The “happy ending” on Back to the Future… as you’ll recall, he goes to 1955 and sets up his parents, then goes back to a more successful and happy “present” (1985).
But…
I’m sorry, if one of your children looks EXACTLY LIKE the cool mysterious guy you and your wife knew in high school, the one she at one point had a crush on, then he disappeared…
wouldn’t that, I dunno, lead to a bit of a fight or two? Your children shouldn’t look just like your best friend from school
PS I didn’t put “spoiler” in the beginning because… well, this movie came out 23 years ago. If you haven’t seen it yet, I’m not waiting any longer
You aren’t going to clearly remember what a guy looked like that you spent a week with 30 yrs ago. You’ll have an idealized image of him if you remember him at all. I don’t believe there were any photographs.
My nitpick about the entire trilogy is that they are always trying to get “back to the future” and are afraid of messing it up. But the future they return to is the one that is altered to be “happy” due to his actions in 1955 and NOT the “real” 1985. Heck, the 1985 that has Biff ruling the city is just as valid as the one where Marty’s dad is a successful science fiction author.
There was a photograph that he brought with him from 1985, and I think he took it back with him… I don’t remember any photograph with Marty in it that was taken in 1955…
And Marty suffers for that change - not having been brought up by a successful family like his brother and sister. His only memories are the loser version of his family.
I submit that they probably wouldn’t live in the same house if they were as successful as they appear, too. But maybe that’s being too picky.
They only knew ‘Calvin’ for a couple months in 1955. ‘Calvin’ evidenced no interest in Lorraine (in fact, he seemed rather disturbed by her obvious crush on him).
Marty - George and Lorraine’s third child - wasn’t born for 14 years, in 1969. At which point, they haven’t seen ‘Calvin’ for that entire time, and an implication of this premise is George never had any thought that Dave and Linda weren’t his.
In the mid-80s, now teenaged Marty ends up looking like ‘Calvin’. But, being George and Lorraine’s kid, he’d have looked like them, too. If George even remembers what ‘Calvin’ looks like at all - it’s 25+ years later, after all - there’s no reason for him to take it as anything other than a coincidence (one to creep Lorraine and Marty out with, if he’s so inclined!).
If he remembers ‘Calvin’, at all, in fact - if they do, the existence of the real Calvin Klein and his company (remember how Marty picked up that alias) would have been likely confusing for them - although assuming George never met the real man at any point, they might think the real Calvin was the ‘Calvin’ they knew… (The ages are close - they’re only 3 or 4 years older than him…if they don’t bother researching him well enough to know he wasn’t in Hill Valley in 1955, that’s close enough they could think he’s the same person.)
They didn’t perfect the technology that makes the kids look exactly like the father, regardless of gender, until Back to the Future II. And besides, who would ever cheat on George McFly? That guy is the tits.
And, of course, there should be another Marty McFly living in the house – or, more likely, he wouldn’t have been born at all. No point in trying to make sense of this moronic (but fun) movie.
It’s hardly moronic. Time travel is fraught with mind-twisting possibilities, so sometimes it’s best to make your own rules and be consistent with them, which they do. As far as I know, they do not break any.
Apart from the laws of physics; they break those a lot.
It’s not clear to me that they’ve actually made any real rules, though. I still can’t make sense of the “Watching one’s image slowly disappear from a photo despite continuing to exist to do the watching, retaining all of one’s memories, etc.” business, for example.
BTTF’s theory of time travel includes the notion that change isn’t instant, but instead propogates gradually, with its speed determined by how likely it is for the event being changed to still happen. Marty didn’t vanish instantly because there was still a chance for his parents to get together, and once they did the future was set in stone again, at least for their family.
This also explains the major plot hole in BTTF 2, where old Biff goes back in time, hands his younger self the almanac, then goes back to the unchanged future.
More on the ripple effect here. BTTF is actually pretty consistent internally as time travel movies go.
Actually, in 1955 he has very pale blonde hair, and in 1985 it’s shock white, with some additional wrinkles from makeup. They did the rejuvenation gag in BTTF Part II to remove the need to keep making up Christopher Lloyd through the rest of the films.
His hair looked the same color to me, but then again, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen a character in a movie with hair that’s supposed to be blond, but to me looked white.
