Lots of films don't age well. We remember films being a whole lot better when we saw them the first time. We were once mesmerized. Now we can't get over how much they suck, and how in the hell we didn't notice the first time.
The Back To The Future trilogy is, appropriately, timeless.
Back To The Future premiered when I was 10 years old; Parts II and III came out when I was 14 and 15, respectively.
Dad usually rented good movies. Now he buys Blu-Ray discs. Guess who got him the Blu-Ray player? Call it payback for nurturing my love of movies. I was pretty much allowed to watch anything at a young age (okay, no porn). I saw The Terminator when I was 11 or 12. I turned out mostly fine.
I don't remember how I saw Back To The Future Parts II and III, so let's assume I saw those on video as well in the early 1990s. I may have seen both of them in the theater, or at the drive-in a mile from my childhood home. I have no idea.
I distinctly remember seeing the TV special that promoted Parts II and III, when Zemekis, Spielberg, and screenwriter Bob Gale went back to the well. Talk about excited. Even then I knew there was more story to tell, and I wanted to see where everything went. I digress.
These films mesmerized me when I was a kid, and seeing them now, I appreciate them for how they take me back, and for how they have barely aged.
Perhaps most importantly, Michael J. Fox is forever young here, before Parkinson's derailed his career. I love seeing him in supporting roles in shows like "Rescue Me" now, but this trilogy is the best work of his career.
Sure, there are plot holes you can drive (or fly) a DeLorean through. How did the walkie-talkies in Part II work all over town except in the Hill Valley tunnel? I distinctly remember endless childhood frustration with lots of different walkie-talkies that barely received from across the yard.
How come the DeLorean only runs when the plot needs the DeLorean to run?
Never mind. This is brilliant stuff.
I went several years without owning these films. The studio screwed up the initial DVD release with technical problems. I felt like a sucker. But when I saw the reissues pictured above, I snapped them up.
Having a film (or trilogy of films) I loved as a child connects me to my youth. I have a lot of films like this. In a way, they're like traveling through time.
When I watch this trilogy, everyone is young again. These films put me right back in the 1980s, stretched out on the living room floor in front of the family's wooden, console television. The front door is propped open, and I can hear the insects outside on a summer night. I can hear the semi trucks on the highway in the distance. Unfortunately I can smell Mom's cigarette smoke, but I can also smell the popcorn she made.
Back here in the future, I find myself looking backward a lot.
Ha. With the setup of the first paragraph, I was like, "Nuh uh! Dude isn't about to talk hell on Back to the Future!"
ReplyDeleteBut then you turned it around in the 2nd paragraph, and okay.
It's funny, how easily and vividly movies from our childhood can takes us back. Any time I think of Young Guns, Iron Eagle, Aliens, Terminator 2, Top Gun, so on so forth, all these movies from my youth, I can smell again the old house north of Brazil, I can see the red shaggy and tattered rug in the middle of our old living room. Possibly even more than smells, which is supposed to be the sense most directly linked to memory, movies like this seem to work in the vice versa.