Blog

13. Back to the Future - Back to the Future (yes, the chapter is actually called that)

“Time circuits on. Flux capacitor…fluxing.”

There is a type of action sequence that requires no violence, only problems. The climactic set piece of Robert Zemeckis’ 1985 classic sets a difficult, precise goal and then makes it increasingly harder for its heroes to achieve.

Never before has an action sequence been infused with such an intractable sense of urgency. It is the domain of time travel films to be centered around a particular event, but the moment here is so exact that it will literally never happen again.

This quality takes advantage of the film’s theme. The movie opens with the most tangible representation of time - clocks. Clocks appear in two crucial locations in this sequence. A big one with Doc Brown and a little one with Marty, tracking the parallel narratives of the piece.

There is a cohesion to all of this: clocks represent time, a precise moment in time (tied to and noted by a clock) is required for their plot to work. I’ve always found it ironic that action cinema rarely takes advantage of visual cues to punctuate theme, since it is, by its very nature, the most visual genre. But Back to the Future gets its visual motif on without hesitation.

On a gut level, the sequence works even without that artistry, since Zemeckis finds little touches to make a horrible situation even worse. Like the cable ripping through Doc Brown’s pants or the cord coming loose on the other end, even after Marty’s started his run and there couldn’t possibly be time for another obstacle. (See the “Are you fucking kidding me?” school of tension in #26.)

The musical cues also do their part. As Marty is driving up and we cut back and forth between him and Doc Brown, the music acts to hurry Brown on. The triumphant theme, by Alan Silvestri, keeps cutting out when the image cuts back to Brown, as if to say “ready yet?” with the silence answering “nope.”

This is a case where the budget forced a better concept. Originally, the sequence was supposed to take place at a bomb test site in Nevada, an atomic explosion being the only way to generate the necessary power.

That sequence was deemed too expensive, so Zemeckis and co-writer/producer Bob Gale came up with this instead. The only reference to the original plan can be seen in the marquee on the theater behind Doc Brown at the end advertising The Atomic Kid, a Mickey Rooney film that takes place on a nuclear test site.

Missing the beginning, but you get the point…

See also: The rest of Back to the Future, the end of Romancing the Stone, all of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (and, of course, Harold Lloyd in Safety Last! but we’ve mentioned that one already).

Next: 62 years is a long time to wait to rip off a classic.