Back to the Future: An Ode to Act I

Back to the Future is an excellent example of a traditional Hollywood blockbuster that really works. The story is formulaic and could easily fit into any of the by-the-numbers paradigms detailed exhaustively in screenwriting manuals everywhere, yet most people consider it one of the better movies from the 80’s. It’s still viewed affectionately as a classic and, despite wearing a suit made from tried-and-true formula, it comes across as highly original. All the good stuff that kick-started what would become a trilogy has shifted into pop culture lore: the Delorian, the flux capacitor, 1.21 gigawatts, Crispin Glover. Who doesn’t remember fondly squirming at the sight of Marty nearly kissing his own mother?

Back to the Future works serves as an excellent springboard to discuss something that all great movies (especially ones as rooted in classic Hollywood formula as this one) have on their side: The set-up. Act one. The place at the beginning where we don’t really know anyone yet or what they’ll be like or what their function will serve in the grand scheme. This is where most movies are busy trying to get your attention so you’ll stick around for a while. And, while most of what we remember from Back to the Future occurs after these moments of set-up, BananaWho wants to bring to your attention, patient readers, how sweet of a set-up this movie has in ways you might not have noticed.

We all remember Marty McFly showing up at the Twin Pines Mall, hearing some technosition (that’s technical exposition) about the time-machine, seeing his buddy, Doc, gunned down by terrorists and fleeing to 1955, where he wreaks havoc on the space time continuum. But, what about before that, even? There is a good 20 minutes of un-memorable scenes which are actually so powerful that the much more memorable parts to come later would be rendered largely ineffectual without them. (The glaring exception is the first 5 minutes where Marty blows an amplifier up with a single rockin’ chord.) But, including that moment, every scene in the first 20 minutes is loaded with importance. Each scene contains at least two bits of information we need to know for later developments. Not one moment is wasted in setting up the story.

1) First, there are clocks. Lots of clocks. Time is obviously a theme that will be explored, and showing lots of clocks certainly gets us on the same page. (If you look closely, one clock is a replica from a Harold Lloyd movie, Safety Last! (1923), where he hangs dangerously from the hour hand…this is some sneaky foreshadowing of what’s to come.) Doc is introduced long before we ever see him, by way of some Brazil-style automated gizmos which illustrate both his profession as an inventor as well as his inability to create fully-functional things. A case of plutonium is seen while a news broadcast conveniently mentions its thievery. Marty’s easy entrance while Doc is absent serves to prove their familiarity. Then he cranks everything to 11 and hits the guitar. His penchant for rocking out will also be touched upon when Marty tries out for the school talent show and is rejected for being too loud.

2) Marty rides to school on his skateboard while holding onto various moving cars headed in his direction. During this ride, we also see the local town square, where much of the action will take place. He arrives at school and meets his girlfriend, Jennifer, who tries to help him avoid Principal Strickland, but fails when they run into him anyway. Strickland reminds Marty that being late is bad and that his father was also a slacker back in the day. “No McFly ever amounted to anything in the history of Hill Valley!” he exclaims, while getting so up in Marty’s face that their noses actually touch. “Yeah, well, history is gonna change.” Good comeback. But, as it turns out, he is pretty darn right. Like, three movies of right.

3) Marty tries out for the talent show and he’s rejected for being “too darn loud” by Huey Lewis himself, who apparently couldn’t recognize his own song beneath all the noise. Marty vents to Jennifer out in the town square about being unable to handle rejection. A woman begging for money arrives and just can’t wait to talk about the Clock Tower behind them all, which was struck by lightning, she says, thirty years ago, she says, and they want to rebuild it! Whatev. Marty’s trying to go to the lake with Jennifer and that’s all that matters.

4) But, when he gets home he discovers that the car is wrecked and he can’t drive to the lake. Upon going into the house, he finds his father, George, having an argument with his boss, Biff. Biff had borrowed George’s car and got into an accident that was his fault, yet bullies George into apologizing to him for it. Biff is a dick and George is a pushover. On his way out, sneers at Marty, “Say hi to your Mom for me.”

5) Then we meet Mom: Lorraine. She’s pouring a nightly vodka while talking about how her brother Joey didn’t make parole. At the dinner table, we learn how George and Lorraine met after her father hit him with his car, and then they went to the “fish under the sea dance” where they fell in love. George conveniently dodges a question about how he ended up in the middle of the road that day because he’s distracted by “The Honeymooners” playing on one of their two television sets.

Finally, Marty heads fatefully to the Twin Pines Mall to meet Doc, and the movie is off and running. There isn’t much suspense or action in these opening moments and if the movie carried on like this, it would hardly be the classic it has become. But all of this information is instrumental in orienting the audience to time, place and character and, like any good exposition, we learn so many things without even realizing that we need to know them:

1) We know plutonium has been stolen (to run the time machine) and that Doc has it in his garage/laboratory filled with dicey contraptions. We learn that Marty wants to rock, but is rejected and that rejection is something he might have a hard time coming to terms with. Wonder if he inherited that from someone? No matter, though. He’ll get his chance to rock soon enough.

2) His method of traveling on a skateboard while holding onto the back of moving cars will come in very handy later during a chase with Biff. The run-in with Strickland at the school foreshadows the same relationship George has with the man back in ’55, and is one of several times Marty will be late in the movie.

3) The whole “lightning striking the clock tower” is a no-brainer, although in this same scene, we’re also treated to a few important vehicles that pass by: The beautiful pickup truck Marty admires, which will conveniently take the place of the wrecked car by the end so he can go to the lake after all (unfortunately, they never do make it because Doc interrupts them and also because she soon transforms into Elizabeth Shue.); the other vehicle is a van with speakers announcing the re-election of Mayor Goldie Wilson, who is still just sweeping the diner floor in 1955.

4) The Biff/George relationship is identical in 1955, so that’s an easy one, too. The “Say hi to your mom for me” has much more impact after you’ve seen the rest of the movie, but is a sneaky way to establish Biff’s creepy interest in her from back in the day.

5) The scene around the McFly dinner table is revealing information in almost every single line. But, for some reason, it doesn’t feel forced to me and gets away with being entirely expositional without seeming so. Marty’s siblings are drawn very quickly, but enough info is shared that we totally get the change at the end, where they are now successful. I find it amusing, however, that their personalities haven’t changed at the end—just their clothes and jobs. Lorraine is well-established here, too, showing her drinking and also being a bit stuck-up when it comes to what Marty and Jennifer might be doing in parked cars, something that never happened in her day…or did it? They are watching Jackie Gleason while they eat; same episode that airs on Lorraine’s first family TV set in 1955. And her monologue about meeting George pretty much sets up the most important plot scenario that drives the rest of the movie.

A lot is established and laid out for us to digest what follows. Without these important elements, all thrown at us in well-constructed moments during the first 20 minutes, we might still enjoy the ride, but we would hardly have the right emotional attachment to the events. The movie efficiently provides what we need to make the big set pieces later really click. Most will walk out talking about the rocking dance scene or the chase through the town with Biff; maybe even Marty convincing his own father to ask his mother out before his existence is fatally jeopardized. But you never really hear anyone going on about that awesome scene at the dinner table, where Lorraine guzzles vodka and peanut brittle.

The movie practically could’ve started with the scene in the mall parking lot and we’d still be able to follow it. But, fortunately the storytellers had the good sense to include these bits at the beginning, elevating a potentially routine movie into a pretty badass one. And, of course, once Doc arrives on the scene (after also being carefully set-up long before we ever meet him) the rest, as they say, is history.

-Jeremy Mather