The movie that just wasn’t right for Eric Stoltz was eventually released in 1985. After a discussion writer Bob Gale wondered if he would have been friends with his parents if they were both young together. From there he and director wrote the story for ‘Back to the Future’ they took this to 40 different studios who rejected the idea. They eventually took this to Amblin Entertainment and secured a deal for production. Credited with writing the story Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis, Bob went on to produce the movie along with Neil Canton whilst Robert Zemeckis was to Direct. Music by the evergreen Alan Silvestri this movie starred Eric Stoltz, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, and Crispin Glover. Well that what I could have written as the movies production begun with Eric playing the role of Marty McFly but the director realised that Stoltz wasn’t playing Marty the way he wanted and causing issues with production schedules, financial cost to pay Eric off and then replace him. They had originally decided that Michael J. Fox was right for the job, but he was unavailable so adding an additional $4m to the $15m budget and delaying productions for months they brought Michael back in to replace Eric. You will still see Eric in some of the shots but from behind for example when you see the other actor over the shoulder of Eric and not Michael. There is also an appearance of Elijah Wood in the café as well, he is playing on the arcade/pinball machine when in the café. With the costs of production increasing to shy of $20m they released the movie and it made $388.8m which is not too shabby. Critically liked as well with an 8.5 out of 10 from IMDb and even higher than me Rotten Tomatoes gave this 96%. Onto the plot? Why not huh!!
In 1985 Marty McFly is a typical teenager in the town of Hill Valley. Marty has a cowardly father who is bullied by his old school bully and now boss Biff Tannen. His mother Lorraine is over-weight and drinking heavily whilst his siblings are also struggling with becoming adults. He has a girlfriend and dreams of being a rock star and having big cars and houses with his sweetheart. He also has a friend called Emmett ‘Doc’ Brown who lets him use his house and his amplifier to play his guitar – which may not be the best idea. Doc asks Marty to meet him at the Mall Car Park in the middle of the night to film his next experiment. An experiment that is a car that can travel through time. When the terrorists that Doc had shafted to get the nuclear power for his time travelling car find him at the mall all hell breaks loose and to escape with his life Marty jumps in the car and tries to drive away but ends up driving back to 1955. He meets a younger version of Doc who he asks for help to get him ‘back to the future’. All Marty has to do is not interact with anyone else including his parents that could stop them from falling in love which would then mean they don’t get married and have ‘him’. Unfortunately, this is already too late so now Marty must fix things before he can jump back to future something that is not as easy as it sounds.
What a great idea and the final realisation of that concept on screen was just stunning. It just works and there maybe cynics out there, but it just works for me. It brings me back to youth as this would have been one of the first movies I saw at the cinema and then saw it through with buying a VHS of it and then waiting for the follow up movie to come out (it’s already been reviewed on here) and then to have the conclusion to come as well a whole year after that one was just cruel to make me wait. They timed this well just to have people walk out of cinema’s going how are they going to conclude this one? They kept us hooked on the line waiting for the conclusion and it was still a good movie just no where as good as this one. (or the second one to be honest). I beg you to go and see this one if you haven’t seen the trilogy. Whilst on the subject of trilogies.
Next up is just your typical Science Fiction movie…
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