“Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.”
An enticement for an adventure to an adventurous guy like Marty McFly could not be more alluring. Coming from a known eccentric and possible genius Doc Brown only adds icing to the cake. The mystery of traveling through time is put in concrete terms as being something that is truly never the same experience twice and it is presented as a seduction that the wacky older man knows the fascinating younger man could not possibly resist. Especially with the additional option of bring a girl along with him this time.
"Whoa. This is heavy."
A teen from the 80’s goes back in time to meet his parents before they fell in love only to discover that his very hot mom has taken a romantic interest in him. Yes, indeed, the film touches upon some rather “heavy” subtexts and themes, but chooses to explore them for humorous purposes. The entire plot of the film could be remade as a significantly with a significantly adult-oriented psychological perspective. This depth potential which remained relatively unexplored may be one reason why the film touched such an unexpected nerve and became not just merely a blockbuster inspiring sequels, but something of a generational touchstone.
“Flux capacitor, fluxing.”
The age of the postmodern science fiction films may not have been introduced in Back to the Future, but it was certainly cemented there. For most of the history of the film genre, screenwriters felt a pressing need to explain in often excruciating detail how their futuristic gizmos works; almost as if audiences would only believe men could walk on the moon without an oxygen supply if it were first explained how this would be possible. The entire mechanics of time travel in the film essentially revolves around the “flux capacitor” but rather than go to great lengths to explain something that the audience knows doesn’t really exist, the filmmakers decided to just wink at the audience engage in a meta-narrative commenting not on time travel, but science fiction movies.
“I'm George. George McFly. I'm your density. I mean, your destiny.”
The entire plot of the film revolves around making sure that a guy who approaches a girl like this winds up marrying her. Seems pretty thin and certainly unlikely, of course, but the irony created by the gap of what we know did happen and the seemingly long odds that such a future could possibly have existed is part the film’s charm and what makes it almost seem as if it isn’t even a science fiction movie at all.
