|
He's the only kid ever to get into trouble before he was born.
Marty McFly is a teenager living in Hill Valley, California. On the morning of
Friday, October 25, 1985, his eccentric friend, scientist Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown
(Lloyd), calls him, asking to meet at 1:15am the following morning at Twin Pines
Mall. Upon arriving home from school, Marty finds the family car wrecked in
the driveway, ruining his plans to spend the weekend with his girlfriend Jennifer (Claudia Wells). Inside the
house, he finds his meek, nerdy father, George (Crispin Glover), being bullied by his
supervisor Biff Tannen
(Thomas F. Wilson), who had borrowed and wrecked the car. At dinner that night,
Marty's mother Lorraine (Lea Thompson) recounts how she
and George first met when her father hit George with his car as George was
"bird-watching".
That night, Marty meets Doc as planned in the parking lot of Twin Pines Mall.
Doc presents a DeLorean
DMC-12 which he has modified into a time machine. As Marty videotapes, Doc explains the car travels to a
programmed date and time upon reaching 88 miles per hour using plutonium in a nuclear reaction to
generate the 1.21 gigawatts of power it requires. Demonstrating how to
program the machine, Doc enters in November 5, 1955 as the target date,
explaining that it was the day he conceived the idea of the flux capacitor; the
device which "makes time travel possible." Before Doc can depart for his planned
trip into the future, a group of Libyan terrorists, from whom he stole the
plutonium, arrive in a Volkswagen bus and murder him. Marty jumps into
the DeLorean and is pursued by the Libyans until he accelerates to 88 miles per
hour and is inadvertently transported back in time to 1955.
The car's starter fails shortly thereafter; Marty hides the car, and makes
his way into town on foot. He finds that the town square now reflects the popular culture of the
1950s, and that the clock tower which was destroyed sometime in his past
is once again functioning. Marty runs into his own father, then a teenager,
being tyrannized just as he was in 1985 by Biff, then the school bully. Marty follows George (who turns
out to be a peeping tom, not a birdwatcher) as he is about to be hit by a car;
Marty pushes George out of the way and takes the impact. The car turns out to be
driven by Lorraine's father, resulting in Lorraine becoming infatuated with Marty instead of George. Marty is
disturbed by her flirtations, which contrast sharply with the prudish mother he is familiar with. He flees from her
home to find Doc Brown.
Doc initially believes that Marty is a lunatic, but he convinces Doc by
recounting the story of how Doc got the inspiration for the flux capacitor, and
then by showing Doc the videotape of the 1985 experiment. However, when he hears
his older self describe the power requirements for time travel, Doc is shocked.
He tells Marty that aside from plutonium, the only possible source of that much
power is a bolt of lightning,
which cannot be predicted. Marty remembers that the lightning strike at the
clock tower will occur the following Saturday (November 12, 1955) at 10:04pm. As
a result, Doc begins planning a way to harness the bolt's power. Doc also
deduces that Marty, by saving his father from the car, has prevented his parents
from meeting, and instructs him to set things right or else he, along with his
siblings, would never exist.
After several failed attempts at playing matchmaker, Marty eventually works
out a plan to have George appear to rescue Lorraine from Marty's overt sexual
advances on the night of a school dance, so he can leave to make his return to
1985. However, Biff shows up unexpectedly and orders his friends to lock Marty
in a car trunk. Heavily intoxicated, Biff jumps into the car and attempts to
force himself on the horrified Lorraine. George arrives as he and Marty have
planned and is shocked to find Biff instead of Marty. Biff orders him to turn
around and walk away, but George cannot bring himself to ignore Lorraine's pleas
for help. When Biff pins his arm behind his back and laughs as he knocks away
Lorraine who tries to defend him, George finally snaps and knocks out his
tormentor with a single punch. A smitten Lorraine follows George to the dance
floor, where they kiss for the first time, ensuring Marty's existence.
Doc, meanwhile, has used cables to connect the clock tower's antenna to two
lampposts, which he plans to have Marty drive under in the DeLorean, now
sporting a lightning
rod, the moment the lightning strikes. Before Marty can leave, Doc finds a
letter in his coat pocket that Marty has written, warning him about his future
murder. Doc indignantly tears up the letter without reading it, describing the
dangers of altering the future. Marty instead adjusts the time machine to take
him back to 1985, the parallel year, ten minutes earlier than he left, giving
him time to warn Doc. Upon his return to the future, however, the car stalls and
Marty arrives at the mall too late to save Doc. As Marty begins crying behind
his friend's body, Doc wakes up and opens his radiation suit to reveal a bulletproof vest. He shows Marty the letter he
had written, taped back together. When asked about his belief in not altering
the future, Doc replies, "I figured, what the hell?"
The next morning, Marty finds his family has been changed for the better.
Most notably, Lorraine is physically fit and is no longer prudish, and George
has become a self-confident novelist who confidently confronts a servile Biff.
Just as Jennifer and Marty reunite, Doc arrives, insisting frantically that he
has visited the future and that they must go back with him to work out a problem
concerning their future children. The three take off into the sky in a newly
upgraded DeLorean that can fly, and disappear into the future.
 Copyright(C) 2007
- 2020. All rights reserved
|
|