If you don’t enjoy this movie, you’re not thinking fourth-dimensionally

by Thom Yee

Back to the Future Part III images courtesy of Universal Pictures.

There’s always been a strong argument against a Back to the Future sequel, and it’s an argument that still stands even now, twenty-five years after two sequels came out and both turned out to be at least okay. Beyond its obvious strengths, the original Back to the Future is simply a neat, tidy, and self-contained story, one that, because of its time-travel premise, rewards multiple viewings but also one that, because of its time-travel premise, begins to unravel the more you add to it with further installments. And for those of you who’ve always wondered (or have always misremembered), no, in its original showings it did not end with the famous “To Be Continued…>” title card.

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Roads! When we are, why do we still need roads?!

by Thom Yee

Back to the Future Part II images courtesy of Universal Pictures.

The date is October 24 and the year is 2015 — three days after Marty McFly and Doctor Emmett Brown arrived in their future (our present) to prevent Marty McFly, Jr.’s arrest. In the process, they unwittingly set forward a series of events that would alter our past (their present), resulting in a ruined 1985 where Biff Tannen became one of the richest men in America who used his newfound economic power to influence the political and socio-economic climate of the country for the worse, resulting in widespread crime, corruption, prostitution, and gang warfare. In order to prevent this dark timeline from happening, McFly and Brown engaged in further unsanctioned time travelling to fix their present-day 1985 and set history back on its correct course. But did they really succeed or did they, in fact, set humanity — all of us — back by engaging in these chronal machinations. Continue reading →

Say hi to your mom for me

by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of Universal Pictures.

It’s the thirtieth anniversary of Back to the Future!

That’s a big deal.

Really.

It is.

It was July 3, 1985 when Back to the Future first hit theatres, literally just over thirty years ago, and not only does that mean we’ve finally reached the year its sequel travelled forward to, with its flying cars and hoverboards and rehydrated pizzas, it also means that we’ve travelled as far forward in time since its release as Marty McFly travelled back in time to 1955 to ensure his own existence and re-emergence into an improved 1985 timeline.

Is that important? Does that mean anything? Did that sentence even make any real sense? It doesn’t matter. I don’t, uh… I’m gonna start over. Continue reading →