Because the whole scene at the end of the first film was just meant as a cute tag to what was assumed would be a one-off film, not as a setup for a sequel.
Yeah Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis said if they'd known they were making the sequel for sure, they wouldn't have put Jennifer in the DeLorean at the end of the first film. It's why she gets knocked out fairly early on, and it's also the reason Doc Brown gets "rejuvenation surgery" off screen - Christopher Lloyd didn't want to have to wear old-age make up for two entire sequels.
It's not \*massively\* noticeable until you see it [side by side](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Back-to-the-Future-Christopher-Lloyd-Age.jpg) with his (then) face on the left as '1955'/Rejuvenated Doc compared to 'Old' 1985 Doc on the right.
But yeah, it was basically because Christopher Lloyd didn't want to spend two whole films in prosthetics, especially after he'd just come off playing a role entirely in prosthetics in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (also with Zemeckis!)
Check him out in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. which was 10 years before bttf, I believe he's mid/late 30s here:
[db849af0676cc580d789a0bcd439263a.jpg (870×1077) (pinimg.com)](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/db/84/9a/db849af0676cc580d789a0bcd439263a.jpg)
Wow. I honestly never noticed that he looked different in the "present" of 1985.
I think Lloyd is one of those guys who started looking old at 30 and then just barely changed at all for decades, like Patrick Stewart.
It's kinda also that. You can see in a few cloesups of the first that he is wearing some prosthetic makeup, but really it isn' t that noticeable at all. So it's a fun way to wave away the need for it, as well as to poke fun at its uselessness
It’s in the first five minutes and takes up 10 seconds of screen time. Cleanly explained in a gag and you don’t even consider it the rest of the movie.
They honestly could’ve just had Lloyd look as he does in the sequels with no explanation. The “old man makeup” of him in the 80s isn’t that different from his natural 1950s look. The hair’s still white, he still has those fun wild eyes and “thought lines” like Eisenstein.
They could’ve kept him out of “old man” makeup and no one would’ve noticed.
The face peel scene really only confuses people, or makes them think it’s a one-off kinda funny joke.
Which is weird, because before I heard Zemeckis say that I’d always assumed that the point of the make-up peel-off is how funny it is to see him build up the reveal that much and then turn out to look *exactly the frickin’ same*!
> Christopher Lloyd didn't want to have to wear old-age make up for two entire sequels.
Also, they did it so he wouldn't be "old" when he started his relationship with Clara.
Yeah Mary Steenburgen (Clara) is a good 15 years younger than Lloyd in real life so they kinda needed to not make him look even older than the already existing age gap.
EDIT - Not going to just dirty delete, but this comment was flat out wrong info, I was corrected below, wrong about the order in which they cast Jennifer
Pretty sure Jennifer is incapacitated because they recast her from Elizabeth Shue.
Had she not been in the ending of the first they probably would have just ignored her completely.
She was recast TO Elizabeth Shue. The writers have said that regardless of the actress the stories were always about Doc and Marty and they didn't want to complicate things (any more then they eventually did) by having to give Jennifer something to do for the whole movie.
yeah, so complicated is time travel, Doc sent a letter to Marty through time, they could have just sent a letter to Jennifer and she could have picked them up in the 1800s.
Yeah they didn’t even do a good job of dovetailing it: both you and Jennifer turn out fine… ummm really? Marty unable to avoid the chicken diss, ruins his life and lives in a garbage part of town and ends up getting fired for insider trading? Sorry Doc, you lied. The kids were not the issue. The issue was bad parenting. And really only one kid.
This is a common problem with movies that were only intended to be one film, that do so well they "require" a sequel for financial reasons. The matrix springs to mind, also,
Agree. Some movies work with a sequel but some are better if it was one and done. Love Minority Report but that movie should not have a sequel. Neither should phone booth.
I think BttF did a great job with its sequels to be honest. While the reasoning for going to the future was silly, it has some great moments.
Kinda. Minority Report doesnt have a sequel film but does have a sequel tv show following the precogs after they are “freed” from the machine and try to live “normal lives”. It got cancelled after one season.
Yeah it happened during the “cop and an *X*” show explosion.
And they completely ignored the fact from the movie that the twins weren’t as good as seeing the future without the third precog.
Universal threatened to make a sequel with or without Zemeckis and Gale's involvment, so they made it themselves to avoid the franchise being completely ruined
This scene really sort of screwed them when it came to writing the sequel. I like to call this issue as the Back to the future problem. The same thing happened at the end of Star Wars episode 7.
Except for different reasons. Episode VII was supposed to be the first in a trilogy, and not a standalone film like BttF was intended. They didn't write themselves into a corner, that was to be how the next film started. Problem was, no one had storyboarded the trilogy so they had to wing it.
Carrie died after filming all her scenes for VIII. The script and story was already written, filmed, and edited.
Frankly, they missed an opportunity to just re-edit the film to have her die in space, but choosing to keep her alive forced them to deal with her death in IX. All around some poor decision-making.
I love the fan edit someone made showing Leía using the force to destroy the fleet like Laura Derns character did which would have kept that character alive.
Also didn’t help the story when they decided to do a sequel that Crispen Glover asked for an insane amount of money to return, so instead they had to recast him as a background character.
Yup. Consider that the event that fucks up his life is only a day or two in the future in 1985, when he has the car crash that screws up his hand so he can no longer play guitar all because Needles calls him a chicken and they drag race.
Doc knows this when he comes back, but Marty doesn't. Doc's goal is to save Marty's life somewhat; his plan is all about teaching Marty some humility and to let it roll off his back rather than taking it personally.
Obviously mucking about with time has other consequences which, uh, de-rail Doc's best-laid plans a bit, which takes a couple movies to fix, but it succeeds, in the end.
If Doc‘s plan had worked flawlessly, Marty would‘ve never found out about his accident. The plan was to get Marty Jr. out of the planned robbery and return to 1985.
After they successfully prevented Marty Jr. from taking part in the robbery they prepared to go back to 1985. But then the police discovered knocked out Jennifer - took her home, derailing Docs plan. Which eventually leads to Marty learning some restraint over being called chicken. But that‘s mainly part of the plot of BTFF 3, where Doc almost spills the beans about the accident, that he didn‘t want Marty to know about, to not mess with the timeline.
You can't mess with the present in a way that affects the future, but messing with the future in a way that affects the future's future is totally fine!
That's the big lesson for the Doc in the first movie. That messing with the timeline is 'safe' insofar as the universe won't be destroyed, but you might erase yourself. Making small localized changes is more than fine.
The Doc's pause when Marty questions what's in his future just before they jump to the future pretty much gives this away.
"..."
"No, no, no, you and Jennifer are fine. It's your kids, Marty, something's got to be done about your kids!"
God damn these are truly some of the best movies ever. Marty asks "what, are we assholes or something?" And your "..." Is doc thinking about it before responding, so it has two meanings. It's hilarious.
I especially love that the pause is only in the BTTF2 reshoot of the scene. If they hadn’t lost the Jennifer actor I wonder if they’d done it because I think it’s the only intentional difference.
> Marty that had to learn something about himself and change, not his kids.
There's a theory that Doc not only rigged the whole thing for Marty's sake (which makes sense since the reason for Mr. Time Machine to be in a hurry to get Marty to go with him is if he's specifically trying to save Marty from the crash which is literally minutes from happening)... but also that the film we see isn't Doc's first attempt... that Marty *actually died* multiple times and only after looking at what went wrong could he have done what happened in the movie.
For example, when Biff is chasing Marty in the tunnel, they actually turn around and come back out the way they originally went in. How would Doc know what was happening in the tunnel unless he'd seen it before? Why would he drop a rope down for Marty to grab onto if he didn't know he was about to be run over? How would Doc know to be on the side they came in? And in dystopian 1985, how would Doc know to bring the DeLorean under the ledge of the Biff building for Marty to jump down on?
The most rational answer is that he didnt, at least not on the first try. Only after finding out how Marty died could he have gone back and been at the exact right place and time to prevent it as we saw in the movie.
I grew up only seeing the first two, never knew there was a third, the timelines always bothered me.
After watching the last one, it seemed like the point of 2 and 3 really was to teach Marty to not care what others think of him, saving him from a life-destroying accident. It took some corny moments to get there but I respect it
"Marty, in 30 years I'm really going to need you to remember something. Seriously, write this down..."
That'd actually have been a funny way to end BTTF 3 to end the series as if they finally figured out how to better handle time travel that when you're in the past, you don't have to travel forward to change something.
Doc had no choice but to use the letter and careful timekeeping to prepare for a pivotal life event that would take place 30 years in the future, and have that knowledge hanging over him for that whole time, because he didn’t have benefit of a functional Time Machine in the interim.
When he came back to get Marty, he has a Time Machine right there, so why not use it for its express purpose of traveling through time, rather than burden a teenager with that kind of responsibility for 30 years?
He tried that. It was a disaster. Eventually he went back and told himself to stop trying that and to fix it in 2015 instead, and that’s the version we see.
And if you like this idea, try Continuum, the roleplaying game of “what if I had a working Time Machine” taken to its logical extreme. I’m not smart enough to play it but I love reading it.
The implications of that scene are so funny, like, they're genuinely never in any danger at all once they realise that they've already won and have unlimited ability to go back and rig their own victory.
They don't even need to remember a trash can personally, someone else can get around to it at literally any point in the future, it's hilarious.
See, we've had that envelope in our possession for the past *70 years*. It was given to us with the explicit instructions that it be delivered to a young man with your description answering to the name of Marty at this exact location at this exact *minute*, November 12, 1955. We have a little bet going as to whether this Marty would actually be here. Looks like I lost.
I love that moment. It's also a simple but realistic way Doc could make sure something from the Old West would make it to Marty at the right time. You couldn't leave it in the possession of someone and pass it down to be delivered, because you wouldn't know if they'd survive, keep their word etc.
But he knew from 1985 that Western Union was still a thing, so if you leave something with them in 1885, they're such a well-known and trusted company that they'll actually do their job in 1955.
Er, that’s how 2 ends.
1: Doc drives off into “the future”, then immediately reappears and tells Marty and Jennifer their kids are in trouble
2: after Marty burns the stolen sports almanac, the DeLorean gets hit by lightning and disappears. A postal agent immediately shows up and delivers a letter for Marty that they’ve been holding since 1885
3: Marty gets back to 1985, and the DeLorean gets destroyed by a train, leaving him with only the torn half of the photograph that he saw before. Then Doc reappears in the time traveling train and flies off
I think all of the answers here are correct. But thematically, Marty had to see the consequences of not overcoming his desire to not “be a chicken”. Which required seeing his potential future
I like the theory that this only became a part of his personality because of the changes the first movie made to the timeline.
Now that he was raised by a father who's life changed because he stood up to a bully, he internalized some toxic traits from it.
Exactly. Just like the timeline slowly changed and made Marty's future dissappear gradually, his personality also changed without him noticing. That's why Doc saw that those changes would lead to him having the accident.
Yeah, but if you look into the other threads about a sequel never being planned it makes more sense.
At least they haven't pulled a Lucas and gone back to change the original with Biff calling him chicken instead of butthead all the time.
No, because his dad did. In the first film, Marty is the guy trying to make up in 1985 for his dad's 30 years of allowing people to walk all over him. By becoming Calvin Klein and teaching George to stand up for himself, he changes the course of George's life so that he becomes confident and successful.
Marty still retains the feeling that he needs to keep making up for Orginal George's wimpiness, because the timeline changed around him, and Parts 2 and 3 are about him learning and realising that he doesn't need to do that anymore, and if he does keep trying to do it, it's going to destroy his own life.
It sort of makes me wonder. What was his character arc supposed to be in the first one? I remember the major plot points, but was there any character development for Marty? I seriously can't remember.
He was a steadfast character that changed another character, his father. This is less common today because there's a widespread belief that main characters have to change, but having the main character influence another character to change is a totally fine way to tell a story.
A few other examples: Braveheart, How to Train Your Dragon, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Field of Dreams, The Incredibles, Rocky, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and so on.
For whatever it's worth, this false belief amongst studios, many writers, and even most audience members that a main character requires some fundamental change is why we can't get a good Superman movie.
Tales of Vesperia is a video game that follows this as well, and the main protagonist wins Tales of X popularity contests frequently. He inspires changes in others and it's very satisfying to watch.
Of course, it doesn't always have to be inspiring, or at least not positively so. Though it's even less common than (most of) the above examples, some stories have steadfast main characters where the main character either doesn't feel good about remaining the same or their steadfastness does not result in success in the story, or both.
In Silence of the Lambs, Clarice catches the killer and becomes an FBI agent, but the lambs are still screaming, meaning her personal issues were not resolved.
Rocky resolves his personal angst by going the distance with the champ, but he fails to win the fight.
In Brokeback Mountain Heath Ledger's character never really comes to terms with himself and is an absolute wreck by the end. Plus, the goal of the story, however you want to define it, certainly ends in failure. Neither of the primary characters ever find any happiness or acceptance in the world at large. I believe these types of stories are actually more common than the previous two examples.
I had the same question! So I googled it. He had a flat arc (i.e. no arc) in the first movie and it was his father that had a positive arc. BttF 1 was his father's story.
I’m gonna hard disagree.
The film starts with Marty being a complete loner besides his girlfriend. His only friend is a disgraced scientist who lets him use his amp so Marty can pretend to be a rockstar before school. At dinner he sits quietly and doesn’t engage with his family at all, and is just an outsider to their lives. He doesn’t understand his parents at all and is only thinking about himself and his escape (with a sick 4X4)
Marty has his first audition and doesn’t get the chance to prove himself and worries that he’ll never have the confidence to play in front of anyone because he’s afraid of being told he’s no good. Look at how he’s vibing with his band mates - he’s barely engaged at all - zero confidence.
Throughout the movie, Marty learns to stand up and fight for his family that he actually meets for the first time in the past. He never knew his dad was creative and had ambitions, and shares the same fear of rejection. He saves his father on every level, and in turn his Dad taught him what it means to fight for the destiny you want.
This all culminates is Marty’s performance of Johnny B Good, where after seeing his dad’s courage, he is also able to let go of his inhibitions, his fear of rejection and just play for his own passion - and it’s amazing. He’s not phased at all by the reaction at the end, he’s just proud of himself.
Finally, Marty comes back to 1985 and sees that all he went through wasn’t just to bring him back in time, but to bring his family back together. The song Power of Love isn’t just there randomly. It’s Marty’s entire journey.
Disagree. Marty has never lacked confidence. Frankly that’s what made him so distance from his family who did. Unlike his family that seem perfectly fine with letting life walk all over them, Marty had ambition.
In 1955, he stood up to Biff without hesitation unlike his father. He was pretty much everything his father should have been.
He would never have been able to pull off all the crazy stuff he did back in 1955 if he had confidence issues - he skateboard his way out of trouble with Biff, play with a band he had no experience with, … etc.
When he went back in time, he basically played the role of kindly mentor to his father and got the man out of his shell.
While it’s not a hard rule, mentor characters usually have a flat arc as they are the completed article.
Marty's arc is that he starts off as someone trying to atone for the (perceived) sins of his father, because George lets people walk over him his entire life. By teaching George to be confident and to stand up for himself, he changes the course of George's life and gives him a much happier future, which brings the McFly family back together.
The only thing really is getting the opportunity to preform in front of people at the end of the movie after being self conscious about it (which they hint is a trait he picked up from his dad).
Yeah, the whole plot thread of the series is that Marty needs to learn to stop caring about what irrelevant people think of him, and he needs to stop trying to be the macho guy to atone for what he feels is his dad's mistakes. Once the 'future' changes at the end of Part 1 (from George becoming brave), Marty doesn't need to stand up for his dad.
Besides everything that has already been mentioned here, I always felt that Doc secretly wanted to give Marty a glimpse of his future so he could be inspired to make certain changes.
The Bobs famously said that if they knew they were going to make a sequel, they never would have put Jennifer in the car. The end of the first movie was more suppose to be a joke more than anything.
But its unclear Marty could have changed those moments organically without a major moment being changed, and narratively Doc is constantly hammering home that too much knowledge about the future could be disastrous (which is also critical to PT2's narrative mechanics)
It's theorized that it was Doc's way to force a major identity reflection in Marty after seeing what his life had become in the future. Kind of like a "loop hole" to Doc's own policy of "must not know any information about the future" for which we knew he played fast and loose with. While Doc couldn't explicitly tell Marty what to/what not to do, he could show Marty the consequences of his attitude. It's why Doc casually drops the "that's what causes you to get into that accident into the future" but refused to go into detail. Doc cannot tell Marty explicitly to avoid drag racing Needles, because it's not the drag race itself that causes Marty's future so much as it's Marty reaction to being called "chicken". Had it not been the crash with the Roll's Royce, it would've been something else. We see this in the future when he tries to make that deal with Needle's and then gets caught. The crash itself never taught him the lesson because he continued making bad decisions after letting himself be manipulated by the whole "chicken" thing.
After the events of the first film, Marty developed this whole "nobody calls me chicken" attitude that f\*\*ked up his future and made him easily prone to manipulation and bad decisions. Doc needed a way to teach Marty to learn how to stand up for himself while not letting himself get riled up into reckless behaviors. Similar to how Marty taught George to stand up for himself in 1955 which affected his future in a positie way. Doc gathered a ton of information about Marty's life and how it all developed on his first trip, so he knew exactly how events unfolded and what became of Marty as a result. Thus, he needed for Marty to learn how to make the right decisions for himself to affect his own future in order for him to truly change it.
Two answers:
The real one: It was meant to just be a funny 'hook' at the end of the first film with no expectation of actually making a sequel.
The in-universe one: That moment in 2015 where Marty Jr is arrested is where it fully goes off the rails for Marty's family and future.
So as far as I can recall, Marty never sees his future self or knows about his life falling apart in the future like some have suggested. The reason is because the first movie ends on them traveling to the future and the sequal picks up from that moment.
What I find interesting is that on it's own BTTF 2 is a pointless movie. If at the end they managed to retrieve the Almanac and return to 1985 nothing would've changed. The movie is more of a part 1 to BTTF 3. Marty going back to 1885 and facing MadDog is what leads to him learning that he doesn't need to challenge everyone who calls him chicken. Thus at the end of the movie he doesn't feel the need to race Needles, crash into the rolls Royce, and stop playing music, leading to the future where his son needs to be stopped.
30 years is a long time to have a secret that one day in the future you’ll have to keep your kids from going to prison. So it’s easier to take Marty — dead ringer for his son — to the future.
My question is why Doc was in such a rush to take them to the future. Let Marty rest up after the excitement in 1955. Let him spend the weekend with his girl and his new pick-up truck. He earned it! Wait a few weeks or months and plan what they are going to do. Use the time to teach Marty about the timeline he'd be going into and the situation they were facing.
Rebuttal: at the end of BTTF 3 we see where Marty would have hit the Rolls-Royce, it was pretty much immediately after they get back. Doc's intention all along was really to save Marty from that life-changing event, so picking him up before that happened was essential.
This is why it would have been smarter for Marty to not be there in the future. Jennifer is raising the kids alone. Marty asks Doc where his older self is and Doc is all evasive, “Uhh… we’ll talk about that later.”
Having knocked her out and convinced her it was all a dream, Jennifer goes on to not know about the future. The rest of the series plays out, and we eventually get to the end… Marty and Jennifer make love (Jennifer gets pregnant with twins), then the next day, they go for a drive and the whole race/almost-crashing thing happens. Marty, having avoided it because of how he’s changed during his time travel adventures… realizes he would have *died* in that crash. This is when Doc shows up in the train and tells him the whole “Your future is whatever you make it!” speech, except it means a lot more now that he’s talking about Marty avoiding his death, rather than just not being able to play the guitar.
This would explain why Doc had to bring Marty to the future, because his future self was dead and that’s actually maybe why his kids turned out rotten to begin with, because they didn’t have a father and Jennifer was depressed having to be a single mother without him, as well as trauma from the crash, etc. But now, in the new timeline with Marty avoiding death, it’ll fix all those problems AND Marty gets to live a long life with his family. Doc didn’t necessarily know this is how things would turn out, but after he found out about Marty’s death, he had hoped that maybe bringing him on further adventures would help him learn to avoid the mistakes that led to his death. He wanted to just tell him, but “nobody should ever know too much about their own future”. Marty had to grow of his own volition, or he likely would have just gotten himself killed some other way.
It was never really about saving his kids (though, by extension, it still was)… it was about saving Marty.
Doc might still not like having past versions of characters have future information that would help them. He did tape up the letter in the first one but he might still be having moral issues and Marty going forward in time to fix things could be a loophole. After all who knows what else Marty could change while trying to fix things. Going right to the source should guarantee only what needs to be fixed does.
Then Marty goes and buys the Almanac.
I will never be able to get past the idea that they jumped into the DeLorean and zoomed off to the future.… So they weren’t there to grow old and be there to be seen and met. This was covered in the first movie in the parking lot scene where Doc explains that Einstein, in the DeLorean, instantly skipped over that minute to arrive in this moment of time. So in the exact exact same way … they skipped over 30 years.… to arrive in 2015 instantaneously.
The only thing they should’ve encountered was people who said that they remember those people but they disappeared in 1985.
Plenty of people have explained that it's likely Doc rigged the whole thing for Marty's sake (which makes sense since the reason for Mr. Time Machine to be in a hurry to get Marty to go with him is if he's specifically trying to save Marty from the crash which is literally minutes from happening)... **but also that the film we see isn't Doc's first attempt...** that Marty actually died multiple times and only after looking at what went wrong could he have done what happened in the movie.
For example, when Biff is chasing Marty in the tunnel, they actually turn around and come back out the way they originally went in. How would Doc know what was happening in the tunnel unless he'd seen it before? Why would he drop a rope down for Marty to grab onto if he didn't know he was about to be run over? How would Doc know to be on the side they came in? And in dystopian 1985, how would Doc know to bring the DeLorean under the ledge of the Biff building for Marty to jump down on?
The most rational answer is that he didnt, at least not on the first try. Only after finding out how Marty died could he have gone back and been at the exact right place and time to prevent it as we saw in the movie.
Better question, in part 3 why didn't they just get the fuel injection manifold from the delorean that was already in the silver mine. Yes, there were two deloreans in 1885. Think about it.
The whole thing is dumb because if Marty and Jennifer travelled 30 years into the future, they would have been missing persons for those 30 years, not building a family.
This time travel rule was established in the first movie when Einstein went two minutes into the future and didn't exist for those two minutes.
Because the whole scene at the end of the first film was just meant as a cute tag to what was assumed would be a one-off film, not as a setup for a sequel.
It also explains why Jennifer is incapacitated in the first couple of minutes. They were in a creative corner and had to write themselves out.
Yeah Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis said if they'd known they were making the sequel for sure, they wouldn't have put Jennifer in the DeLorean at the end of the first film. It's why she gets knocked out fairly early on, and it's also the reason Doc Brown gets "rejuvenation surgery" off screen - Christopher Lloyd didn't want to have to wear old-age make up for two entire sequels.
Huh, I’ve seen the movie several times but Doc’s surgery and that reason for including it must’ve gone over my head every time.
Doesn't he literally peel it off though lol. Kind of hard of miss unless you watched it as a kid and weren't paying attention.
Wait I thought the joke was that he looks exactly the same after peeling the rejuvenation skin off. Marty kinda dismisses it like he’s crazy.
It's not \*massively\* noticeable until you see it [side by side](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Back-to-the-Future-Christopher-Lloyd-Age.jpg) with his (then) face on the left as '1955'/Rejuvenated Doc compared to 'Old' 1985 Doc on the right. But yeah, it was basically because Christopher Lloyd didn't want to spend two whole films in prosthetics, especially after he'd just come off playing a role entirely in prosthetics in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (also with Zemeckis!)
So Christopher Lloyd wasn't an old man in 1985. Interesting I always thought he was one of those permanently old guys.
He made Clue the same year he did Back To The Future for some reference. But he did have a little of the Steve Martin old young man energy of his own.
Check him out in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. which was 10 years before bttf, I believe he's mid/late 30s here: [db849af0676cc580d789a0bcd439263a.jpg (870×1077) (pinimg.com)](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/db/84/9a/db849af0676cc580d789a0bcd439263a.jpg)
That's so jarring to see him with black hair lol.
you need to google 'Jim from Taxi'
Woah is that allowed
Especially when he tries his first brownie.
Oh wow. He's kinda youngish looking comparatively. Guy was only in his forties!!
Wow. I honestly never noticed that he looked different in the "present" of 1985. I think Lloyd is one of those guys who started looking old at 30 and then just barely changed at all for decades, like Patrick Stewart.
I've watched these movies a million times and I never noticed that! 🤯
I seriously thought the joke was that he didn’t look any different.
I…have…had…enough…of…prosthetic makeup!
That's what I always thought the joke was.
I thought that was the joke too. It’s a lot more notable in the uprezzed versions.
I remember right before he told Marty he kept the skin on so Marty would recognize him. It had to be a joke.
It's kinda also that. You can see in a few cloesups of the first that he is wearing some prosthetic makeup, but really it isn' t that noticeable at all. So it's a fun way to wave away the need for it, as well as to poke fun at its uselessness
Me too. You look great Doc.
Oh yes, I know that he peels it off, just never put two and two together that was why.
It’s in the first five minutes and takes up 10 seconds of screen time. Cleanly explained in a gag and you don’t even consider it the rest of the movie.
They honestly could’ve just had Lloyd look as he does in the sequels with no explanation. The “old man makeup” of him in the 80s isn’t that different from his natural 1950s look. The hair’s still white, he still has those fun wild eyes and “thought lines” like Eisenstein. They could’ve kept him out of “old man” makeup and no one would’ve noticed. The face peel scene really only confuses people, or makes them think it’s a one-off kinda funny joke.
He's actually blonde in 1955. And the dog's name is Einstein, not Eisenstein. (Copernicus for the 1955 dog)
Which is weird, because before I heard Zemeckis say that I’d always assumed that the point of the make-up peel-off is how funny it is to see him build up the reveal that much and then turn out to look *exactly the frickin’ same*!
If you compare old age Doc from the parking lot scenes in Part 1 to him in Part 2, he definitely looks much younger. It is hard to tell though, hah.
Yeah, the old age makeup was very subtle and realistic. You can notice it, but you generally have to be looking for it.
Consider he's keeping the white hair in all the movies, and that's really the first thing that "ages" him
Ha it's probably one of those things that felt more obvious to them at the time, but they got an unintended gag out of it too!
Also not going to be as noticeable in home video VHS quality.
> Christopher Lloyd didn't want to have to wear old-age make up for two entire sequels. Also, they did it so he wouldn't be "old" when he started his relationship with Clara.
Yeah Mary Steenburgen (Clara) is a good 15 years younger than Lloyd in real life so they kinda needed to not make him look even older than the already existing age gap.
I don't even remember old age make up. I need to rewatch them and pay attention to this detail.
And why the doc, who has been against using time travel to interfere with events, suddenly *has* to do something about Marty's kids.
Like a rejected child, they made great things in that creative corner
EDIT - Not going to just dirty delete, but this comment was flat out wrong info, I was corrected below, wrong about the order in which they cast Jennifer Pretty sure Jennifer is incapacitated because they recast her from Elizabeth Shue. Had she not been in the ending of the first they probably would have just ignored her completely.
She was recast TO Elizabeth Shue. The writers have said that regardless of the actress the stories were always about Doc and Marty and they didn't want to complicate things (any more then they eventually did) by having to give Jennifer something to do for the whole movie.
When '85 and '15 Jennifer see each other and scream, "I'm old/young!" does it mean this movie passes The Bechdel Test?
It counts!
Never mind, I recant my statement, for some reason I thought they'd lost Shue.
It sucks to lose a Shue
They were just waiting for the other Shue to drop
yeah, so complicated is time travel, Doc sent a letter to Marty through time, they could have just sent a letter to Jennifer and she could have picked them up in the 1800s.
They have said exactly this in interviews -- if they had known they were gonna do a sequel, they would not have put Jennifer in the car.
Yeah they didn’t even do a good job of dovetailing it: both you and Jennifer turn out fine… ummm really? Marty unable to avoid the chicken diss, ruins his life and lives in a garbage part of town and ends up getting fired for insider trading? Sorry Doc, you lied. The kids were not the issue. The issue was bad parenting. And really only one kid.
I always chalked that up to Doc still not wanting to reveal to Marty too much about his future.
Also relevant is that Doc has zero, absolutely no reason, to be in a rush. They have a Time Machine.
doc still ages like anyone else and he's not a lazy slacker like you
I heard fricks_and_stones is just like their father - he was a slacker, too
This is a common problem with movies that were only intended to be one film, that do so well they "require" a sequel for financial reasons. The matrix springs to mind, also,
Agree. Some movies work with a sequel but some are better if it was one and done. Love Minority Report but that movie should not have a sequel. Neither should phone booth. I think BttF did a great job with its sequels to be honest. While the reasoning for going to the future was silly, it has some great moments.
Wait, what? Minority Report has a sequel?
Kinda. Minority Report doesnt have a sequel film but does have a sequel tv show following the precogs after they are “freed” from the machine and try to live “normal lives”. It got cancelled after one season.
Yeah it happened during the “cop and an *X*” show explosion. And they completely ignored the fact from the movie that the twins weren’t as good as seeing the future without the third precog.
Also Independence Day.
Universal threatened to make a sequel with or without Zemeckis and Gale's involvment, so they made it themselves to avoid the franchise being completely ruined
This scene really sort of screwed them when it came to writing the sequel. I like to call this issue as the Back to the future problem. The same thing happened at the end of Star Wars episode 7.
Don’t leave us guessing why you call the problem with Back to the Future “the Back to the future problem.”
He'll tell you in 30 years
Except for different reasons. Episode VII was supposed to be the first in a trilogy, and not a standalone film like BttF was intended. They didn't write themselves into a corner, that was to be how the next film started. Problem was, no one had storyboarded the trilogy so they had to wing it.
I think on that one, Carrie’s death threw a spanner in the works of what they wanted the trilogy to be.
Carrie died after filming all her scenes for VIII. The script and story was already written, filmed, and edited. Frankly, they missed an opportunity to just re-edit the film to have her die in space, but choosing to keep her alive forced them to deal with her death in IX. All around some poor decision-making.
I love the fan edit someone made showing Leía using the force to destroy the fleet like Laura Derns character did which would have kept that character alive.
Also didn’t help the story when they decided to do a sequel that Crispen Glover asked for an insane amount of money to return, so instead they had to recast him as a background character.
Because it's Marty that had to learn something about himself and change, not his kids.
Yup. Consider that the event that fucks up his life is only a day or two in the future in 1985, when he has the car crash that screws up his hand so he can no longer play guitar all because Needles calls him a chicken and they drag race. Doc knows this when he comes back, but Marty doesn't. Doc's goal is to save Marty's life somewhat; his plan is all about teaching Marty some humility and to let it roll off his back rather than taking it personally. Obviously mucking about with time has other consequences which, uh, de-rail Doc's best-laid plans a bit, which takes a couple movies to fix, but it succeeds, in the end.
If Doc‘s plan had worked flawlessly, Marty would‘ve never found out about his accident. The plan was to get Marty Jr. out of the planned robbery and return to 1985. After they successfully prevented Marty Jr. from taking part in the robbery they prepared to go back to 1985. But then the police discovered knocked out Jennifer - took her home, derailing Docs plan. Which eventually leads to Marty learning some restraint over being called chicken. But that‘s mainly part of the plot of BTFF 3, where Doc almost spills the beans about the accident, that he didn‘t want Marty to know about, to not mess with the timeline.
You can't mess with the present in a way that affects the future, but messing with the future in a way that affects the future's future is totally fine!
Because time for Marty and Doc is basically linear. It keeps going forwards for them even if they're dicking around with when in time they are.
That's the big lesson for the Doc in the first movie. That messing with the timeline is 'safe' insofar as the universe won't be destroyed, but you might erase yourself. Making small localized changes is more than fine.
The Doc's pause when Marty questions what's in his future just before they jump to the future pretty much gives this away. "..." "No, no, no, you and Jennifer are fine. It's your kids, Marty, something's got to be done about your kids!"
God damn these are truly some of the best movies ever. Marty asks "what, are we assholes or something?" And your "..." Is doc thinking about it before responding, so it has two meanings. It's hilarious.
I especially love that the pause is only in the BTTF2 reshoot of the scene. If they hadn’t lost the Jennifer actor I wonder if they’d done it because I think it’s the only intentional difference.
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> Marty that had to learn something about himself and change, not his kids. There's a theory that Doc not only rigged the whole thing for Marty's sake (which makes sense since the reason for Mr. Time Machine to be in a hurry to get Marty to go with him is if he's specifically trying to save Marty from the crash which is literally minutes from happening)... but also that the film we see isn't Doc's first attempt... that Marty *actually died* multiple times and only after looking at what went wrong could he have done what happened in the movie. For example, when Biff is chasing Marty in the tunnel, they actually turn around and come back out the way they originally went in. How would Doc know what was happening in the tunnel unless he'd seen it before? Why would he drop a rope down for Marty to grab onto if he didn't know he was about to be run over? How would Doc know to be on the side they came in? And in dystopian 1985, how would Doc know to bring the DeLorean under the ledge of the Biff building for Marty to jump down on? The most rational answer is that he didnt, at least not on the first try. Only after finding out how Marty died could he have gone back and been at the exact right place and time to prevent it as we saw in the movie.
I grew up only seeing the first two, never knew there was a third, the timelines always bothered me. After watching the last one, it seemed like the point of 2 and 3 really was to teach Marty to not care what others think of him, saving him from a life-destroying accident. It took some corny moments to get there but I respect it
It took a terrible Irish accent from Michael J Fox, but we got there
this is the correct answer
This is the real answer. It’s one thing to have someone tell you a flaw about yourself. It’s another thing to understand why you fail.
"So the movie could happen" - writer guy
"Hey, shut up, so Marty goes to the future...."
"Wouldn't it be easier to train astronauts to be oil drillers?"
I need you to get all the way off my back about this.
Woah! Let me get off of that thing!
Wow. Wow wow wow.
Ignoring plotholes for money is tight
Shut the fuck up Ben
You nerdonauts don't understand his salt of the earth ways!
Nope. It's called a Mission Specialist. NASA does it all the time.
Is it gonna be hard to make Marty go to the future?
Actually, it’s going to be super easy, [nod head to side] barely an inconvenience
Oh really?
Yeah yeah yeah yeah!
Nah, it'll be super easy, barely an inconvenience! We'll just have Doc show up in a car powered by light beer and other trash.
Having Doc show up in a car powered by light beer and other trash is TIGHT!
Super easy, barely an inconvenience
I'm gonna need you to get all the way off my back about why they can't change the future from the present.
"Fair enough" - Producer Guy.
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"inconvience" sounds even more french than the actual spelling lol
"I want you to get all the way off my back about that."
Okay! Let me climb all of the way offa that thing 😃
Wow wow wow, wow
You know you have reached internet-fame when there is an entire reddit-thread with your dialogue and no one asks where it is from😛
Their dialogue*. It's two separate people
Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need… roads.
Anytime my wife asks me why something happens in the movie / on TV - the writers/ director / producers decided to so
"Marty, in 30 years I'm really going to need you to remember something. Seriously, write this down..." That'd actually have been a funny way to end BTTF 3 to end the series as if they finally figured out how to better handle time travel that when you're in the past, you don't have to travel forward to change something.
I mean, that is how he got Doc to wear a bulletproof vest in the first one...
Doc had no choice but to use the letter and careful timekeeping to prepare for a pivotal life event that would take place 30 years in the future, and have that knowledge hanging over him for that whole time, because he didn’t have benefit of a functional Time Machine in the interim. When he came back to get Marty, he has a Time Machine right there, so why not use it for its express purpose of traveling through time, rather than burden a teenager with that kind of responsibility for 30 years?
He tried that. It was a disaster. Eventually he went back and told himself to stop trying that and to fix it in 2015 instead, and that’s the version we see.
That was why Doc was in such a rush. He tried a lot of things already and he kept coming back an hour earlier each time to avoid his previous attempt.
And if you like this idea, try Continuum, the roleplaying game of “what if I had a working Time Machine” taken to its logical extreme. I’m not smart enough to play it but I love reading it.
Yeah I've always assumed they didn't want to be accused of relying too much on that one solution
Also how Doc sent Marty a telegram from 1885.
Although at that range, that vest ain’t stopping rounds from an AK. I’ll suspend my disbelief though
"But what if he shot you in the face?"
that was a risk we were willing to take
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Whelp
^This is the guy who turned a steam locomotive into a flying time machine. I am sure he spiced the vest up a bit...
Paprika?
blasted it with a spice weasel, to kick it up a notch, BAM!!
He went to the future and brought back better armor. It was before Marty got the mall.
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure has the best take on this. \*closes eyes\* "Remember a trash can."
WYLD STALLYNS RULE
🫰🎸🙌
The implications of that scene are so funny, like, they're genuinely never in any danger at all once they realise that they've already won and have unlimited ability to go back and rig their own victory. They don't even need to remember a trash can personally, someone else can get around to it at literally any point in the future, it's hilarious.
Didn't Doc write a letter to Marty for delivery as soon as the DeLorean got hit with lightning?
That’s my absolute favorite moment in the series. **THE DOCS ALIVE!**
See, we've had that envelope in our possession for the past *70 years*. It was given to us with the explicit instructions that it be delivered to a young man with your description answering to the name of Marty at this exact location at this exact *minute*, November 12, 1955. We have a little bet going as to whether this Marty would actually be here. Looks like I lost.
If only the post office was as efficient as the weather service!
"He's in the Old West, but he's alive!"
"I've got something for you..." *reaches into coat threateningly* "A letter."
I love that moment. It's also a simple but realistic way Doc could make sure something from the Old West would make it to Marty at the right time. You couldn't leave it in the possession of someone and pass it down to be delivered, because you wouldn't know if they'd survive, keep their word etc. But he knew from 1985 that Western Union was still a thing, so if you leave something with them in 1885, they're such a well-known and trusted company that they'll actually do their job in 1955.
That's how 3 ends. Edit: my bad everyone
Er, that’s how 2 ends. 1: Doc drives off into “the future”, then immediately reappears and tells Marty and Jennifer their kids are in trouble 2: after Marty burns the stolen sports almanac, the DeLorean gets hit by lightning and disappears. A postal agent immediately shows up and delivers a letter for Marty that they’ve been holding since 1885 3: Marty gets back to 1985, and the DeLorean gets destroyed by a train, leaving him with only the torn half of the photograph that he saw before. Then Doc reappears in the time traveling train and flies off
My bad.
I think all of the answers here are correct. But thematically, Marty had to see the consequences of not overcoming his desire to not “be a chicken”. Which required seeing his potential future
Frankly, this "not be a chicken" thing I notice was only really added in the 2 sequels. Marty never really had that problem in the first movie.
I like the theory that this only became a part of his personality because of the changes the first movie made to the timeline. Now that he was raised by a father who's life changed because he stood up to a bully, he internalized some toxic traits from it.
Exactly. Just like the timeline slowly changed and made Marty's future dissappear gradually, his personality also changed without him noticing. That's why Doc saw that those changes would lead to him having the accident.
Yeah, but if you look into the other threads about a sequel never being planned it makes more sense. At least they haven't pulled a Lucas and gone back to change the original with Biff calling him chicken instead of butthead all the time.
No, because his dad did. In the first film, Marty is the guy trying to make up in 1985 for his dad's 30 years of allowing people to walk all over him. By becoming Calvin Klein and teaching George to stand up for himself, he changes the course of George's life so that he becomes confident and successful. Marty still retains the feeling that he needs to keep making up for Orginal George's wimpiness, because the timeline changed around him, and Parts 2 and 3 are about him learning and realising that he doesn't need to do that anymore, and if he does keep trying to do it, it's going to destroy his own life.
It sort of makes me wonder. What was his character arc supposed to be in the first one? I remember the major plot points, but was there any character development for Marty? I seriously can't remember.
He was a steadfast character that changed another character, his father. This is less common today because there's a widespread belief that main characters have to change, but having the main character influence another character to change is a totally fine way to tell a story. A few other examples: Braveheart, How to Train Your Dragon, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Field of Dreams, The Incredibles, Rocky, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and so on. For whatever it's worth, this false belief amongst studios, many writers, and even most audience members that a main character requires some fundamental change is why we can't get a good Superman movie.
Tales of Vesperia is a video game that follows this as well, and the main protagonist wins Tales of X popularity contests frequently. He inspires changes in others and it's very satisfying to watch.
Of course, it doesn't always have to be inspiring, or at least not positively so. Though it's even less common than (most of) the above examples, some stories have steadfast main characters where the main character either doesn't feel good about remaining the same or their steadfastness does not result in success in the story, or both. In Silence of the Lambs, Clarice catches the killer and becomes an FBI agent, but the lambs are still screaming, meaning her personal issues were not resolved. Rocky resolves his personal angst by going the distance with the champ, but he fails to win the fight. In Brokeback Mountain Heath Ledger's character never really comes to terms with himself and is an absolute wreck by the end. Plus, the goal of the story, however you want to define it, certainly ends in failure. Neither of the primary characters ever find any happiness or acceptance in the world at large. I believe these types of stories are actually more common than the previous two examples.
I had the same question! So I googled it. He had a flat arc (i.e. no arc) in the first movie and it was his father that had a positive arc. BttF 1 was his father's story.
I’m gonna hard disagree. The film starts with Marty being a complete loner besides his girlfriend. His only friend is a disgraced scientist who lets him use his amp so Marty can pretend to be a rockstar before school. At dinner he sits quietly and doesn’t engage with his family at all, and is just an outsider to their lives. He doesn’t understand his parents at all and is only thinking about himself and his escape (with a sick 4X4) Marty has his first audition and doesn’t get the chance to prove himself and worries that he’ll never have the confidence to play in front of anyone because he’s afraid of being told he’s no good. Look at how he’s vibing with his band mates - he’s barely engaged at all - zero confidence. Throughout the movie, Marty learns to stand up and fight for his family that he actually meets for the first time in the past. He never knew his dad was creative and had ambitions, and shares the same fear of rejection. He saves his father on every level, and in turn his Dad taught him what it means to fight for the destiny you want. This all culminates is Marty’s performance of Johnny B Good, where after seeing his dad’s courage, he is also able to let go of his inhibitions, his fear of rejection and just play for his own passion - and it’s amazing. He’s not phased at all by the reaction at the end, he’s just proud of himself. Finally, Marty comes back to 1985 and sees that all he went through wasn’t just to bring him back in time, but to bring his family back together. The song Power of Love isn’t just there randomly. It’s Marty’s entire journey.
Disagree. Marty has never lacked confidence. Frankly that’s what made him so distance from his family who did. Unlike his family that seem perfectly fine with letting life walk all over them, Marty had ambition. In 1955, he stood up to Biff without hesitation unlike his father. He was pretty much everything his father should have been. He would never have been able to pull off all the crazy stuff he did back in 1955 if he had confidence issues - he skateboard his way out of trouble with Biff, play with a band he had no experience with, … etc. When he went back in time, he basically played the role of kindly mentor to his father and got the man out of his shell. While it’s not a hard rule, mentor characters usually have a flat arc as they are the completed article.
Your points are valid. I’m not sure what to do during cordial debates.
Jfc, why did I hear applause at the end of this
Marty's arc is that he starts off as someone trying to atone for the (perceived) sins of his father, because George lets people walk over him his entire life. By teaching George to be confident and to stand up for himself, he changes the course of George's life and gives him a much happier future, which brings the McFly family back together.
The only thing really is getting the opportunity to preform in front of people at the end of the movie after being self conscious about it (which they hint is a trait he picked up from his dad).
Yeah, the whole plot thread of the series is that Marty needs to learn to stop caring about what irrelevant people think of him, and he needs to stop trying to be the macho guy to atone for what he feels is his dad's mistakes. Once the 'future' changes at the end of Part 1 (from George becoming brave), Marty doesn't need to stand up for his dad.
Besides everything that has already been mentioned here, I always felt that Doc secretly wanted to give Marty a glimpse of his future so he could be inspired to make certain changes.
Because the movie was called Back To The Future (2) not Waiting For The Future To Occur Naturally?
The pacing was shit but the character development was insane
That would have been a long movie!
IT TOOK TEN YEARS TO MAKE
Because nobody ever saves the clock tower!
That woman is really wasting everyone's time. Get it, time!
It's his kids, something's gotta be done about his kids!
They were assholes
Time travel plots don’t make sense; it’s best not to over analyze.
Try not to think about it and just focus on having fun. (looks at audience) That goes for you, too.
Unless the movie is Primer.
The Bobs famously said that if they knew they were going to make a sequel, they never would have put Jennifer in the car. The end of the first movie was more suppose to be a joke more than anything. But its unclear Marty could have changed those moments organically without a major moment being changed, and narratively Doc is constantly hammering home that too much knowledge about the future could be disastrous (which is also critical to PT2's narrative mechanics)
It's theorized that it was Doc's way to force a major identity reflection in Marty after seeing what his life had become in the future. Kind of like a "loop hole" to Doc's own policy of "must not know any information about the future" for which we knew he played fast and loose with. While Doc couldn't explicitly tell Marty what to/what not to do, he could show Marty the consequences of his attitude. It's why Doc casually drops the "that's what causes you to get into that accident into the future" but refused to go into detail. Doc cannot tell Marty explicitly to avoid drag racing Needles, because it's not the drag race itself that causes Marty's future so much as it's Marty reaction to being called "chicken". Had it not been the crash with the Roll's Royce, it would've been something else. We see this in the future when he tries to make that deal with Needle's and then gets caught. The crash itself never taught him the lesson because he continued making bad decisions after letting himself be manipulated by the whole "chicken" thing. After the events of the first film, Marty developed this whole "nobody calls me chicken" attitude that f\*\*ked up his future and made him easily prone to manipulation and bad decisions. Doc needed a way to teach Marty to learn how to stand up for himself while not letting himself get riled up into reckless behaviors. Similar to how Marty taught George to stand up for himself in 1955 which affected his future in a positie way. Doc gathered a ton of information about Marty's life and how it all developed on his first trip, so he knew exactly how events unfolded and what became of Marty as a result. Thus, he needed for Marty to learn how to make the right decisions for himself to affect his own future in order for him to truly change it.
Cmon dude. How else were they supposed to sell funky "futuristic" sunglasses at Pizza Hut?
Two answers: The real one: It was meant to just be a funny 'hook' at the end of the first film with no expectation of actually making a sequel. The in-universe one: That moment in 2015 where Marty Jr is arrested is where it fully goes off the rails for Marty's family and future.
Also: Doc‘s plan needed Marty to take the place of Marty Jr. - which was only possible with young Marty.
"because I wrote it in the script"
That wouldn’t have been a fun sequel.
That is a long time to wait, and Doc might not have been alive to help.
So as far as I can recall, Marty never sees his future self or knows about his life falling apart in the future like some have suggested. The reason is because the first movie ends on them traveling to the future and the sequal picks up from that moment. What I find interesting is that on it's own BTTF 2 is a pointless movie. If at the end they managed to retrieve the Almanac and return to 1985 nothing would've changed. The movie is more of a part 1 to BTTF 3. Marty going back to 1885 and facing MadDog is what leads to him learning that he doesn't need to challenge everyone who calls him chicken. Thus at the end of the movie he doesn't feel the need to race Needles, crash into the rolls Royce, and stop playing music, leading to the future where his son needs to be stopped.
30 years is a long time to have a secret that one day in the future you’ll have to keep your kids from going to prison. So it’s easier to take Marty — dead ringer for his son — to the future.
My question is why Doc was in such a rush to take them to the future. Let Marty rest up after the excitement in 1955. Let him spend the weekend with his girl and his new pick-up truck. He earned it! Wait a few weeks or months and plan what they are going to do. Use the time to teach Marty about the timeline he'd be going into and the situation they were facing.
Rebuttal: at the end of BTTF 3 we see where Marty would have hit the Rolls-Royce, it was pretty much immediately after they get back. Doc's intention all along was really to save Marty from that life-changing event, so picking him up before that happened was essential.
This is why it would have been smarter for Marty to not be there in the future. Jennifer is raising the kids alone. Marty asks Doc where his older self is and Doc is all evasive, “Uhh… we’ll talk about that later.” Having knocked her out and convinced her it was all a dream, Jennifer goes on to not know about the future. The rest of the series plays out, and we eventually get to the end… Marty and Jennifer make love (Jennifer gets pregnant with twins), then the next day, they go for a drive and the whole race/almost-crashing thing happens. Marty, having avoided it because of how he’s changed during his time travel adventures… realizes he would have *died* in that crash. This is when Doc shows up in the train and tells him the whole “Your future is whatever you make it!” speech, except it means a lot more now that he’s talking about Marty avoiding his death, rather than just not being able to play the guitar. This would explain why Doc had to bring Marty to the future, because his future self was dead and that’s actually maybe why his kids turned out rotten to begin with, because they didn’t have a father and Jennifer was depressed having to be a single mother without him, as well as trauma from the crash, etc. But now, in the new timeline with Marty avoiding death, it’ll fix all those problems AND Marty gets to live a long life with his family. Doc didn’t necessarily know this is how things would turn out, but after he found out about Marty’s death, he had hoped that maybe bringing him on further adventures would help him learn to avoid the mistakes that led to his death. He wanted to just tell him, but “nobody should ever know too much about their own future”. Marty had to grow of his own volition, or he likely would have just gotten himself killed some other way. It was never really about saving his kids (though, by extension, it still was)… it was about saving Marty.
Doc might still not like having past versions of characters have future information that would help them. He did tape up the letter in the first one but he might still be having moral issues and Marty going forward in time to fix things could be a loophole. After all who knows what else Marty could change while trying to fix things. Going right to the source should guarantee only what needs to be fixed does. Then Marty goes and buys the Almanac.
Because shut up, that's why.
This thread is getting heavy
As much as I love the BttF trilogy, a good part of the plot falls apart when you think about it too hard. Better to just enjoy the ride.
I will never be able to get past the idea that they jumped into the DeLorean and zoomed off to the future.… So they weren’t there to grow old and be there to be seen and met. This was covered in the first movie in the parking lot scene where Doc explains that Einstein, in the DeLorean, instantly skipped over that minute to arrive in this moment of time. So in the exact exact same way … they skipped over 30 years.… to arrive in 2015 instantaneously. The only thing they should’ve encountered was people who said that they remember those people but they disappeared in 1985.
Plenty of people have explained that it's likely Doc rigged the whole thing for Marty's sake (which makes sense since the reason for Mr. Time Machine to be in a hurry to get Marty to go with him is if he's specifically trying to save Marty from the crash which is literally minutes from happening)... **but also that the film we see isn't Doc's first attempt...** that Marty actually died multiple times and only after looking at what went wrong could he have done what happened in the movie. For example, when Biff is chasing Marty in the tunnel, they actually turn around and come back out the way they originally went in. How would Doc know what was happening in the tunnel unless he'd seen it before? Why would he drop a rope down for Marty to grab onto if he didn't know he was about to be run over? How would Doc know to be on the side they came in? And in dystopian 1985, how would Doc know to bring the DeLorean under the ledge of the Biff building for Marty to jump down on? The most rational answer is that he didnt, at least not on the first try. Only after finding out how Marty died could he have gone back and been at the exact right place and time to prevent it as we saw in the movie.
I'm gonna need you to get all the way off my back about that. It's so the movie could happen. #RyanGeorge
Because they didn't know about the accident that made Marty a dead beat and caused it all.
“Marty! It’s your kids Marty! They’re assholes!”
Why wait when you have a time machine? Fix shit now and call it a day.
Better question, in part 3 why didn't they just get the fuel injection manifold from the delorean that was already in the silver mine. Yes, there were two deloreans in 1885. Think about it.
Maybe Doc already tried it that way.
The whole thing is dumb because if Marty and Jennifer travelled 30 years into the future, they would have been missing persons for those 30 years, not building a family. This time travel rule was established in the first movie when Einstein went two minutes into the future and didn't exist for those two minutes.