There’s a lot that sets this fate-interrupting journey of a 1980s teenager and a wiryhaired scientist apart, including tight writing, spot-on casting, clever planning and laugh-out-loud humor, but what “Back to the Future” tackles best is its use of the time paradox - the probability of interference with one’s own fate through time travel.
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“‘Back to the Future’ is a smart, funny and unpretentious film,” Gondry said, adding that the movie is “grounded in a tangible reality, in the present time, and from there, the magic happens, something extraordinary happens.” Goode” and filmmaker Michel Gondry (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”), who says the film has served as his movie-making reference. Fox’s on-screen performance of “Johnny B. In the 30 years since, “Back to the Future” continues earning lifelong megafans, including Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, who used the movie’s theme music to open every show during the band’s 2012 world tour director Seth MacFarlane (“Ted”), who owns a replica DeLorean time machine musician John Mayer, who began taking guitar lessons as a child after seeing Michael J. Reagan laughed so hard that he asked the projectionist to stop the movie, back it up, and run it again. The film hit theaters July 3, 1985, and topped the box office for 11 weekends.Īfter Ronald Reagan quoted the film in speeches, one of his writers told Gale that when the president first watched it in the White House movie theater, he couldn’t stop laughing when 1955 Doc Brown, played by a delightfully theatrical Christopher Lloyd, is shocked to hear that Reagan is president in 1985. Then, in 1984, Zemeckis landed his first big box-office success with “Romancing the Stone,” giving him enough clout to make any movie he wanted “Back to the Future’s” timing was finally right. “We couldn’t get the thing made to save our lives,” he said. But Disney thought it was “too incestuous,” Gale said, with the plot device of a mother falling in love with her time-traveling son. Most movie studios thought the movie was too light and suggested the team take it to Disney. With two sequels, several video games, and continuous sellout showings 30 years later, it’s hard to believe “Back to the Future” was rejected 40 times before being made. Gale took those questions back to Zemeckis, and they had their premise.