Yeah, but are they ever going to make a remake of BttF?
Doc’s a time traveler. In the future (2015’s future), weather has been recorded in detail and you could presumably request a report of any particular date’s weather down to the minute. I bet this is highly important information for a time traveler to have, so one of his first trips might have been to some point in the future where he could have gotten this information in a convenient form from the weather service. He then studied this weather report before traveling to the date in question. It’s Biff’s sports almanac all over again.
That’s my interpretation. In fact, I’m sure we already have this information now, just not in a convenient place for laymen to access. But I bet the meteorologist at the news station knows or can find out exactly when it rained yesterday or last month.
I agree with this. To think that the writers worked out every detail to satisfy time traveling fanboys, and make sure they didn’t step on any logical flaws is not believable to me. If you watch a movie once in the theater in 1985, you enjoy the references to Chuck Berry and how he may have been inspired to write Johnny B. Goode, or how Goldie may have been inspired to run for mayor. They are meant to make the viewer smile, to say to themselves “look how a small event can change the course of history.” Just like the Twin Pine Mall was Lone Pine Mall when Marty returned. It is just something subtle for viewers to connect with time travel.
I don’t know… Multiple viewings at home wasn’t exactly popular in the mid-80’s. I don’t remember exactly when VHS became popular, but I remember the first time I watched a movie at home was in the mid 1980’s, and it wasn’t a VHS tape. It was a big disc player. The disks were about the size of an old LP, and they slid into a machine, the machine somehow opened the sleeve, and pulled out the disk to play it. I don’t recall much, but this was the first thing I remember hitting the home market. Then, there was the VHS/Beta war, and THEN dvd’s followed years later.
The big disks I remember were only popular for a couple of years, and were not very practical. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, think of them as being just a big version of a dvd inside a protective sleeve.
I don’t think (and of course I could be wrong) that many movies were made at the time BttF was made with the idea that it would be watched over and over, being analyized frame by frame by fans. I’m sure movies are made now with the idea of being viewed multiple times, with hi-def blu-rays, director’s cuts, deleted scenes and cast/director interviews all included as part of a release.
I always thought this indicated that Doc had known the weather report due to a previous visit. He’d been there on that day before (you know, he time-traveled to that exact time before), and knew when the rain started and stopped that day.
Of course, now that I have thought about it, my answer may be too complicated. Given the two choices you provided, I’d pick the weather service was supposed to be good enough in 2015 to predict the exact second the rain would stop.
I think you’re contradicting yourself a bit–you say that you find it implausible that the writers worked out a lot of subtle details, then mention that they include subtle details for the viewer.
I don’t mean that they went so far as to work out specific propagation speeds for the changes or anything like that; that’s something I do for fun, part of examining the framework of the movie universe. However, they obviously were aware of and paid attention to changes in the timeline outside of the main plot–like the name of the mall. They also included tiny details, like the picture of the Lloyd clock. Why, then–when they were obviously thinking these things through–would it be implausible for them to have gotten any given bit of time travel logic right? Since we don’t see all the effects and implications, why automatically assume OMGPARADOX? The insistence that particular jokes must be logic holes, when it’s clear the writers made an effort at consistency, puzzles me.
Couple of things:
- The post you’re responding to is from several years ago.
- If you’re interested in more detail on the topic, it was discussed pretty thoroughly in this thread two years before the quoted poster brought it back up in this thread.
Wow. Thanks. I’m usually pretty good about recognizing zombies, but I didn’t catch this one.
Unlikely, since BttF was filmed on the Universal back lot.
I agree with this. I think there’s further support for this idea because in BttF, during the scene where Doc is setting up his “weather experiment” on the main drag, right before Marty writes the DO NOT OPEN UNTIL 1985 note- the scene opens with a shot of a radio, with the announcer saying that the weather is expected to be clear and cool. Doc, listening to this, says to Marty “Are you sure about the storm?” and Marty makes a crack at how weathermen in the 50s and in the 80s are shitty at predicting the weather. One assumes that the Bttf2 joke about the weather service being impeccable in 2015 is a callback to this scene.
I didn’t really want to get into this again (hence re-linking the old thread), but this is actually a different interpretation than either of the ones argued in that thread.
If, as you say, Doc knew when the rain would stop because he had gone farther ahead in time and checked the weather info for that day (or observed it for himself) why would he comment that it was “amazing” and compliment the efficiency of the Weather Service? What’s so amazing about being accurate concerning weather that’s already happened that he would feel the need to exclaim about it?