The beginning of BTTF 2 swoops Marty, his girlfriend, and Doc off to 2015, a mere 3 and a half years hence. Given how absurdly wrong the original movie predicted the future, and considering what we might expect the next few years to be like, what sort of alterations could we make to the movie to make it more realistic?
Some examples:
-when Marty first gets to the future, Doc shows him a USA Today that appears to magically change before his eyes. That’s just an updating app on my I-phone. As soon as Marty gets to 2015, Doc gives him a smart phone, with a quick tutorial on how to text and use google maps. Marty, of course, would discover the web browser, which will have “grave implications for the future”.
-instead of flying cars - Hybrids with talking GPS
-this one has long bothered me. When Marty tries to impress the local kids with his prowess on the arcade shooting game, the kids sneer, “you have to use your hands? That’s a baby game,”. Epic fail - the best games now are physically interactive! A better reply-“This game’s only in 2-D? Lame.”
If I recall correctly, the USA Today changed because Marty changed the events of the future so that the robbery that Griff planned to take Marty Jr. on never occurs. Instead, Griff and his cronies crash through the front of the courthouse and are arrested on vandalism charges. It’s like the photo of Marty and his brother and sister from the first movie. I don’t think the newspapers in the future in the movie normally change on their own.
Also, other newspapers in the film changed headlines as Doc and Marty were restoring the “correct” timelines in 1955 and 1985 by undoing Biff’s theft of the sports almanac.
The 2015 McFly household wouldn’t have 12 20" TV screens showing different channels all at the same time, but one enormous screen showing whatever you’ve chosen it to show right then, with a couple of smaller personal ones showing something completely unrelated.
Hoverboards would still be skateboards.
Marty’s Mom would probably have spent ages cooking something lovely with organic ingredients or ordered a take-out.
‘Where we’re going, we don’t need roads’ could still apply, but only because Doc is cleverer than Einstein (and I don’t mean his dog) so could have utilised 2015 technology to do more than 2015 tech will really deliver for the average driver.
Neither Marty nor Biff would have been legally convicted within a day. They might well, however, have been all over the net and convicted by public opinion.
Biff Jr wouldn’t have been able to use his implants or whatever they were to beat up Marty. He would have had to rely on being naturally much taller, stronger, more aggressive and surrounded by several similar friends, who would all have had their cameras out to video the smackdown.
Instead of the Cubs beating “Miami”, it’d be Florida (I.e. The Marlins). And then only if the Marlins switched from the National to the American league. Better for the movie: the Cubs beat Tampa Bay.
That assumes the Cubs are 4 years from a World Series victory, no matter who their theoretical opponent might be. Typically over-optimistic.
The headline would more realistically read “Yankees win World Series AGAIN.” (You could throw in Florida – or Arizona or Colorado – as the losing team, I suppose.)
Well no real ‘theme’ restaurants around now. There’s a Cafe50s around here(SoCal), but I don’t see it changing to Cafe 80s anytime soon. Most diners are the same they were back in 1985 (Denny’s, IHOP, etc) The better joke would be to have Marty go into a diner next door to the same diner. (ok, I’m no Zemeckis)
And nostalgia shops? Actually I cant remember if the comic store was a normal comic store with an old almanac, or some kind of rare-book shop. But the current day answer is really a library with periodicals. Just as it was in 1985 (or 1989 when it was made)
Not much on the technology side that you were starting with though.
Well, the Marlins will be called “Miami” when they open their new stadium next year, so by 2015, at least that will be accurate. Although the Miami team in BTTF 2 was actually called the Gators.
I think it was just a general antique shop. IIRC in addition to the almanac they also had, among other things, an original Macintosh computer and a Dustbuster
I think it would be completely awesome if someone produced a new version of BTTF 2. Obviously they’d need a new actor to play Marty, but Christopher Lloyd could still be Doc, this time without the “old man” makeup. And they could show Marty, a teenager of the 80s, interacting with the real 2015. I figure they could explain the flying car as a modification that Doc got in the much later future.
