Weight Has Nothing to Do with It

I would give anything, anything, to know how Robert Zemeckis feels about Back to the Future nowadays. The guy doesn’t talk about it. He doesn’t participate in any of the anniversary stuff. He doesn’t contribute new material to the special editions of the Future trilogy Universal releases every five years. I guess I can understand him being tired of people bringing it up, but … well, you made one of the most enduring and beloved American movies of the last fifty years, and maybe ever, dude. There’s no shame in taking a victory lap every once in a while.

Because Back to the Future – which roared back onto shelves last month in Universal’s new 40^th Anniversary Trilogy boxed set – really is a classic, an ingenious script perfectly executed by a team of rising stars and seasoned pros, released at the exact right moment to catch fire in popular culture. Zemeckis and Bob Gale’s bright, rousing adventure – with Michael J. Fox in a star-making turn as teenage time traveler Marty McFly – also functioned as sly pushback to Ronald Reagan’s endless blather about the American golden age, reminding audiences that the idyllic 1950s weren’t as great as your parents and grandparents would have you believe … especially if you were a woman or a person of color.

But mostly it’s about Marty, an ordinary California kid who likes playing guitar and skateboarding and monster trucks and kissing his girlfriend Jennifer (Claudia Wells). His personality reads as slightly rebellious, but mostly because he’s defined himself in opposition to his milquetoast father George (Crispin Glover), a hapless dweeb still taking shit from his childhood bully Biff (Thomas F. Wilson), who’s now his boss. I don’t think we ever find out what it is that they both do, which reflects Marty’s utter disgust with his old man, who sleepwalks through his home life neglecting his kids as well as their mother Lorraine (Lea Thompson), now a glazed-over alcoholic.

Fortunately, Marty has found himself a new father figure in Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), an eccentric scientist who lets the kid use his workshop as a rehearsal space – I think – in exchange for helping him out with his experiments. One of them involves a modified DeLorean. You know how that goes.

With genuinely thrilling set pieces, well-drawn characters and an airtight plot that’s the result of years and years of rewrites, it is – as more than one member of the production says in the supplements – a perfect movie. It was the biggest hit of the year, and rightly so: It’s as good as entertainment gets. Forty years, on the only thing that’s really dated is the unfortunate caricature of the “Libyan nationalists” whose plutonium sets the whole story in motion … but even that now plays as a signifier of the era in which the film was created. You know, like Marty’s mirrored sunglasses or the ebullient beat of “The Power of Love,” the hit single by Huey Lewis and The News. You can hear it right now, can’t you?

Something else no one ever seems to talk about: Back to the Future is one of the best-edited movies ever made, full stop. From the timing of the cuts in the opening reel, matching action after action to the synth line in “The Power of Love,” to the way the sound effects keep time in the Twin Pines Mall scene, the whole thing is exquisitely constructed. Zemeckis and company carry us along with such energy that even things that aren’t supposed to be funny land just right.

For example: The little zzzip! of Doc’s remote control during the first test of the DeLorean got a laugh at every screening I attended, because it sounds like an enthusiastic bark from Einstein in the driver’s seat. I asked Zemeckis about that when we sat down during the Death Becomes Her junket a few years later: “I know!” he said. “It’s just a noise!” But it hits at the perfect moment, just as tension is building up about what the car is going to do. Kismet.

I’ve seen Back to the Future dozens of times – first at a test screening a month before it opened, where the Universal rep later told me they didn’t bother handing out response cards because the cheering and screaming was enough to tell them the movie worked, and then at least once a week from July through September – usually on $2 Tuesdays. I’d take friends who hadn’t seen it, and watch it play for them; I’d try to deconstruct the climax, which manages to juggle half a dozen character arcs with genuine urgency while also coming up with utterly logical laughs like Marvin Berry’s phone call or Doc’s desperate scream at the latest complication on the clock tower.

The test screening had been an unfinished print with the visual effects still in black-and-white, so I knew exactly how economical Zemeckis had been with them: There are just a handful of shots that weren’t pulled off practically, and I could look more closely at the way the film implies something fantastic without really showing it.

The biggest effects are the actors, after all: Fox and Lloyd are so good at finding comic notes in their characters’ potentially terrifying experiences that they make the movie fun from start to finish, even as it touches on some genuinely unpleasant themes and images, like Doc being gunned down by the Libyans or Biff preparing to assault Lorraine.

Marty isn’t even present for that, so it’s played straight – and Wilson is allowed to show us Biff really is a monster. But Marty sets the film's tone, and Zemeckis and Gale said they knew Eric Stoltz had to be replaced after he filmed the mid-movie chase scene: Fox could telegraph that on some level Marty was enjoying his narrow escapes from Biff and his goons, while Stoltz just looked scared.

Before you ask: No, the footage from Stoltz’ weeks of shooting is not included in this new collection. At this point it’s clear Zemeckis and Gale don’t want it out there, and I doubt Stoltz does either. There are plenty of other things to talk about when it comes to these movies. The sequels are pretty fun too, if you don't think about certain ... implications.

Like Universal’s 50^th anniversary release of Jaws earlier this year, the new Back to the Future set is built on the previously released 4K and Blu-ray discs of the film(s), which is not a bad thing if you didn’t pick them up the first time around: These are beautiful presentations of all three films, with a subtle Dolby Vision grade to bring out colors and highlights – the LED display in Doc’s DeLorean particularly benefits from the expanded dynamic range – and the films’ surround soundtracks remixed for Dolby Atmos. Weirdly enough, some of the early digital compositing work in the sequels has dated, but Back to the Future looks like it was shot yesterday.

Almost all of the supplements produced for previous special editions over the decades has been carried over, as well as the new material on the bonus Blu included with the 35^th anniversary set. The new set also includes an eighth disc, with a suite of new extras that manage, against all odds, to find a few new angles on the trilogy.

Bob Gale turns up for his own victory lap in “40 Years Later: Reflecting on the Future,” discussing the trilogy and its legacy, and joins Donald Fullilove– who played Goldie Wilson in the original movie – for a location tour in “Back to Hill Valley.” Gale’s also a big part of the disc’s centerpiece, “Untold Stories of Back to the Future,” which gathers more than a dozen crew members to talk about the production.

Producers Neil Canton and Frank Marshall are there, along with cinematographer Dean Cundey, first assistant director David McGiffert, second AD Pamela Eilerson, Fox’ stunt double Charles Croughwell and many more, and they do have stories: There’s a great one about the DeLorean being almost impossible to drive once it was tricked out with 600 pounds of time-machine geegaws – and another about the stunt driver having to wear a fake dog head so it would look like Einstein was behind the wheel.

Croughwell’s story about how he lucked into doubling for Fox is a lovely tale of preparation meeting opportunity. (We also get to see the stuntman tell a version of it on a panel with Cundey, Gale and host Alicia Malone at this year’s TCM Classic Film Festival, held in advance of a screening of the IMAX restoration.)

And while Zemeckis remains absent from all of these, it was a genuine shock to see Fox, Lloyd, Thompson, Lewis and Harry Waters Jr. – Marvin Berry himself! – turn up for the last featurette, “A Mystery in History,” which is an only slightly tongue-in-cheek plea for the return of the cherry-red Gibson ES-345 guitar that Marty plays at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance.

Accompanied by Gale (of course) as well as the musician Jason Isbell and Gibson director of brand experience Mark Agnesi, our heroes relate the story of the instrument going missing after the shoot – someone suggests it might be in a Teamster’s garage – and beg for its return, complete with a toll-free number for viewers to call. It’s … weirdly sweet for an advertorial piece, honestly, and the producers are respectful enough not to mention the entire line of replica guitars Gibson launched not too long ago. Possibly because they’ve already sold out. People love this movie, you know.

The Back to the Future 40^th Anniversary Trilogy is available now in a 4K/Blu-ray combo collection from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. A fairly ridiculous collector's edition is also available:

Up next: Universal Language and Splitsville lead another wave of new releases, with Criterion’s restoration of Howard Hughes’ Hells Angels waiting in the wings. See you soon.