What if "Back to the Future" were made today?

Cafe Society
1

Having watched “Back to the Future” trilogy again recently, I thought about what the movie would be like if it were based in 2005 instead of 1985 as a starting point. The points of time travel would be 1975, 2035 and 1905 for each movie, respectively. Based on the technology we have today and how we perceive the future from this point (e.g. flying cars are not likely any time soon, if ever), how would the movies be made if the basic premises of the movies remained the same? That is:
[ul]
[li]BTTF1: Get Marty’s parents to meet after Marty accidentally alters the course of history such that his fate is doomed otherwise.[/li][li]BTTF2: Unfuck the altered and corrupted 2005 and get things back the way they were before.[/li][li]BTTF3: Get Doc back to the present day after going back to 1905 and dealing with the woefully limiting technology available.[/li][/ul]

Here are some of my thoughts:
[ul]
[li]Marty would probably use a cell phone to keep in touch with Doc on his way to the demonstration in the mall parking lot. He has his cell phone with him when he flees from the terrorists and gets zapped back to 1975. I don’t know if Marty would attempt to use his cell phone in 1975, only to realize that it would not work then. Anyone who sees him using it has no idea what it is. Perhaps Marty also has music CDs with him.[/li][li]Marty might inadvertently make references to the Internet when talking to a 1975-ite. Phrases such as email (which existed in 1975 but was not a household word), world wide web, “dot com”, etc. were completely unknown back then.[/li][li]By 1975 most people had TV, even color TV, so what sort of new-fangled technology would be all the rage then? All I can think of is the advent of 8-track tapes, which were short-lived. Most big advances in technology that we have today occurred in the 1980s and beyond. Perhaps “I saw it on a DVD set that I own” could replace the phrase, “I saw it on a rerun.”[/li][li]Huey Lewis got a good gig out of the movie when he was at the height of his popularity. Who would be best suited to fill the same role with today’s music and artists? [/li][li]Would having Marty try to prevent the disaster of 9/11 somehow work in the movie, or at least warning people in Boston not to travel by air that day?[/li][li]What kind of music could Marty play at the high school dance that would make everyone stop dancing? The band in 1975 would not have the instruments or equipment needed for rap music, and while guitar playing in the style that Marty used was not unheard of by then, most heavy metal, death metal, thrash metal musical styles were still yet to come, so perhaps Marty could play something along these lines.[/li][li]What scenarios would be shown in 1905? How different would it be from 1885? By that time the “old west” as its shown in 1885 in BTTF3 was pretty much a bygone era. Radio, telephone and automobiles were new or emerging technologies, as was flight (perhaps Doc brown embraces the design of the Wright Brothers’ plane to build a time machine).[/li][li]Are there any elements in the 1885/1955/1985/2015 timelines that do not have any analogous equivalents in a 1905/1970/2005/2035 timeline? I can’t think of anything analogous to a “colored mayor”, for example, since I’m sure by 1975 a black mayor was not unheard of, as it seemed to be in 1955 (at least as portrayed in the movie).[/li][li]The teen culture of the 1975 era would be centered around disco and the band Kiss, which were both on the verge of becoming popular (perhaps waiting a couple years and have the movie follow a 1977/2007 timeline would offer more options, as this would allow for the original “Star Wars” hype to also be portrayed). “Jaws” would be all the rage in that era. What other sorts of pop culture would be portrayed in 1975?[/li][li]What would a “Cafe 2000” have shown in it (in the year 2035)? What music would best typify the era?[/li][li]What type of car would Doc likely use for time travel, starting in 2005?[/li][/ul]

So have at it. Please share your thoughts and ideas.

2

Initially I was thinking a Hummer typifies this decade like the Delorean kind of defined the 80s. And not one of those pussy H2 or H3’s; I’m talking the big boy.

But then I got to thinking you could have Doc use a hybrid, a Prius ferinstance, and since there was the whole oil thing going on in the 70s, you could work the whole “electric car” into the story somehow.

“You get how many miles per gallon with that thing? What, are you on ludes?”

3

Mid-2000’s teen Marty would have his brand-new iPod, which could be used in identical fashion (torturing teen dad awake with outlandish music) as the Walkman in the original movie. Star Trek references in his alien persona would have to be changed.

Probably early home video game consoles. I think Home Pong and possibly the Magnavox Oddysey had come out by this point. You could contrast that with an earlly scene of Marty playing a PS2 or an XBox 360.

The more interesting thing would be what to do about Marty’s skateboard. Although the real peak of the 70s skateboard craze was yet to come as of 1975, they certainly were around, and would not have amazed the crowd to such an extent as they did in the original movie.

He didn’t try to prevent the JFK assassination or Viet Nam in the original. Out of place in a light entertainment film.

Anything punk-derived was just barely appearing in Britain, so yeah.

Radio wasn’t around until 1920. And the old west wasn’t necessarily old in 1905 , at least not out west. You could up everything by a year and make knowledge of the 1906 SF quake figure into the plot somehow.

A woman mayor. Still fairly uncommon in 1975, although not as common as you might think it would be in 2005, either.

Elton John would be HUGE. Kiss and disco were already big (Destroyer was 1974, and “The Hustle” was 1975). You could have a couple of pathetic Ford supporters wearing WIN buttons. Lots of plaid clothing and center-parted hair, and singer-songwiter music.

You could have it take place in California, and instead of younger, skeptical Doc asking time-travelled Marty who’s the president in 2005, he could ask who’s the governor of California, which would elicit the Shwarzenegger response, and you could have a similar scene.

The reason the DeLorean was perfect was because it was already past its prime in 1985, whereas it had been seen as the wave of the future a very short time before. It also had a notoriously bad starter, which was used as a plot point several times in the movie. An early Prius might be a candidate, but it looks like hybrids are only gaining in popularity, whereas the DeLorean was a sign of faded glory. Maybe a VW New Beetle, or a Chrysler PT? I don’t know if they had any mechanical problems that could be used in the plot, however.

4

I meant to add that in the second movie, you could still use the Baseball history book as a plot point, and have Biff become stupid rich by betting boatloads of money on the Red Sox to win the World Series in 2004.

5

[QUOTE=dwc1970]
[li]By 1975 most people had TV, even color TV, so what sort of new-fangled technology would be all the rage then?[/li][/QUOTE]
The Space Shuttle, Skylab, video games. Home computers aren’t quite starting yet.

[QUOTE=dwc1970]

[li]What would a “Cafe 2000” have shown in it (in the year 2035)? What music would best typify the era?[/li][/QUOTE]
Boy bands, Britney Spears, some type of hiphop. Add some unlikely story of what Britney has become by 2005.

I don’t think there’s anything better than the Prius. It’s a hybrid, so it could become a gas/electric/fusion hybrid with little hassle.

Einstein published on Brownian Motion & Special Relativity in 1905. They could involve him somehow and have Doc Brown responsible for General Relativity, as well as Einstein’s hairstyle.

They could have some virtuosic rock music, followed by Marty banging out some 3-chord punk, impressed with himself while the audience stares, dumbfounded by the stupidity of it all. I don’t think they would be shocked quite like in the originals. Maybe he could have the drummer start a beat, and then he’d start gangsta-rapping, but that wouldn’t really work unless it was obscene. I’m not sure what would have been played at a dance in 1975. KISS wouldn’t work, and disco isn’t romantic like the music in the first movie. What did people slow-dance to back then?

6

In 1975 an actor as Governor would not surprise Doc Brown (Reagan was governor in the 60s), but would Doc even know who Schwarzenegger was in 1975? Marty could also find out that his grandparents were into key parties.

In 1905 Doc would still be stuck (repair parts not invented until the 40s/60s), but gasoline should be availible and no gunslingers.

In 2035 they’d have Queen Katherine visiting instead of Queen Diana. Cafe 2000s would probally have holographic versions of Bush, Osama bin Laden, and Brangelina taking orders.

7

I just don’t think it would work. The fun of ‘Back to the Future’ was seeing a modern kid go back to a time when teenagers were fundamentally different. 1975 teenagers were not much different than they are today. Nothing was going to shock them.

Actually, you could play it backwards. Marty the ‘modern’ teenager goes back in time, and discovers how wild his stodgy parents were. He thinks he’s hip and cool, then goes back to 1975 and finds his mom snorting coke off of Dad’s Johnson while he prepares knife-hits of hash on the stove while the Doobie Brothers play in the background.

And he could get up on stage ready to shock them with some grunge or something, and dad yells, “You wanna see some ROCK, you pussy?” and climbs on stage with a bottle of Jack Daniels and plays ‘Purple Haze’ while popping acid, then throws up on Marty.

The 1970’s were crazy. Kids were smoking pot at grade 8 school dances. The teachers would confiscate it and go get high in the staff room. I remember a friend in grade 7 showing up with a couple of joints at a dance. We wanted to know where he got it, and the answer was, “I snuck it out of my parents’ stash.” There was pre-AIDS sexuality. Girls didn’t wear bras half the time. Teenager’s cars had superchargers sticking out of the hood and race slicks on the back. People would laugh at the Prius.

If you must confound 1970’s era people with your amzing future-ness, you’ll have to stick to technology, I think. But even cell-phones won’t amaze people. They’d seen star-trek communicators, and CB radios were all the rage. You’d just get responses like, “that’s a pretty small walkie-talkie. What kind of range do you get?”

If you want to startle them with a fact from the future, tell them that we’re still flying the Space Shuttle, and we haven’t been back to the moon. No one will believe you.

8

Doc could have been frequenting the Golds Gym in Santa Monica.

9

But Punk wasn’t revolutionary in any musical sense. Everyone in the 70s knew who Bobby Fuller was. They also knew who The Sweet, Gary Glitter and David Bowie were. The cool ones would know who The Stooges, MC5 and The Dolls were.

Well I was in 7th Grade in the 70s, and it was not quite as wild as all that. If my parents smoked any pot, it was back in the 50s, when they were young enough to do foolish things like that. Girls had many reasons not to have sex with guys besides AIDS. There is always the assertion that the person who steals your pot is smoking it later. I heard the same thing about the cops who used to toss us in the 80s. When I was a little kid, my freinds and I found a plant back in the woods that we thought looked like pot. We decided to show it to my father, becasue he was a teacher, so would know what pot looked like. Turns out he had no idea, despite the fact that the school he taught in had a reputation for drugs (It turned out to not be pot, by the way. It never turns out to be pot).

Everyone I’ve talked to about the 70s has described crazy stufflike this, only going on for people they knew, or knew about. I think most kids at the time had fairly tame experiences.

10

Just watch Saturday Night Fever.

11

I guess it all depends on where you grew up. If you lived in a suburb in a conservative neighborhood in the midwest, maybe it never got that crazy at any time. If you lived in an urban area in California or New York, it might have been different.

I grew up in a small city in Canada, and I was a teenager in the 1970’s, and I can tell you it got pretty wild. I remember our Jr. High school dances well. The cops busted up a couple of them. I remember a kid whacked out on some drug throwing a chair through the glass wall of our cafeteria, and I remember a couple of teachers who were supervising often being stoned out of their minds. And the smell of pot was everywhere. One of the kids I knew almost died after passing out drunk in a snowbank after a dance - this was in Grade 9.

This was the era of the ‘bush party’, where kids would pile into cars and head out into some camping area with a keg of beer and proceed to party all night, then drive home absolutely drunk. Two girls from my highschool were killed when they rolled their car in a ditch coming home from a bush party.

Maybe I grew up in a particularly wild place, but I don’t think so.

12

A hybrid would emphatically not work. Remember, in III, back in the Old West they can get water to fuel the Mr. Fusion no problem, but the Mr. Fusion just outputs electricity, which can’t move the car. It’d be pretty easy to kludge a hybrid car to run entirely on the Mr. Fusion, though. Or even if you don’t use the Mr. Fusion, there’s still got to be something running the time-travel machinery, and it’s got to be powerful enough that the energy cost of getting the car to 88 mph would be negligible.

Yes, we know now that flying cars and tabletop fusion generation are not coming any time soon. We knew that in 1984, too. That was part of the schlocky fun of the movies as they were originally set.

13

But 1950s teenagers weren’t fundamentally different from today’s teenagers, by-and-large. People often have a sanitized idea of what those times were like because they think that Leave it to Beaver and Happy Days are approximately accurate reflections of what went on – but things were largely the same – there’s always been a wild element. TV '50s kids might be all wide-eyed, naive, and more wholesome than fresh bread, but a more honest reflection of the youth culture of the '40s and '50s can be found in Tom Lehrer’s contemporary account, Bright College Days:

Pleasantville never existed – some kids drink and drug and fight and f*ck, and it has ever been thus.

14

That’s kind of what the idea was behind Family Ties; the former hippie parents of conservative teenagers.

Given the fuel crisis in 1975, you might shock them with how little change there’s been in automobile fuel efficiency.

15

IIRC, it was mostly (in my experience anyway) “Color My World” by Chicago. That song ended just about every high school dance I went to in the 1970s. A few other slow songs I remember from those dances:

“Precious and Few,” Climax
“Me and Mrs. Jones,” Billy Paul
“The Morning After,” Maureen McGovern
“Midnight at the Oasis,” Maria Muldaur
“I’m Not in Love,” 10CC
“Dream Weaver,” Gary Wright
“I Like Dreaming,” Kenny Nolan
“Don’t Give Up On Us,” David Soul

There were, of course, many more; but those are the ones that come immediately to mind.

16

That’s right. Remember, when Marty got his teenage mother alone in the car before the big dance, she whipped out a bottle of booze and nearly attacked him. But kissing him was like kissing her brother. :smiley:

17

That’s absolutely, one hundred percent wrong. It’s so opposite to the truth I’m wondering if you’re serious.

In fact, the movie makes a point of showing the teenagers of 1955 are not much different from the teens of 1985. One of the film’s most successful running gags is that Lorraine McFly’s claims of things being different - specifically, that girls never chased boys - are revealed to be lies, as her teenaged self was permanently horny and aggressive.

18

Actually they had come and gone already. There was a minor skateboard craze in the mid-60s, using roller skate wheels that were metal and rubber. I had one. So, the only reaction you’d get was how much better the wheels were, nothing else.

19

That might make for a better, funnier movie than the original! :smiley:

Another point: What would Marty do or say (intentionally or otherwise) to turn his Dad from a trailer-park loser into a wealthy success in 2005? Maybe tell him to get a computer degree or invest in Microsoft . . . but stay away from dot.com companies with the middle step missing out of the business plan!

20

True. But to skateboard-mania wave to hit so hard that the land was to be littered with new, concrete or hardwood skate parks was to come in the late 1970s, and was already beginning to build around this time. That’s what I was referring to.