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Back to the Future - Comprehensive Plot Summary and Analysis
It is 1985, and 17-year-old Marty McFly lives a relatively uneventful life in Hill Valley. He loves riding his skateboard around town and playing the electric guitar. His family is less than perfect—his father, George McFly, always allows himself to be harassed by Biff Tannen, an idiotic bully; his mother, Lorraine, does not seem to have any zest for life; his older brother can’t get a job, and his sister has trouble with romantic relationships. But Marty seems to be doing okay: he has his loyal girlfriend, Jennifer Parker, as well as his good friend, Dr. Emmett Brown. “Doc,” as he is called by Marty, is an eccentric scientist and inventor who lives alone in a large house.
Marty comes to Doc’s house, only to discover that Doc is noticeably absent. Doc calls him and tells Marty to come to Twin Pines Mall at 1:15 in the morning. Marty is confused, but in the meantime, goes to school. It seems as if the world is telling him that he is destined for failure—Mr. Strickland, the school principal, tells him that no McFly has ever amounted to anything. Marty defiantly says, “Yeah? Well, history is gonna change.” Still, when he plays his electric guitar at an audition, he is rejected. Marty fears failure, but Jennifer reminds him of Doc’s words: “If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.”
Marty and Jennifer go out in their town of Hill Valley. A lady enthusiastically pushes a flyer into their hands, urging them to give a donation to save the clock tower, which was struck by lightning thirty years ago and has never worked since then. Marty ignores her but keeps the flyer. He returns to his suburban home in Lyon Estates, where Biff Tannen, a lumbering and offensive middle-aged bully, is getting Marty’s father, George McFly, to take on extra work. Marty is disappointed in his father, and his mother, Lorraine, is no consolation either—she does not seem to take pleasure in life. She reminisces about how she fell in love with George: her father hit George with his car, Lorraine nursed George back to health, and they first kissed at a dance and fell in love. Lorraine dreamily says that it was “meant to be,” but it really just seems like she has accepted a dreary fate. Marty’s older brother can only find a job at a fast-food restaurant, and his older sister cannot find a boyfriend. Marty wants more than what the future seems to spell out for him.
In the middle of the night, he arrives at Twin Pines Mall and finds out that Doc has achieved his life’s dream and invented a time machine from a DeLorean sports car, which is programmed to travel through time once it reaches 88 miles per hour. Marty and Doc test the time machine with Doc’s dog, Einstein, and it works. Doc then sets the time machine to 1955, to the date on which he had the idea for the time machine. But before they can experiment further, Libyan terrorists arrive on the scene. Doc has stolen plutonium from them in order to fuel the time machine, and the angry terrorists hunt him down, shoot him, and kill him. Marty frantically gets in the DeLorean, gets up to 88 miles an hour, and inadvertently escapes to 1955.
He lands in a barn, and a family humorously mistakes him for an alien because he is wearing a radiation suit. Marty runs away and tries to get a hold of Doc, but to no avail. He goes to a malt shop and orders a drink. Horrified when he sees a young Biff Tannen bullying a younger version of his father, Marty resolves to boost his father’s confidence and help him change— thus, Marty sets out to change history (Thompson 87). However, George wants nothing to do with him and runs away. As Marty follows, he sees that George is about to be hit by a car. Marty pushes George out of the way and saves him at the last moment, but gets hit by the car himself and is knocked unconscious as the cowardly George runs away. George earlier spied on Lorraine as she was undressing, and the combination of this lewd behavior with his cowardice serves to bring out his negative character traits.
Marty awakens and is appalled to discover that his mother is not only tending to him, but is also infatuated with him. She undresses him and sees his Calvin Klein underwear, and Marty amusingly goes by the name “Calvin Klein” for the rest of the film. However, he has unwittingly interfered with the meeting of his parents, as it was after Lorraine’s father hit George with his car that Lorraine and George fell in love.
Marty now has to repair the history that he has altered. He runs to Doc’s house and tries to convince Doc that he is from the future and has come to 1955 in a time machine that Doc has invented. Marty has a photograph of himself and his two siblings, which he uses to try to convince Doc that his story is real. However, his siblings are slowly fading away from the picture, symbolizing that their existence—as well as Marty’s—depends on Lorraine and George getting together. Because Marty has tampered with events, history is being changed.
Doc is only convinced that Marty is from the future after he sees a tape that Marty had filmed in 1985, which describes the time machine and tells them that it requires 1.2 gigawatts of electricity to function. The flyer that the lady in the town square had given Marty reveals that lightning had struck the town clock at 10:04 p.m. on a certain date in 1955. Doc realizes that this would generate enough power to get the De Lorean to reach 88 miles per hour, and concocts a plan to “electrocute” Marty back to the future.
However, rather disturbingly, there is now a romantic love triangle between Marty, his mother, and his father. George is attracted to Lorraine, Lorraine is infatuated with Marty, and Marty is trying to bring George and Lorraine together. Marty discovers that although his mother had scolded him about Jennifer, saying that in her days girls never “parked” with boys, her younger self is very wild—she sneaks liquor from her parents, smokes cigarettes, and is very eager for physical intimacy with Marty. However, later on, after kissing him—her own son!—she says something about it feels wrong, that it feels like she is kissing a brother. Instead of being contradictory, the difference between the young Lorraine and the old Lorraine makes sense. In 1985, being married to George has slowly beaten down Lorraine’s old spirit, so that she disapproves of Jennifer (Thompson 84).
Marty is also surprised by the “old” George, who loves science fiction and writing stories. Marty encourages George to pursue his passion for science fiction and also encourages him to pursue Lorraine; however, George fears rejection. Marty ends up “forcing” George to ask Lorraine to the dance by dressing up as Darth Vader and scaring George into believing that Lorraine is his destiny. Although Marty does not necessarily realize it, he is like his father, also fearing rejection even though he is talented. His earlier reluctance to pursue his musical interests is linked to his father’s refusal to let people read his stories (Thompson 91).
Back at Doc’s house, Marty tries to warn Doc about the Libyan terrorists and Doc’s death, but Doc refuses, maintaining that nobody should know too much about the future. Lorraine shows up and manipulates Marty into agreeing to take her to the dance. Marty now faces a dilemma, because he has to get George and Lorraine together. He makes a plan and tells George to come to the car that he and Lorraine will be in at a certain time, and instructs George to stop Marty from making unwelcome advances. When the time comes, after Marty has the extremely awkward kiss with his mother, and then Biff shows up on the scene before George can confront Marty. George tells Biff to leave Lorraine alone, and after a tense moment, George punches Biff. Lorraine gazes at George, and it is obvious that they now have a connection. At the dance, George and Lorraine are getting close, but the music is dying down. There is a need for some good music in order to keep them together, so Marty gets up on stage and does a rendition of “Johnny Be Good,” which has yet to be written by Chuck Berry. George and Lorraine finally kiss, and Marty sees his siblings and himself reappearing in the photograph. The McFly men have succeeded—George has defeated Biff and obtained Lorraine’s affections; Marty has not only ensured his own existence in the future, but also has had some musical success.
Now Marty has to rush to the town square in order to be at 88 miles an hour and make contact with a cable that is connected to the clock tower at the precise moment, 10:04 p.m., when lightning will strike. He tries to tell Doc about the Libyan terrorists again, but Doc is too preoccupied. Marty instead writes a letter about it, but to his dismay, Doc finds it and rips it up. Everything is set up, but then a broken branch detaches the cable. At the last moment, dangling from the clock tower in a scene that became famous, Doc is able to reattach the cable and send Marty back to the future.
Marty arrives in 1985 but is unable to prevent Doc from being shot. Devastated, Marty rushes over, and to his amazement Doc is alive. It turns out that Doc had later pieced the letter back together, and then wore a bullet-proof vest on the day that he knew he would be shot.
Marty goes to bed, and upon waking, thinks that everything was a nightmare. However, he soon realizes that he has inadvertently changed the lives of every member in his family. Lorraine and George are a happy and lively couple. George is now a successful science fiction writer. Lorraine’s marriage to the transformed George has allowed her original traits to carry on, so that she approves of Marty’s big date to go camping with Jennifer (Thompson 84). Biff now cleans cars for a living and is submissive to the McFlys. Marty’s brother has become a successful businessman, and his sister works at a boutique and has several boyfriends. George says to his family, “Like I’ve always told you, if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.” Ironically, he is echoing the words of his own son, who first heard them from Doc. In the beginning, Doc acts like a father figure to Marty, whose real father is a failure; by the end, George has become a strong father, and Doc can now depart into the future (Thompson 83). The circle is completed.
Marty thinks that everything is safe and fine, but then he runs into Doc, who insists that Marty and Jennifer accompany him to the future, to the year 2015. Evidently something is wrong with Marty and Jennifer’s future children, and the line “Both you and Jennifer turn out fine. It’s your kids, Marty, something’s gotta be done about your kids!” makes for a cute ending, while also allowing for the possibility of a sequel (Thompson 99).
Back to the Future ends with Marty having changed the course of history in order to preserve his own future; simultaneously, he has unintentionally improved the lives of everyone in his family and also saved Doc’s life. Although Back to the Future is an “ordinary” mainstream movie, it was the #1 box-office hit in 1985: it is not only very entertaining, but it is also masterfully constructed with finely manipulated details, and it is a truly excellent film.
Some analysis derived from Kristin Thompson’s Storytelling in the New Hollywood ; see Sources page.