Robert Zemeckis' Classic Time-Travel Movie
Back To The Future may not have been completely groundbreaking - Ebert grants it only 3.5 stars! - as time travel had been done before, from The Time Machine (1960) to Planet of the Apes (1968). My favorite in the genre is probably Time After Time (1979), with David Warner but Robert Zemeckis set a new benchmark and ever since, any time travel picture has been measured against it.
THE LEGACY
Did you know that Zemeckis also wrote Spielberg's flop
1941 and directed the fabulous
Romancing The Stone with Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglas and Danny De Vito? Here are some more trivia: Douglas and De Vito had both been on
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest with Douglas as producer and De Vito in the cast next to … Christopher Lloyd (here as The Doc). Since writing
Back To The Future, Zemeckis' main credits other than
The Polar Express have mostly been
Back To The Future spinoffs, including the various installments of the game.
THE WORLD
I love how the movie sets up the fictional town of Hill Valley, California as a pleasantly comforting small American community with easily recognisable land marks, which is handy when you start time travelling and you have to find your way around. The world is contained and knowable. Not only is it relatively small, everybody knows each other and they mostly know what you're up to as well. It doesn't take long before we feel at home in this town where everything and everyone is safe, even with someone as crazy as the Doc around. So when the Libyan terrorists appear, this is very much a break out of the ordinary world...
THE OPENING
The movie boasts a whole range of classic moments, such as the DeLorean's explosive jump back into time, the awkward mother-sun dalliance, the lightning / return climax and Biff's comeuppance. Here is also an example of a deceptively simple, yet highly effective and exciting opening. The writing is super tight, with a bunch of exposition squeezed into mere seconds of screen time. Over the titles, we see a pair of feet entering the Doc's place and we are introduced to a few important clues to the ensuing plot and subplots. Even before a single word is spoken, the audience is fed a whole range of questions and by the time Marty is blown away by the monster loudspeaker, we know he is friends with the Doc, rides a skateboard and plays the guitar.
SETTING UP GOALS EARLY
Perhaps the most important quality of this opening sequence is how it sets up anticipation through visual questions and character goals. Why does the Doc have the missing plutonium hidden in his lab? Why hasn't he been there for a while? The Doc wants to meet Marty that night but won't tell him what for; Marty needs to get to school on time and wants to compete in the music contest. All these questions and goals give the story instant momentum, which is something any screenplay can benefit from. Ask yourself: how do you set up anticipation in your first scenes? The opening elements in Back To The Future are all linked to a deadline or a subplot even in that first act, propelling the story engine with a power of 1.21 GigaWatts.
Karel Segers
Karel Segers wrote his first produced screenplay at age 17. Today he is a story analyst, script editor and producer with experience in rights acquisition, script development and production. His
screenwriting classes have trained writers in Australia, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and his clients include international award-winning filmmakers as well as three Academy Award nominees.
Karel is the founder of
The Story Department and he ranks in the world's Top 10 of most influential people for screenwriting on Twitter.