So we are finally here in the future and now the past. The 21st October 2015.
For those who have been living in a bubble this is the date that Marty McFly and Doc Brown go forward to from 1985 in Back to the Future Part II.
It’s amazing that a film from 1985 with two sequels in 1989 and 1990 have produced this surreal event. I think it is the first time since Prince’s song 1999 that something has captured the publics’ imagination. Prince’s song was about partying and a year; this was a day and how the future could be.
How many news items have had what predictions have come true from Back to the Future Part II? Well a lot. Every news programme’s mentioned it. It must be quite incredible for the people involved in the films to witness the reaction it has had. Surely Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis never imagined that this day would cause so much fuss when they wrote the film.
We could talk all day about the predictions which were made in the film. We discussed it in the Hour of Power that fax machines are a thing of the past now and that everyone uses E-mails instead. The film didn’t foresee the advent of the internet, and the World Wide Web was a good decade away from common usage.
I’m not going to bang on about the predictions we all know what is life is like now and the innovations that have occurred in the intervening 30 years. On the whole they did a pretty good job of realising a believable future (but we are still waiting for those hover boards).
I’ll sign off on this blog by declaring my continuing love for Back to the Future. I remember the trailer for the film, and there being a tie in with a breakfast cereal of some sort, and clips of the film being in the cereal commercial. But I didn’t see the film when it came out in 1985, I didn’t see it until Christmas 1988 when it was on TV on Christmas Day. I loved the film straight away. Bizarrely I didn’t go and see the sequels at the cinema either. I waited until they came out on video to see them (Do you remember videos? They predated DVD and Blu-Ray?!) My elder brother Gary got me a pirate copy of Back to the Future Part II from a friend of his at college, there was no end credits as the film cut just where Doc says Great Scot and collapses. I watched that again and again and again most nights throughout 1990 and probably 1991 until I got Back to the Future Part III on video.
I finally had all the Back to the Futures on video (2 and 3 were ex-rental copies in the big boxes, why did ex-rental have the bigger boxes?) Bizarrely I actually got the original Back to the Future on video last. I’d recorded it off TV that Christmas and had watched it so many times I wore the tape out. My grandma bought it me for about £10.99 around 1991 or 92 from, the sadly missed, Woolworths. I have to say it was the first adventure movie I was completely obsessed with in my teen years, in a different way from Star Wars as Back to the Future didn’t have action figures!
So that was my Back to the Future experience. I never fell out of love with it. I got the albums, made the DeLorean models, bought the t-shirts, got the box set on video in the mid 90s and then got the DVD of the films when they came out. I’ll get the new DVD with the extra features on them and there’s also a comic which I have ordered. So the future’s here but it’s much the same as the past even though it’s 27 years since I first saw the film I still want to go Back to the Future.
Excelsior
Craig
