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

[scotandrsn]

@Spoons

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.

Nice list, but it occurred to me that the best such scene would be the teens slow-dancing to the first part of “Stairway to Heaven”, then attempting to continue slow-dancing as the tempo picked up. That would be true to life there.

[Der_Trihs]

[QUOTE=dwc1970]
[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][/QUOTE]
Could homosexuality replace race ?

[RickJay]

@BrainGlutton

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?

Marty’s effect on George was simply to make him more confident in himself. He was a sci-fi geek who wrote sci-fi stories but was too shy to share them with anyone else. Marty didn’t give George any advance warning of anything to make him rich. You wouldn’t have to change that part at all, really.

[Spoke]

@dwc1970

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.”

I was going to suggest the bulky early version of the VHS VCR, but that didn’t hit the store shelves until 1977.

[F.U.Shakespeare]

@scotandrsn

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.

When I was in 10th grade in 1975, you couldn’t buy skateboards in town, but my kid brother and I ordered some from California companies through ads we saw in surfing magazines. The common reaction from people too young to remember the mid-60s skateboard craze was bewilderment. Older folks invariably responded with, “Hey, I remember those things!”

[Fern_Forest]

Make he goes back in time on a suped up Segway?

[Walloon]

@Dewey Finn

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

Average fuel economy improved by 60 percent to 21 miles per gallon in 2005 from 13.1 miles per gallon in 1975.

[Mangetout]

Don’t forget the JVC camcorder product placement; that was quite a bulky item by today’s standards and could be replaced either by a tiny modern camcorder, or by the camera/video function on Marty’s cellphone.

[Walloon]

@dwc1970

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.

Wrong decade. The 8-track tape was invented in 1964, and was available as an option on Ford vehicles in 1965. The first home 8-track players came out in 1967. 8-tracks were old news by 1975, although certainly popular.

The first Betamax combination TV/VCRs came on the market in November 1975. Not the first VCR, but one of the first priced for the home market (after the failed Cartrivision in 1972).

[cold_cold_night]

@Sam Stone

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.

Let me guess. You’re a baby boomer?

[saoirse]

@cold cold night

Let me guess. You’re a baby boomer?

Unless he was a future President, I would hope a baby boomer would be finished with that sort of thing by 1975.

Bush parties are not that specific to the era, though. Kids have been going out into the woods and partying long before that, and right up to the present. And I think a kid today is more likely to have a parent with a stash than a kid then. A higher percentage of kids used pot, but that could simply have been the fact that wort coolers hadn’t been marketed to them yet.

[Sailboat]

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

@Walloon

Average fuel economy improved by 60 percent to 21 miles per gallon in 2005 from 13.1 miles per gallon in 1975.

That’s abysmally poor, and certainly qualifies as “little change” in my book.

Fifteen years ago I owned a car that got 50 miles per gallon regularly. It was cheap too. There’s no compelling reason everyone in the U. S. couldn’t have owned one, say, fifteen years ago.

1975 to 2005 is 30 years. Look at the 30 year spans of, say, 1903-1933 for changes to cars (not to mention airplanes!), or 1975-2005 computers, the period in which horses were replaced by cars. Rapid technological change can happen, and 30 years is plenty of time for it. A 60% increase in average fuel economy, starting from the kind of awful that only government subsidy could have underwritten, is not very impressive.

And I think they’d have known that in 1975: wasn’t the millennial news media filled with “Where’s my flying car?” stories in the year 2000?

Sailboat

[zuma]

I’m with Sam on this… it would not really work today.

Although the thought of a 2005 teen sleeping over at his 1975 mom’s house, and seeing the grandparents snorting coke and the mom smoking weed, all the while wearing super-revealing shorts and tube tops would be hilarious. Maybe it would work in a reverse situation. I honestly think that today’s teens couldn’t deal with what was going on in the 70s haha.

Maybe it would make an interesting film.

[zuma]

Ooh…

For the skateboarding scene, 2005 marty transported back to 1975 would be wearing a helmet, elbow pads, and kneepads, the 1975 kids would be making fun of him for the extraneous gear, much like the “ski jacket” scene in the original.

[Dewey_Finn]

For the skateboarding scene, Marty could rig up some inline skates (rollerblades) instead. I don’t think they existed in 1975, although they aren’t terribly current today.

[BrainGlutton]

Ooh, I’ve got it! The setting is moved from a small town in California to a small town in Wisconsin . . . and Marty’s parents are part of this group of friends who periodically hang out in a basement smoking (it is strongly implied) pot . . . and there’s this foreign exchange student . . .

[RickJay]

@zuma

I’m with Sam on this… it would not really work today.

Although the thought of a 2005 teen sleeping over at his 1975 mom’s house, and seeing the grandparents snorting coke and the mom smoking weed, all the while wearing super-revealing shorts and tube tops would be hilarious. Maybe it would work in a reverse situation. I honestly think that today’s teens couldn’t deal with what was going on in the 70s haha.

Again, though, that’s not what the movie is about. It’s not wild and crazy 1985 Marty blowing the kids of 1955 away with his wild behaviour. Geez, it’s like you guys are describing a different movies. The references are all to terminology and technology, like the “I saw this in a re-run” reference, or jokes like:

MARTY: Give me a Pepsi Free.

SODA JERK: You want a Pepsi, ya gotta pay for it!

Over and over, Marty is amazed that his parents and their peers AREN’T squares; his Mom is horny, his Dad is a peeping Tom, and Biff is as abusive a bully as anyone you’ll encounter today.

The only thing about Marty that seems “wild” to the denizens of 1955 is his guitar riffs - which is really more about the music being weird than anything else - and again, you could just make him a DJ doing some gangsta rap for the same hilarious effect.

[Scumpup]

@RickJay

The only thing about Marty that seems “wild” to the denizens of 1955 is his guitar riffs - which is really more about the music being weird than anything else - and again, you could just make him a DJ doing some gangsta rap for the same hilarious effect.

IIRC, Marty is, himself, rather surprised during the musical number when the 1955 teens do some rather spectacular dancing.

To make this re-make work, you would have to juxtapose a 2005 teen against a 1975 setting that superficially resembles the world of The Brady Bunch or The Partridge Family TV shows. Marty’s expectations that kids from that time period really behaved like the characters from those shows could then be hilariously dashed…just as in the original Marty (and the audience) had pre-existing expectations that the 50’s really were like Leave It to Beaver and similar shows.

[Fern_Forest]

@Dewey Finn

For the skateboarding scene, Marty could rig up some inline skates (rollerblades) instead. I don’t think they existed in 1975, although they aren’t terribly current today.

I’ve seen the design in a 19th Century issue of Scientific American but I don’t think most people knew that.

[Walloon]

Illustrated history of inline skate designs.