When I was a kid, I loved Back to the Future and saw it a million times. Can we all agree that the second and third movies were not very good at all though? The third one was okay – watchable, even – but the second one was just garbage. Still, the first film is regarded as a modern classic. Even though it’s full of plotholes! One of the plotholes was always “why didn’t 1980s Mom (Lorraine) and Dad (George) recognize their son Marty as the mysterious Calvin who got them together back in the 1950s?” Well, since we all have f–king time on our hands, the BTTF screenwriter took the time to answer that question last week:
The debate about an apparent plot hole in Back to the Future recently reignited amid the popular social media trend “5 Perfect Movies.” That is, until screenwriter Bob Gale closed the case for good. What started as a fun Twitter list for the Top 5 movies suggestions to watch during quarantine turned into some serious business as stars and filmmakers began to debate just what makes a film “perfect.” Marvel filmmaker James Gunn argued via Twitter “a perfect film can be different from a favorite film, or a great film. A perfect film is something that sings from start to finish with no obvious mistakes, whether they be aesthetic or structural. There are no logical lapses.”
He pointed to 1985’s Back to the Future, writing, “Back to the Future SEEMINGLY could be imperfect (why don’t Mom and Dad remember Marty?), but I would still argue it’s a perfect film because there are reasons why this could conceivably be the case (time protects itself from unraveling, etc). Or maybe I’m in denial. Who knows.”
Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy star Chris Pratt replied, explaining the situation as best he saw it: “Maybe they do remember him tho, not as Marty, as Calvin. When Marty returns to present day 1985, it could have been years since his parents would have perhaps originally noted the uncanny resemblance between their son and that kid from high school 20 years previous.”
Well, Pratt is correct. Gale, the screenwriter for Back to the Future, settled the debate once and for all on Wednesday, telling The Hollywood Reporter, “Bear in mind that George and Lorraine only knew Marty/Calvin for six days when they were 17, and they did not even see him every one of those six days. So, many years later, they still might remember that interesting kid who got them together on their first date. But I would ask anyone to think back on their own high school days and ask themselves how well they remember a kid who might have been at their school for even a semester. Or someone you went out with just one time. If you had no photo reference, after 25 years, you’d probably have just a hazy recollection.”
Concluded Gale, “So Lorraine and George might think it funny that they once actually met someone named Calvin Klein, and even if they thought their son at age 16 or 17 had some resemblance to him, it wouldn’t be a big deal. I’d bet most of us could look thru our high school yearbooks and find photos of our teen-aged classmates that bear some resemblance to our children.”
Yeah. That actually makes sense when you really think about it. It’s important to note that Lorraine and George didn’t have any photos of Marty from back then, and they only knew him for a few days. Still, he was an important part of their “origin story” as a couple and I would have thought that they would have stronger memories of Marty in particular from their shared history. Here’s what always bugged me as a kid: I get that the butterfly effect of George punching Biff changed the course of their two lives from that point on completely. But with that life-altering course, why would… George and Lorainne still name their three kids the exact same thing? That ALWAYS bothered me!! Like, if Marty/Calvin was so important to them, why didn’t they name their oldest son Marty?!?! And why did the butterfly-effect McFlys live in the exact same house (only a lot nicer)?
Promotional images from ‘Back to the Future.’
Cheesy ’80s films are *chef’s kiss.* It was amazing what we considered palatable back then.
As fro the article…eh, that was never really a plothole to me because…who would actually make that connection? Even if it sparked your memory well enough to remember his face, you’d just rationalize it away as impossible. All one has to do is look around at this country right now to know people can talk themselves into all manner of irrational deniability.
I loved that first movie so much.
That is all
While the second movie is not good, it is funny to see the things they got wrong about 2016. Also, I believe we are living in the timeline where Biff stole the almanac.
I actually loved the second one too because of all the futuristic stuff. I thought that we might have that stuff one day and thought it was the coolest.
Agree about the house though and I always thought that too, why in the world wouldn’t they have lives in a different nicer house?
oh wow your last sentance is so on point. I mean they did base Biff on Trump and this made me laugh, so thank you for that.
WHERE ARE THE FLYING CARS. They promised us them by 2016!
I kno. All we get is iphones! I WANT MY FLYING CAR!
apparently Serbian president is into making them. New Yugo cars on the way!
Correction – it was 2015 not 2016. Still not excusable that we didn’t (still don’t) have REAL hover boards, self-drying clothes and flying cares by then!
When he leaves his girlfriend asleep on a porch in a dangerous neighborhood, that movie was ruined. Misogynistic AF.
That is one of the enduring classics of my childhood.
I’m about 25 years out of high school. I BARELY recognize people that I occasionally run into, and that’s with having facebook and seeing photos a lot, and I bet I could look through my yearbook and have zero recollection of a good third of them. Someone I met for a few days only? No way I’d remember.
The fact that they lived in the exact same house, just nicer, always bothered me, too. I figured maybe there were just a very limited number of properties in their small town 🤷🏻♀️
comedian John Mulaney has the best take on this film, worth a google 🙂
I was just watching that bit while washing dishes this weekend. Mulaney is hilarious!
Love him (and his take) so much!
As Bob Gale pointed out, younger George and Lorraine only new Calvin/Marty for a week. I can remember people I went to high school with eighteen years ago but their faces are kind of fuzzy unless I knew them very well. I never considered this a plot hole. I love this movie and the trilogy as a whole; one of the best series ever made.
There is however, a more interesting albeit darker theory I’ve considered about BTTF. You know how in the original timeline, Lorraine is a depressed alcoholic and George is still a timid coward enduring Biff? Recall what Marty’s plan was for getting his parents together at the dance. He takes Lorraine as his date and tries to “take advantage” of her but George shows up to play hero. However as we know, things don’t go according to plan. Biff and his cronies get there first, his goons haul Marty away while he assaults Lorraine. George comes along to play his part but finds the situation has gone horribly wrong. This is where George comes into his man. He grows a spine, stands up to Biff, saves Lorraine and the rest is (new) history.
When Marty returns to his own “time” he finds things have radically changed. His parents are successful and healthy with Biff now a submissive personality. But what caused their lives to become so dismal in the original timeline? What was different? George took Lorraine as his date. Did a similar scenario involving Biff occur but with his cronies carrying George away while he succeeds in raping Lorraine as no on is there s stop him? That would explain why their lives were a mess, why Lorraine hit the bottle so hard and why George never developed passed his mousy ways.
I read that theory a while back and it always stuck with me.
I love the whole trilogy, recognizing its faults. The first one is so SO good that I never once gave this or any other plot hole a second thought. 😂
My favourite destiny/fate part of this series was offscreen: the fact that Michael J Fox wasn’t originally Marty McFly. The Eric Stoltz switch out is an unbelievable story. And consider that Fox never had a screentest or chemistry read with Christopher Lloyd! For one of the most iconic movie character pairings! He just showed up on set and they jumped into filming. Sure they’re both excellent actors and luckily apparently got along well, but that doesn’t guarantee screen chemistry. Wow did the movie gods smile on those producers. 😁
Mia4s, Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis originally wanted Fox for the role but his manager kept the script from him because filming the move would conflict with shooting “Family Ties”. So, they hired Stoltz and began filming. However, the chemistry was not there and they’ve said watching Stoltz’s takes produced a gut feeling over how wrong it was. What happened? Executive Producer Steven Spielberg intervened and spoke to Fox’s manager. Fox gladly accepted and shot “Family Ties” during the day and BTTF during the evening. He was working on 3-4 hours of sleep a night doing both. The rest is history.
Interestingly enough, before reading the script Fox heard about the project through second-hand sources and wished he could be a part of it.
For any major BTTF fans, I highly recommend this book:
https://www.amazon.com/We-Dont-Need-Roads-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B00OZ0TN6I/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=we+don%27t+need+roads&qid=1588003103&sr=8-1
Stoltz made the role very serious and went all method. Michael J Fox had a comedic undertone to the role and thus made a much more likeable Marty. I’ve seen footage of stoltz and he does look great, in fact they look very similar. Eric seems so much more grown up whilst MJF still looks very boyish and like a lovable rogue. But MJF just made the role perfect. A lot of the scenes from the other actors in the first film were done with stoltz there and they just edited with MJF after. I think a young Matthew Broderick could have been a potential Marty.
The first one consistently makes my top 10 list of all time.
The thing that I always wondered about though is that Marty specifically says to them not to be so hard on their son if he accidentally sets fire to the living room or something like that. You’d think that would have stood out to them when it actually happened and they would wonder how he knew. And even though they only knew Marty/Calvin for a few days, it was a momentous few days. Given that Lorraine has a huge crush on Marty/Calvin, I find it odd that she would not piece it together, or at least find it odd that their son grows up to look exactly like her teenage crush.
I’m sure this makes me sound awful, but there are classmates from my senior year of high school that I don’t remember at all – and looking back at some Facebook “class of ‘XX” group stuff it seems like we had some classes together. So, yeah, it’s highly feasible the characters wouldn’t remember at all what “Calvin Klein” looked like.
Interesting thought I just remembered: when Marty returns to 1985, George and Lorraine say that if it hadn’t been for biff they never would have fallen in love, huh. It was certainly Calvin Klein who made them fall in love but they remember it differently.
How to put this politely? Beyond living in the same house, and giving their kids the exact same names, how did they manage to time their conception of Marty and siblings exactly the same such that they produced the exact same combination of genes?
In the future where Biff has the almanac, the same concept comes up – how did those three kids come into existence where things wound up so radically different? But then, for Marty McFly to exist to make these changes, that point of conception must be a stable constant across all three timelines with the same gene rearrangement. Maybe one of the rules of that universe is that time is forced to stabilize around the one traveling through it. There’s a lot of nerding out you can do theorizing for those movies.
Back to the future is just a classic especially the first 2 films, the third one is a bit meh. So glad they never made a fourth or it would have been ruined. If it was made today there would have been like 8 mediocre films churned out.
When marty is 17 years old in 1985, 30 years would have passed when they last saw the 17 year old Calvin/Marty. Prior to that Marty would have been a child and not looked like his 17 year old self. I think people always look different in your memories over time, especially if you have no photos to remember them by. I always wondered why doc still looked so old in 1955. There seems to be no reference of his age in 1955 or 1985. And there isn’t a 2015 doc so I wonder if he made it that far?
Also why was doc meddling in Marty’s children’s fate when he brought Marty to the future to stop him doing whatever her was going to do? I thought the whole point was to not interfere regardless.
I love the BTF films. First is a classic, but I love the second one too. The third is my least favorite. A plot hole for me for the third one is: why does George’s ancestor look like Lorraine? They’re not related.
I get the explanation. I might not remember the people I went to high school with of they walkEd by me and I haven’t been out of school that long. But yeah, why did they live in the same house? That bugged me. And why when the kids were disappearing from existence, did it go from oldest to youngest?
I always liked the Family Guy scene where they spoof BTTF with George suspiciously questioning Lorraine as to why their son looks exactly like the guy she was chasing after in high school lol
I saw BTTF at the theatre when I was 14 in 1985 and I’ve loved it ever since. I lost count of how many times I’ve watched it; my brother bought me the 20th anniversary edition/trilogy when it was released. The first movie is complete perfection, plot holes and all. An 80s movie that doesn’t feel like one, imo, it’s such a timeless classic. I’ve watched the second one the least but plan to do so soon (wow, I really do sound like a geek, lol). I’ve really grown to love the third movie, it’s really charming and Biff and Doc are especially excellent in it. I agree with so many posts here on what makes this trilogy endure (and I’m also glad they kept to three films). The casting, including supporting characters was superb (except maybe Marty’s girlfriend Jennifer, not much of a role tbf, and having to replace the original actress). Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox are truly amazing as Doc and Marty, rare movie magic.
Plus, why in the world would George and Lorraine think the kid they knew really briefly in high school was actually their son born in the late 60s?