My favourite film aged 12: Back to the Future II
I am rubbish at concentrating, sitting still and keeping my mouth shut, traits particularly intense when I was young. Consequently, my interests ranged from sport to board games to general wildness, tricky for an only child, never mind a complete and utter only child, and I could not be detained by toys, Lego or sleep, nor narcotised by a TV set.
But every morning I was stuck in front of one anyway, when my parents dropped me at the childminder’s. There, I and various other kids were primed for a day’s education with a film that would show until we settled into a Vauxhall Cavalier, one in the front, five in the back, one in the front footwell, one in each back footwell and one on the dividing hump to be whisked off to school. Which is to say that I watched the first hours of Summer Holiday and Scrooge so often that I can still recite their dialogue and lyrics – as well as ads from the commercial breaks.
However, the consensus favourite, with which I was entranced, was Back to the Future. So when the sequel came out and I was off school because all the teachers were ill, I asked my mum to take me to see it. Though all she knew of the story was Christopher Lloyd acting up on Wogan, she agreed. Already buzzing after an illicit weekday matinee, I was soon buzzing from my ability to decode, analyse and explain an electrifying new world, while absolutely buzzing from my utter absorption into it; I was in love. Physically, I remained in the Harrow Cannon but spiritually I had been knocked clean into the middle of Hill Valley, and part of me is still there now.
In the name of research, I began this piece by rewatching the original – mainly to reacquaint myself with its child-friendly themes of alcoholism, voyeurism, incest and consent, but also to imagine the sheer, affirming delight of spectating my parents’ courtship. In the event, though, I was struck hardest by its dizzying, euphoric perfection.
And the sequel plays on that even before it starts, Robert Zemeckis’s title card appearing backed by the luscious tingle of incidental music – the message alert on my Johnny Fartpants 3210, now that you ask. Thanks to it, we’re straight back in the film having never been away, joining our great pals Marty McFly and Doc Emmett Brown right where we left them – with Doc expressing his desire to visit the future.
Hindsight tells us that these are foolish words and, sure enough, he returns to the present in a right froth. “What, do we become assholes or something?” asks Marty – to my 12-year-old self a reasonable question, to my 41-year-old self a rhetorical one. But the problem is his son, Marty Jr – themes of raging ego and fragile masculinity seeded – who is about to trigger a family-destroying chain of events. So off he and Doc go to 2015.
Jennifer, Marty’s wife-to-be, is also invited on the trip. This, along with the idea that one decision can shape a life, moves me because of how many unlikely things had to happen for me to marry my wife. However, I could never put her to sleep and dump her in a ginnel to spare me her feelings, as Marty does with Jennifer. “She’s not essential to my plan,” says the Doc.
Without her, we make our way into Hill Valley’s town square, beautifully modernised. Foreshadowing a movie business dominated by franchises, Jaws 19 is on at the cinema – a virtual-reality shark attacking Marty is a sensational touch – and we’ve already seen powerlacing trainers, along with the prediction that a certain type of twonk would one day parade their jean pockets outside their jeans. But it is the hoverboards that really grab us.
Anyway, Marty quickly saves the day, then buys a sports almanac to use as a betting crib when he gets home. It’s a lovely, human conceit, mixing elemental passions and aspirations with an essential truth: unfathomable wealth is generally achieved by cheating, even when accrued by those we love.
“I didn’t invent the time machine for financial gain!” incandesces Doc. “The intent here is to gain a clearer perception of humanity. Our past, our future, the pitfalls, the possibilities, the perils and the promise. Perhaps an answer to that universal question, ‘Why?’”
Though this prefigures Google’s conundrum by more than a decade, it does not read well, yet in context it’s a joke of rhythm, profundity and zest. Were we not so consumed by the movie it would remind us that we were watching one. Instead, we can appreciate yet another slice of classic Doc before he and Marty head back to 1985.
The problem being that, while they were busy in the future, old Biff twokked the time machine and gave his younger self the almanac, creating a parallel reality. Thanks to Marty, his dad is dead and his mum is married to Biff who owns a dystopian Hill Valley; it’s heavy.
Marty seeks to remedy the situation, confronting Biff and eliciting the date on which he received the almanac, and then, with help from the Doc, escapes being murdered. Our heroes are ready to restore the world to its former vainglory.
“You’re not going to believe this,” says Marty. “We’ve got to go back to 1955!” “I don’t believe it!” responds the Doc. “Unbelievable, that old Biff could have chosen that particular date,” he continues. “It could mean that that point in time inherently contains some sort of cosmic significance. Almost as if it were the junction point for the entire space-time continuum. On the other hand, it could just be an amazing coincidence.”
In the wrong hands this would be intolerably twee. But if we choose to, we can remember that enjoying silliness is to be encouraged, joy overrides overwriting, and who really cares when we’ve been watching this film for an hour desperate to get there, wondering if we’ll get there, and now we’re there and Mr Sandman’s playing and YES, we’re back in good old 1955!
There’s something compelling about postwar America: it was, for good and for bad, where the western world was shaped. That, along with its ubiquity in popular culture means I somehow feel connected to a time that I didn’t experience, and returning there now, I not only feel nostalgic about 1955, but about the time I lived through with my mates Marty and Doc.
Settling in again, I’m gratified that, like any sentient adult, old Biff recognises that his younger self was a twat. Anyway, Marty retrieves his book and heads to the Enchantment Under the Sea dance. There, a small group of black people entertain a room full of white people, before the Marty in 1955 from the first film takes to the stage to culturally appropriate rock‘n’roll before it’s even been invented. Yes, their kids are gonna love it … but their grandkids are gonna scorn them for it.
Losing the book again, Marty prevails in a tense, beautiful action sequence, before the film races to a finish; how much it crams into 108 minutes is a lesson in propulsive storytelling. It’s true that 2015 Marty remains an “asshole or something”, but that’s cinéma vérité for you: who among us can assert with certainty that their middle-aged self was not, is not, or will not become precisely that? Ultimately, time travel cannot resolve this problem, which must be addressed by us and us alone.
As a kid, I saw Back to the Future II as better and more complex than the original, but understood that the original would always be the original; as an adult, I know that we can just adore both. So while the sequel could be defter, it doesn’t much matter, because when the words “To be concluded” appear, all I’m thinking is MORE MORE MORE.
Art touches us in different ways – sometimes with emotion, sometimes with truth – and here it’s the unrelenting elation, flair and thrill that remain an inspiration. On which basis I’d be a right “asshole or something” to feel anything but eternal love for a movie which changed my life by penetrating deep into my soul to demand that I concentrate, sit still and keep my mouth shut.