Back to the Future Franchise question... - Page 4

You might as well wonder why it takes Dave and Linda a week to fade from the snapshot in Part 1, but Marty goes in only a few hours.

I always assumed it was because they were older and more firmly entrenched n the timeline, while Marty was younger.

"What we read from the Internet transcripts were shocking and fit the profile of an Internet sex predator.

'Do you like role-play? I've got some life preserver jackets I think you'd look sexy in.'

'I'd like to go down on your flux capacitor at 88 mph'"

No, because that would change Doc from even knowing to wear the bullet proof vest if Marty never got in touch with him in 1955 for the extra plutonium. Setting everything back to Marty never meeting his parents would still kill Doc.

What I mean is, Doc wouldn't know he was going to get shot that night unless Marty gave him the letter. So if Doc gave Marty extra plutonium before he went back to 1955 and Marty didn't have to go through the entire first movie for the Delorian to get struck by lightening, the Doc of 1955 would've never got the letter so the Doc from 1985 would've never known about getting shot thus causing a paradox! *brain explodes* So Doc would make sure that everything leading up to Marty going back to 1955 would go exactly as it always did (thus making sure not to pack extra plutonium/gas or fleeing the country completely) and would only be able to talk to Marty about everything after he returned.

I've wondered that too. He's so upset when he realizes that she was supposed to die, but he refuses to take her with them for fear of altering history. You'd think he would realize that her just being alive would alter history, and removing her from the time line would solve that. Though I guess he does realize that later on.

I liked the way The Butterfly Effect dealt with that. As soon as the main character changed time, he kept his old memories but got new ones as well. I believe it was handled the same way in Frequency.

Also with Clara and the whole ravine.

Notice it got called Eastwood Ravine? Maybe thats how the explained the disappearance of Marty/Clint from the past to the old town folk.

I also wonder this, and also what happened to the Marty McFly of the second 1985 timeline (first movie), the one who didn't grow up in a dysfunctional family? He only had memories of the first timeline, and growing up with a drunk for a mother and wimp for a father. What happened to the Marty who grew up middle class with successful parents?

Huh? It was the town folk who most likely named it Eastwood Ravine after Marty "died" in it.

.....so when you really think about it, Doc has all knowledge of everything that takes place in all of the films, except for his eventual life with Clara and how everything wraps up.
He knows from the beginning that Marty will go back in time, he will get him back home, they travel to 2015, they go back to an altered 1985, which leads them back to 1955, which leads them to the Old West. Sure most of it is secondhand information, but Doc learns of the course of his life as a fairly young man.

Does this make him some sort of mastermind/puppetmaster?

You could argue Doc doesn't know Marty will go back in time, because the timeline in which that happens hasn't been created when the first film begins.

Wow, you're right. 1955 Doc knows about everything up to him going back to the old west and dying there. Mind = blown.

No, remember the diagrams Doc draws in Part II. The timeline in which Doc goes back to 1855 doesn't exist until he actually goes back to 1855. Therefore, any Doc existing prior to that moment has no knowledge of it because it hasn't happened in their timeline yet.

I don't think there's any debate with that. Doc doesn't know. Just as Marty didn't have a new memories when he came back to 1985 in BTTF1 to find his whole family were actually self-made people.

Maybe I'm crazy but I've always figured that nothing changed until the exact moment the DeLeorean left at the end of the film. I figure if you can leave a sleeping girl on a porch in an alternate timeline with no ill effects and it doesn't even disturb her nap how could Marty notice such an instantaneous change himself?

There was no Marty 2 or alternate timeline. Only one timeline that was changed for the better by Marty's actions in the past. Much like how the 1985 timeline was changed by Old Biff's actions.

The utter lack of concern for Jennifer while the entire space time continuum shifts and folds around her is disturbing. What if they had fucked things up and made it worse? She could of gotten raped, a paper cut or been transformed into a single cell organism while they were gallivanting around time and space.

That whole scene plays out like they finished the screenplay, realized Jennifer was pretty much just hanging around for the second half of the film, and decided to just get her out of the way.

The second half? That's how the whole film feels. They dump her in a trash can for the first half.

I remember reading that if they knew there was going to be a sequel they would have never had her gotten in the car at the end of the first film.

Edit: Excuse me, it is an alleyway they leave her in, not a trash can.

That's exactly what Bob Gale said. The ending to the first film was supposed to be a joke. They never had any sequel (or trilogy) ideas when they finished the first movie and thought that was it. So when they wrote the sequel, they knew they couldn't just randomly not have her in the car or negate anything from the first film but realized they wanted to make it about Doc and Marty as a duo and not all three running around so that was what they came up with to get rid of her.

For those that haven't seen it there's a FIRST draft of Back to the Future: Part II (before they decided to make it a trilogy) called Number Two. It's definitely not as good with what we ended up with but it's a fun read on what might have been

http://www.bttf.com/scripts/Number_Two.pdf

Jennifer actually has more to do as does George McFly who actually has a role and the beginning is very similar to what ended up in the film (2015, Sports Almanac, alternate 1985) but instead of Biff going back to 1955 to change things, he goes back to 1967 and then the script is basically a remake of the first film but set with 1960s humour. In 2015, there's a scene where Marty actually encounters Huey Lewis and the News playing live on stage music from 1989 (which Marty obviously hasn't heard before).

They run into the Peabodys again, Marty is dressed to the extreme as a "Hippie" (like the joke on how he was dressed as a cowboy in 1885) and over-using the word "groovy", Marty gets arrested and Goldie Wilson is his public defender (who's changed his name to Muhammad Wilson), Lorraine bails him out of jail (and doesn't recognize him at all even with a new name like Marty DeLorian) and brings him home to her two small children Little Dave and Little Linda who are all organizing an Anti-War movement, George is away at Berkely teaching a seminar where Lorraine was supposed to meet him but used all her money to bail Marty out of jail, Marty realizes that Lorraine meeting George at Berkeley is when he will be conceived so he needs to get the money for Lorraine to get there, Lorraine's parents make an appearance, Doc of 1967 (who looks a cross between an Indian guru, a rock star and a scientist) wants to help Marty as he hasn't seen him in 12 years and there's all this humor in the Doc of 1985 trying to avoid the Doc of 1967 as they both try and help Marty get the book back from Biff, Doc of 1967 has a dog named Newton, Doc 1967 runs into Doc 1985 but just thinks he's taken too much LSD.

In the end Marty gets the book from Biff, George comes back to Hill Valley and takes Lorraine personally back to Berkeley (which Marty managed to raise enough money from an anti-war crowd) and Marty and Doc use a nuclear bomb (with help from Doc 1967) to get back to 1985. Once back, Doc makes his speech about the future not being written and then goes off to the "5th dimension".

You sure he doesn't go off WITH The 5th Dimension?

I'm going to my grave championing the "only one malleable timeline that we mere humans cannot perceive the changes in" theory.

You know who also got fucked? Red the Bum. Everybody got a great new life, Biff got his comeuppance (although one could argue that being an asshole alone doesn't deserve consignment to a life of menial labor waxing spoiled rich kids Toyota's) and Red is still a drunken, homeless vagabond scrapping by on the fringes of Hill Valley society.

Ah, but he looks GREAT!

Everything looks great! Especially that porn theater.

Downtown Hill Valley still looks like ass, as well. Personally, I blame Mayor Goldie Wilson. I can only hope that George, once his novel hits big, will dump some of those royalties into revitalizing the downtown area.

Maybe the guy liked being a bum. Just because Marty fixed his life doesn't mean everyone else's will also get fixed. It's the Quantum Leap way of correcting what once went wrong.

Maybe that's the life he wants to live? Goddamn man! Let him live the life he chose!

When one out of control teenager is in charge of time machine that can remake our entire reality?

No one gets to choose.

"Hey Red, I've got a time machine and we can mold our very existence to our any whim and desire with just the slightest changes to the timeline. You in?"

"No, I want to beg for change in front of the porno theater and dumpster dive the Orange Julius until I die from TB in the alley behind the Burger King..what the fuck do you think!"

I don't think Red made a conscious choice. He's more than likely crazy and can't make decisions. And some people do want to be bums, shocking as that may be.

I wonder if in the alternate reality that this version was made, a Ghostbusters sequel existed that was universally viewed as being better than the original.

Thank God Zemeckis vetoed this script.

That's the choice I'd make.

Red seemed to be having fun in Biff's 1985.

I always wondered how Marty knew Red. He seems to be attracted to eccentric older men.

Why don't you have a seat, Red??

You know, for the longest time I thought Red the Bum and Mayor Red Thomas was the same guy. They even look the same.

Until this thread, I actually thought they were the same person.

During a previous Into-BTTF mood of mine, I recall reading something about a theory known as "Other Marty" about this.

I suppose you're going to make me google. Fine.

Edit:

That was the most depressing read ever. Marty who goes back in time as Marty is returning from 1955 faces his hellish original reality?

Which when I think about it, makes some kind of strange sense, because that Marty is leaving the new and improved existence that Marty is returning to. But we really have no idea if he leaves and returns to the original timeline---can't it just be a continuous time loop within the same dimension? Why does any Marty McFly have to return to the original 1985?

So now all homeless people are crazy and wouldn't take advantage of a time machine if offered?


Buck Flower is rolling over in his grave right now Ed.

Didn't think of that, but if you look at time as straight line that never really replaces it self, but can loop back and then have new events unfold to create alternate realities (wow I need a comma or a period):

Marty has to go back to the original time line to allow him to go the future to allow Biff to alter the past.

So the events had to happen. People traveling with the bend of time wouldn't be affected because they were the catalysts and had to exsist for the new sequence of events to unfold.

Basically no fate but what we make for our selves.