 Doc now has to explain to Marty about what has happened to them and to their town.

A moment like this is incredibly important to a time travel film, since so many of them require characters to go back and forth so much that they eventually overlap onto themselves. (We'll see that later in the film.) So the more explanation that you can give the audience, the less chance they'll be confused about what they're watching.

Plus, it helps that Marty's not the sharpest person when it comes to the past, present and future. He proved that in the 1955 café when he tried to order a Pepsi Free, despite him being old enough to know when that drink was first introduced – in the early 1980s. And he proved it again in the Café 80s in 2015 when Biff told him how his father was a complete butthead and he started defending George McFly, not realizing that Biff was talking about HIM since Marty was pretending to be his son.

Doc takes a piece of chalk and draws a line across the board.

DOC: Imagine that this line represents time! Here's the present 1985, the future and the past.

Doc puts the chalk on the line between the "Past" marker and the "1985" marker. He draws a diagonal line down and creates a new timeline that he marks "1985A."

DOC: Prior to this point in time, somewhere in the past the timeline skewed into this tangent, resulting in an alternate 1985. Alternate to you, me and Einstein, but reality to everyone else.

Now that it's spelled out for Marty – as well as the audience – Doc walks over to the time machine and pulls a plastic bag out of the driver's seat.

DOC: Recognize this? It's the bag the sports book came in. I know because the receipt was still inside. I found it in the time machine.

Doc reaches back into the car and pulls out a piece of a wooden cane with a gold fist on the top. He holds it in front of Marty, knowing he would recognize it.

DOC: Along with this.

Marty takes the cane and looks closely at it.

MARTY: It's the top of Biff's cane. I mean, Old Biff from the future.

DOC: Correct. It was in the time machine because Biff was in the time machine. With the sports almanac.

The pieces are slowly starting to fall into place in Marty's head. We can see in his eyes that he is immediately regretting the one moment where he took his eyes away from the DeLorean, when Doc was busy rescuing Jennifer from the McFly home in Hilldale.

MARTY: Holy shit.

DOC: You see, while we were in the future, Biff got the sports book, stole the time machine, went back in time and gave the book to himself at some point in the past.

Doc flips through the archived newspapers and comes across another monumental headline, but monumental for all the wrong reasons.

DOC: Look. It says right here, that Biff got his first million betting on a horse race in 1958. He wasn't just lucky, he knew because he had all the race results in the sports almanac. That's how he made his entire fortune!

Doc hands Marty a magnifying glass.

DOC: Look at his pocket with the magnifying glass.

Marty does as he is told and he can see the Grey's Sports Almanac in the pocket.

MARTY: The almanac.

Marty slams the glass down on the newspaper.

MARTY: Son of a bitch stole my idea! He must have been listening when I…

And then all of a sudden, the fact hits Marty like a ton of bricks. Everything in this alternate reality – Biff's fortune, the town being destroyed, George McFly dead – it all comes back to Grey's Sports Almanac. And everything would have been just fine if that book had stayed where it was in 2015.

MARTY: It's my fault. The whole thing is my fault. If I hadn't bought that damn book, none of this would have ever happened.

Doc knows there's no point in dwelling on mistakes, even ones as catastrophic as this one. The fact is that they're in this reality now and they have to do what they can to get things back to where they were.

DOC: Well, that's all in the past.

MARTY: You mean the future.

DOC: WHATEVER! It demonstrates precisely how time travel can be mistreated and why the time machine must be destroyed… after we straighten all of this out.

Marty understands that now's not the time to keep the guilt from this situation hanging over his head. He knows that they have to act in order to fix the space-time continuum. But he also comes up with the wrong conclusion about how to go about this mission.

MARTY: Right. So we go back to the future, and we stop Biff from stealing the time machine.

DOC: We can't! Because if we traveled into the future from THIS point in time, it would be the future of THIS reality. In which Biff is corrupt and powerful, and married to your mother…

Doc grabs one more newspaper and holds it up to Marty.

DOC: … and in which… THIS has happened to ME!

The headline of the paper reads: "Emmett Brown Committed."

DOC: No. Our only chance to repair the present is in the past, at the point where the timeline skewed into this tangent. In order to put the universe back as we remember it, and get back to our reality, we have to find out the exact date and the specific circumstances of how, where and WHEN young Biff got his hands on that sports almanac.

Marty nods. Finally, this is something that he knows he can do correctly in order to repair the damage to the timeline.

MARTY: I'll ask him.

Thank God for Doc Brown in this movie, and I'm talking about the Doc Brown from 1985, the version that is in about 99% of this film. Not only is he aware of all of the pros and cons of time travel and can therefore express those to Marty, but he can also express those to the audience. Back to the Future Part II has a lot of exposition, but considering that there are three different times that the film exists in – four if you count the very beginning showing the correct version of 1985 – some exposition would be required to keep both the audience and Marty from getting lost.

But more than anything, if Doc wasn't around, the entire space time continuum would be screwed up thanks to Marty. Think about it. Marty's left alone after the big hoverboard sequence in 2015, and as soon as he's dried off, he gets the idea to buy the sports almanac. Then, when Marty's left alone to watch over the DeLorean while Doc goes to find Jennifer at Hilldale, what does he do? He lets himself get distracted by an automated dog walker and walks so far away from the time machine, he can't hear Biff get into it and drive off. Then in 1955, after successfully getting past Biff's gang, Marty can't resist stopping to look back at his other self talking with Lorraine. It's not as if Marty doesn't remember that conversation they had, since they had it, when, YESTERDAY???

And of course, the one thing that continuously dooms Marty in both this film and the following one is the urge to look back and confront someone for calling him "chicken." So if Marty ever had the sense to just walk away whenever someone tried to get under his skin, the movie would most likely be about a half-hour shorter than it was.

However, thanks to Marty's mistakes along the way, we get – as Doc Brown had said – a precise demonstration of how time travel can be mistreated, which is always one of the most fascinating kinds of stories to tell. At least in the end, we can say that Marty McFly's a young man who is very capable of making mistakes. We can't really say the same thing for Doc Brown, but we're going to see next week that he can be shown to make mistakes as well.

That brings us to the third element of time travel films, when there are so many trips back and forth through the story that a few mistakes are bound to sneak in there. You'll see what I'm talking about next week.

Until then, Class Dismissed!


-- George H. Sirois