I did a thread similar to this some years back when there was talk of possibly doing a BTTF reboot.
Anyway, I thought it’d be fun to speculate on this again. What would it be like if Marty traveled from 2020 to 1990. What would be Doc’s reaction to hearing that Donald Trump was president in 2020? What would he think about seeing footage of his older self on a smart phone? What song would Marty play to shock the teens of 1990? Maybe Marty would get called Grizzly Adams for sporting a hipster beard. You get the idea.
Wasn’t the consensus was it wouldn’t have been as big a ‘cultural’ shock as 1985 --> 1955?
There was talk of Trump back then running for higher office, so President Trump wouldn’t come as a shock to Doc Brown.
There was plenty of discussion of hand-held computers by then (as well as portable, albeit brief case size laptops), let alone numerous depictions of such devices in Sci Fiction, so a smart phone would interesting to Doc, but not mind-blowing (he might not like the way he aged, though).
As for music, nothing would be likely be shocking for 1990 high school teens’ tastes, however some music might be considered pretty annoying (even at that, Metal Machine Music had been release in the mid-1970s…)
This really is the crux, I think. Between 1955 and 1985 a few things happened that individually seemed like they changed the world and collectively changed it massively. An incomplete list from memory:
[ul]
[li]rock & roll generally and Elvis specifically[/li][li]JFK and the assassination[/li][li]the British Invasion[/li][li]the civil rights movement[/li][li]Martin and the assassination[/li][li]Bobby and the assassination[/li][li]Apollo XI[/li][li]Vietnam[/li][li]Watergate and Nixon’s resignation[/li][li]Three Mile Island[/li][li]the hostage crisis in Iran[/li][/ul]
Between 1990 and 2020?
[ul]
[li]maybe, if you squint, the end of the Cold War[/li][li]the widespread availability of the Internet[/li][li]social media (entirely a sub-event of the previous)[/li][li]flat screen TVs[/li][li]smartphones (actually, just a co-event of the previous mixed with a sub-event of the Internet)[/li][/ul]
Did I forget anything?
With the Republicans in office in 1990, we were still years away from Bill Clinton’s leap forward on gay rights — by which I mean ‘signing the Defense Of Marriage Act into law and saying that homosexuals who “tell” will be kicked out of the military’.
Plot it around a gay Marty McFly, is what I’m saying.
I thought about mentioning gay marriage becoming legal as another thing that changed in the past 30 years.
In the original BTTF they show a lot about how the town of Hill Valley changes over the decades: In 1955 there was a thriving downtown business district; In 1985 there’s a big shopping mall on the outskirts of town and downtown was decaying. A reboot could probably flip that around: The hip, gentrified neighborhood where Marty hangs out today was a scary, crime ridden, inner city neighborhood in 1990. Meanwhile the mall that’s struggling today was thriving in 1990.
Another small detail was how the Toyota dealer with the 4x4 truck that Marty drools over in 1985 was Studebaker dealer in 1955. This, I’m sure, was meant to show the rise of Japan as an industrial and technological powerhouse (and the fall of the “independent” American car makers). Or at least the mainstream acceptance of Japanese cars between the 50s and the 80s. I’m not sure what country could be considered the equivalent today? South Korea maybe? Hyundai was considered cheap crap by Americans in 1990, and is now a respected mainstream car company.
And what car would the present day Doc make into a time machine? I’m thinking maybe a Tesla. The Model X even has gullwing rear doors like a De Lorean.
And perhaps instead of needing 1.21 gigawatts, perhaps the latter-day equivalent needs some amount of computing power that is easily achieved today but would be difficult in 1990.
First of all, I don’t think this movie should be remade, but if they rebooted, I think he should still go back to '55. Maybe it’s just me but I think the cultural shift between '55 and '85 is much greater than 1990 to 2000. At best you’d have some gags where Marty laments not having a cellphone or GPS.
I did think of that, but Nirvana was formed in 1987 and released Bleach in 1989. (And recorded some of Nevermind in April 1990.) The basics of what was to be called grunge had already been well-established in Seattle by then.
Yeah, music-wise I’m having a tough time finding anything with the massive cultural impact something like rock or rap had. I mean, I think dubstep would sound somewhat odd to a '90s ear, but not all that far out as an outgrowth of late 80s and early 90s electronic and club styles. The “democratization” of music and access to vast catalogs of music immediately is a big change, as are the editing tools and the ease of home recording – so technologically, huge changes, but in terms of sound, I don’t think at least today’s popular music would sound all that twisted to a 1990 ear, as opposed to all the new sounds in 1985 vs 1955 (I mean, besides rock, you have early-ish rap and electronica/house/techno, etc. I mean, imagine hearing “I Feel Love” in 1955!)
