The Real McFly: How the Back to the Future Trilogy Corrects its Timeline
Some weeks ago, my best friend and I had a movie night over FaceTime, repeatedly trying to play the video at the same time and giving each other our timestamps to try and match up whenever one of us had to pause it. Normally when we do this, we only watch one movie and don’t pay much attention to it, but I had recently discovered that all three films were on Netflix, and neither of us had seen them in some time, so we decided to marathon them. It took us until 1AM to finish them, and a good percentage of that time was spent with her laughing at me for becoming so incensed at Marty McFly’s seemingly sudden character change. In the five years since I had last seen the trilogy, I had assumed the motif of “No one calls me chicken” was present throughout all of it. It decidedly is not, and watching the trilogy all at once highlights that. Though I enjoyed the trilogy, it frustrated me that the story added in a sort of hair-trigger scenario for Marty and played it as though the audience should have already been familiar with it the first time it occurred in Back to the Future Part II. It took some days ruminating over the logic of the series to recognize the purpose in adding this element to the sequels.
The original Back to the Future did not end with a “To Be Continued” card. It ended with a cut to black following a cliffhanger not initially meant to be resolved. Screenwriter Bob Gale and director Robert Zemeckis conceived the film as a self-contained story, and the final scene in which the Delorean flies off to the future allowed for the possibility of the sequel, but also left Doc Brown and Marty McFly’s continuing adventures open to the viewer’s imagination had the film never expanded into a franchise. When the decision was made to produce sequels, they ultimately resolved a much larger issue than the external one set up at the end of the first film concerning Marty’s future children.
The first act of Back to the Future is purposeful in establishing Marty’s everyday life and how it informs his worldview and self-image. His family is lower-middle class with his father George in a dead-end job under abusive boss Biff Tannen, his parents’ relationship is not particularly close or affectionate, and he has a family member in prison. Not only that, but his principal makes a point to tell him he will never amount to anything worthwhile, that his father was a “slacker” who went nowhere in life and the same future is waiting for Marty. The family’s economic status is a major source of insecurity for Marty that informs his attitude toward his parents and adds to his ambition as a guitarist. It also manifests in bouts of impulsive rage when he or someone he cares about has been slighted. He curses at the Libyan terrorists after they assassinate Doc Brown, which leads to him having to escape in the Delorean when they turn their fire on him. Now in 1955 when his entire existence is in jeopardy, he confronts Biff Tannen for harassing his mother, leading to her unwittingly falling in love with her future son instead of George. It only ever leads to more problems, yet he doesn’t overcome this by the end of the first film. Instead, he influences George to use some of his righteous anger to stand up to Biff and alter the course of their lives from that point on.
Marty returns to the present day to find that his family is now happy and successful, with Biff under their thumb performing menial work for them. Everything else in his life that had been positive remains; he is still dating Jennifer Parker, and Doc Brown listened to his warning in the past and put on a bulletproof vest before the terrorists arrived. On all counts, it is a happy ending and the cliffhanger in the final scene serves to imply more exciting adventures for him and Doc. But his issues in the sequels prove that although his life changed around him, he did not change to fit in with his new world. Now that his father has a high-paying and respected position, and his parents’ relationship is more loving, Marty’s deep-seated resentment has no source or target. His memories and personality were formed in a world that no longer exists, and logic dictates he should be perfectly happy in the one that does.
In Back to the Future Part II, Marty’s home life with his future children is eerily similar to his life at the beginning of the first film. He has a low-ranking office job (continuing the use of poverty as shorthand for personal failure), can no longer play the guitar due to an injury, and his son has fallen in with a gang led by Biff’s grandson. His parents became successful after he altered the past and he benefited from it as a teenager, but it was not a given that this would set his life on track for his own goals. In this timeline, he maintains his resentment toward the event that stunted his career as a musician and his domineering boss. Both his younger self posing as his son and his older self are swayed by being called “chicken” by people trying to persuade him to help with some shady dealings, and it still makes sense because he continues to resent his place in life. His anger fits into this timeline, but it still only serves to make his situation worse as his son ends up with the same embarrassment for Marty that he previously had for George. Having changed his parents’ future means nothing for his own.
In Part III, as Marty prepares for a duel with a gunman from the Tannen family, his ancestor Seamus confides in him that he had a brother with a similar temper who was killed in a fight. At this point he is unaware of his future self’s many misfortunes, but his conversations with Seamus make him realize how his rage and pride endanger his future, both in terms of his success or failure and life or death, as well as the potential it has to hurt the people around him. This is especially poignant now that his present timeline is comfortable and privileged. He no longer has an excuse to act the way he does, and if he doesn’t overcome it, he will eventually return to the same meager and unhappy state he was in at the beginning of the trilogy.
Marty’s internal conflict begins at the same time Doc Brown starts to fall in love with Clara Clayton and contemplates staying in the past with her. Doc briefly ends their relationship in order to return to the present and maintain the correct course of history, but ultimately goes back to her and stays behind when Marty goes back to 1985. When Marty arrives in the present, the confrontation that led to his injury takes place, but now he refuses to engage with the people goading him to prove himself and the accident that would have broken his hand is narrowly avoided. Soon afterward, Doc arrives in a new time machine with Clara and their children to deliver the trilogy’s thesis: “Your future is whatever you make it, so make it a good one.”
It’s a simple philosophy that is most prominent in the third film, but it’s also particularly relevant to Marty’s character growth. His present timeline becomes happy and desirable in the first film, but he has to move on emotionally from his former life in order to make a successful future possible. Both he and Doc have now breached traditional time travel protocol (don’t step on a butterfly, don’t introduce “Johnny B. Goode” three years early, etc.) for the sake of their own happiness, but they also had to overcome their most deep-seated faults to actually be happy, be it anger management issues or a strict dedication to rules and logic. The shift in timeline requires a recognition of those faults and an individual responsibility not to let them stand in the way of a good future.
An MFA student at Hollins University whose penchant for Disney led into a love for all things film. Film critic/essayist and screenwriter. View all posts by Mary McKeon
Originally published at http://miseensense.wordpress.com on July 19, 2020.
