Back to the Future- plot complexities on commentary? (1 Viewer)

[Ray H]

I never got something from Part III. Doc's tombstone had a note from Clara, right? But after Marty went back, they prevented her from dying. She would have died before Doc's death and even possibly before they met. So how was her note on the tombstone?

 

[Johnny G]

Ray,

If Doc had never been in 1885, she would have died, hence Clayton Revine.

If Doc was there but not Marty, as per the tombstone you mention, he would have picked her up at the train station & she would have lived but Doc wouldn't.

With Doc & Marty there, he forgot to pick her up & original history occurred.

The problem is Marty could never have got there because in the 1955 he was in, the past was still as it would have been without any time travel and Doc would not have been able to send the Wetsern Union letter. The future occuring after Doc's life in 1885 would have had a different timeline where things could have been very different with Doc's changes to history such as the name of the revine & his inventions etc.

 

[Ray H]

Thanks for clearing that up.

 

[TerryW]

Johnny,

They started creating multiple Marty's and Doc's as soon as they began time travelling. The trick is to go and come back at the exact same time so there's never an appearance of more than one at once. Doc knew this and tried to send Marty back that way but he changed it to 11 minutes earlier to save Doc's life from 1:35AM to 1:24AM because he thought the letter was destroyed. Even if Marty had arrived at 1:35AM he was next to the clock tower at precicly the same moment the other Marty was going back to the past at now Lone Pine Mall. So, he has to run to get to the mall just in time to see Doc get shot again and himself takeoff.

The only information Doc had about the future was from that note. So he knew the exact date he would be at the mall and that he would be shot by terrorists and of course all the memories of sending Marty back in the first place to 1985. He presumedly would've done everything else in his life as he did it before including typing in different dates and times into the keypad ending with November 5, 1955, that red-letter day. Which would send Marty back the same way as before.

Where it gets confusing is: this Marty is leaving his hip family and Lone Pine Mall but when he gets to 1955 he hasn't changed anything yet so how can those changes have occurred? He'll still come flying out of the barn and knock over a pine tree but there should be only one right? This is why I think once time travel occurs and something is altered it creates an endless loop of events happening over and over again that can never really stop. Very dangerous stuff and probably why it's impossible.

There's also the idea that we're seeing different parallel timelines which is discussed by Doc in Part II. This is what I think happens at the end of Part I. Doc says something has gotta be done about your kids but he Jennifer turn out fine. At the beginning of Part II, when it was refilmed for actress Elisabeth Shue, Doc hesitates slightly before telling them this which is very important because he's lying. This was probably changed because the sequel wasn't written in 1985 and to accomodate the new actress.

When Doc first went into the future he saw what happened to Marty and his family. This would've been Marty I. I think that Part II starts off with Marty II whose future is slightly different thus Doc's hesitation and Jennifer being a different girl. Marty II would've grown up with hip parents so maybe that made him a little cockier and more sensitive to being called chicken. He gets into a car accident and messes up his future. When they all go to 2015 there shouldn't be a Marty II or a Jennifer II because they were missing for the 30 years that they time travelled. Everyone would've wondered where they went for 30 years. The reason they are there is because they are a combination of Marty's I & II merged together. Jennifer shouldn't be there at all. This is the first time she time travelled so unless Doc created a Jennifer II during his time travels it's a mistake.

As my head is about to explode I'm going to stop for now.

 

[R. Kay]

I miss the Bob Zemeckis/Bob Gale of 'Used Cars',
'Romancing the Stone' , 'Roger Rabbit', and the original 'Back To The Future' days.

After that, they lost that old edge that made them such brilliant storytellers in the 1st place.

As interesting as 'Future 2' was, it lacked the heart and ingenuity of the 1st one.

Oh well. Happens to the best of 'em.

 

[Colin Sims]

List of features International V US.

 

[Gui A]

So Basil, if I travel back to 1969 and I was frozen in 1967, I could go look at my frozen self. But, if I'm still frozen in 1967, how could I have been unthawed in the 90's and traveled back to the Sixtssss??

Oh no, I've gone cross-eyed.

 

[Brenton]

Makes you wonder if Doc from the end of Part I got the idea to use his flux capacitor to build a speeding DeLorean time machine fueled by plutoneum from the boy from the future who he helped send home. If the theory is correct, then it's possible that the Doc from the beginning of the film also got the idea from an earlier Marty. So where did the idea come from originally?

Wouldn't it be crazy if 1985 Doc had somehow gone back to 1955 and GIVEN the DeLorean to 1955 Doc (and found some alternate way back to 1985). And then thirty years later, Doc used THAT DeLorean to accidentally send Marty back to 1955. Where did the DeLorean actually come from? Was it really built by DMC? Or by a LOOPHOLE IN THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM...!

With each "loop" of events, the DeLorean would get progressively older and older and older. Eventually, they would be dealing with a car billions and billions of years old. Eventually it would just stop working. It would turn into a rock, leaving Marty stranded in 1985.

 

[TerryW]

The Doc while living for eight months in 1885 learned he couldn't rebuild the time machine without a crucial part not to be available until sometime in the 1940's. So, to help Marty get back to the future once again he needed to send the letter explaining where the Delorean was hidden. The letter wasn't sent via time travel but regular Western Union where it sat for 70 years in their offices until 1955 rolled around and it was finally delivered.
Doc, again would be very careful not to change anything back in 1885 but being a scientist he can't help to invent stuff like the huge refrigerator. As for the revine name it seemed that whether it was Clayton, Shonash or Eastwood it didn't change anything else important that we can see.
The slight problem I have with the plot for Part III is: when Marty breaks the fuel line on the rough terrain and Doc tells him there is no gas available for years why didn't they just go to the Delorean that the Doc had just walled up in the mine shaft. There was plenty of gas left in there and Doc would've either left it in the car or removed the valubale liquid for safe-keeping. Whether or not the car had gas in it would be irrelevent to Marty and Doc in 1955 because they just just refill the tank.
Maybe there was a scene filmed that shows Doc in 1885 also breaking the fuel line leaving nothing to use. That would at least justify the rest of the film.

 

[Jeff Bamberger]

All this trying to figure out the complexities of the plot is just killing me.........

I just want to get these DVDs and sit down and watch them in a 6 hour marathon and just be happy....

Plot complexities and time/space incongruities.....yes, but I don't really care. Let's just get these and be happy.

 

[Johnny G]

Terry,

In the 1955 in part 2, Doc hadn't lived in 1885 and so he couldn't have sent Western Union. When he went back to 1885, he would have started a new timeline and Marty would not be there.

Remember in part 2, they couldn't go to 2015 to stop old Biff taking the book because they were now in a new timeline where biff wouldn't do the same things, the only way to stop things was to go back.

Similarly going forward in time from 1885 to 1955 would mean a new future, no matter whether you travel, in a time machine or just wait for time to take it's course.

The plot also falls down when old Doc travels back with the book but comes back to 2015, he would not come back to that 2015 but the one where biff is rich, as explained by Doc (referred to above). They might have tried to justify this by making Biff disappear, edited out to save confusion but the fact is he would have never gone back there in the first place.

 

[James Q Jenkins]

it's just a movie people.

Man I hope Doc remembered to put Sta-Bil in that gas.

 

[DeepakJR]

In part III, the paper Jennifer brings back from 2015 erases and Doc explains that the future insnt written. Isnt it logical that the almanac would of also been completely blank when old Biff gave it to young Biff in 1955? And like it was previously mentioned, how would of Marty on Jennifer seen themselves in 2015? They couldnt of seen themselves as in a nalternate reality because they traveled to the future of their current present. They would have been missing for 30 years and the only probable traces of the MacFLy family would of been aging Lorraine and George. But who cares, they are not my favorite movies because of their "accuracy" so i guess ill just enjoy them as they are.

l8rz,
Deepak Jr.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Deepak: I'd assume that the alamanac, like the photo in Part I, automatically updated it self as the changes to history took effect. I can only assume the future newspaper was blank because they we're in relatively close proximity to a nexus in time (the taunt at between cars where Marty would have been hit), and since we know that the changes take time to take effect (which is why Marty didn't disappear as soon as he stopped his dad from getting hit by his grandfather) the "new" history hadn't clicked in yet. A week from then, I'd bet the newspaper would have had the news for that future date as per the current course of history.

 

[TerryW]

originally posted by Johnny G[/I]]

The fax Jennifer brings back is intact only up until after Marty is not in the car accident thus altering future events and he is not fired. The fax only existed in the first place because of the accident.
On the other hand, the almanac always existed in 2015 so there would be no reason for it to go blank or disappear. For that to happen the author of the book would have to have been stopped from writing it.
When Doc speaks of the future not being written yet he means that what they saw in the future was only the logical progression of the events from the present time. Anything they do can alter their future.

 

[Brian Kidd]

My brain hurts!!!

I was thinking of another discrepancy. At the end of Part 1, when Marty returns to 1985, it's evident that the time-line has changed by the fact that Twin Pines Mall is now Lone Pine Mall. If this is so and life is now good for Marty, what are the odds that he'd still be in the same situation where he'd need to go back in time? Would he even know Doc Brown? Seems like Doc wouldn't be in the same social circle as Marty.

 

[Daniel W]

When Doc speaks of the future not being written yet he means that what they saw in the future was only the logical progression of the events from the present time. Anything they do can alter their future.

Terry,

It seems to me that these statements somewhat contradict each other. Regardless of whether 1955 Biff had actually placed a bet right away, by giving him the sports almanac, 2015 Biff instantly changed the logical progression of the events from the present time (1955). Even if 2015 Biff left one second after giving up the almanac, he should have traveled to a vastly different 2015. The one where, in 1985, Marty was in Switzerland and Doc was in an institution. The Marty and Doc from the original timeline should have been either stranded in their version of 2015 because Biff was never able to return the time machine, or the neighborhood around them should have changed. Of all the paradoxes/plot holes that I've come across in the past couple of days, this is the one that, IMHO, is the hardest to get around.

 

[Dharmesh C]

The Marty and Doc from the original timeline should have been either stranded in their version of 2015 because Biff was never able to return the time machine, or the neighborhood around them should have changed. Of all the paradoxes/plot holes that I've come across in the past couple of days, this is the one that, IMHO, is the hardest to get around.

You got me there, I don't have an explanation for this parabox/plothole.

 

[Douglas R]

It seems to me that these statements somewhat contradict each other. Regardless of whether 1955 Biff had actually placed a bet right away, by giving him the sports almanac, 2015 Biff instantly changed the logical progression of the events from the present time (1955). Even if 2015 Biff left one second after giving up the almanac, he should have traveled to a vastly different 2015. The one where, in 1985, Marty was in Switzerland and Doc was in an institution. The Marty and Doc from the original timeline should have been either stranded in their version of 2015 because Biff was never able to return the time machine, or the neighborhood around them should have changed. Of all the paradoxes/plot holes that I've come across in the past couple of days, this is the one that, IMHO, is the hardest to get around.

I agree - this is the biggest loophole in the plot. The only reason old Biff returns to the original 2015 in the car is because it is the only way the filmmakers could think of advancing the story without having Marty and Doc stranded. One of the deleted scenes in the DVD extends the scene when old Biff returns and we see him slowly fade away to show that he does not belong there - but it still doesn't make sense.

 

[R. Kay]

What happened to Biff's career after these movies?