This Wednesday, Oct. 21 will mark the date when Marty McFly, the teenaged protagonist of the famous Back to the Future movie franchise, is due to arrive in the year 2015 as he did in the second film in the trilogy.
Perhaps it was a universal nostalgia or even a desire to cash in on the bandwagon, but scientists and corporate bodies alike have been clamouring for years to pay tribute to the impending arrival of their dear friend Marty.
With movie theatres across the country bringing the film back to audiences in an anniversary marathon, it seemed like a good chance to ask the question, what effect has Back to Future had on the 2015 of today with its predictions of the future?
Flashback! It’s Oct.23, 1985. The silver screen is graced and the box office smashed by the adventure classic Back to the Future. The acclaimed sci-fi masterpiece by director Robert Zemeckis is a quirky story about a son trying to bring his parents back together after traveling through time with his wacky friend and brilliant scientist, Doc Brown, every step along the way changing the course of history.
From flat screen TVs, tablet computers, controller-less videogames and now hover boards, in the past 15 or so years, science and ingenuity have produced many of the luxuries predicted in the trilogy.
“When something is part of the social and cultural consciousness, it finds its way into science.” said Kelly Bronson, an assistant professor of Science and Technological studies at STU. When asked about Part II’s influence on the technological trade, Bronson says it plays into many things.
“In science they like to say they’re not influenced, but when it comes to how we look at or pursue ideas, pop culture would definitely be a factor.”
Jamie Gillies is a professor of Communications at STU and fondly remembers seeing the original film in theatres when he was seven years old.
“My only vision of the future at that point had been the Jetsons, but what Back to the Future did was solidify that idea that we were on the edge of something big,” said Gillies. “But it still had things in it you could relate to, even at my age.”
He speculated that films like Minority Report, Star Trek and especially Back to the Future might have inspired people like Steve Jobs and other consumer technology companies to start to develop mass-marketed items like flat screens and personal touchscreens.
“If that’s how it looks in a movie, why can’t we have that at home?” said Gillies.
The original Back to the Future ends with the line, “Roads? Where we’re going… we don’t need roads.”
On that day 30 years ago maybe we were given a hint, a vision of what the future of today might hold: a vision of flying cars, utopian whimsy and Jetson-esque wonder.
Although a recent video of a hoverboard has been making waves online, Bronson said this technology isn’t new.
“We’ve had the technological capacity for a while to at least pursue what we’ve seen in these movies, it’s just a matter of getting started,” she said.
For Gillies, there is a simple answer to why the film resonates with us after all this time.
“They’re still in the future, we’re still not there yet. So until we get those things, it’s still so very relevant.”
