Nineteen Eighty... Five?
by Sunny Kalsi on 01 Nov 2004
OK, I wrote that because it's one more than 1984. How freaky huh?
I was watching Back to the Future (that's where the 1985 comes from) and came to a startling conclusion: In the face of Star Wars, in the face of all the crappy old comic book ripoffs and cheap sci fi was an unfound truth. That Back to the Future was perhaps the greatest science fiction trilogy to ever hit the screens. I'm going to go so far as to call it the Lord of the Rings of sci-fi. Yet we don't see the same kind of hype about BTTF as we do about Star Wars/Trek, Batman, etc. Why is that?
My guess is because they're a great bunch of movies, not just a great bunch of science fiction. I'm putting it right next to Transformers when it comes to awesome underrated sci-fi. These movies were truly unique, and took the idea of time travel to the masses. One of the movies is a western, despite the fact that the rest of the series had time travel and flying cars. That's wacky to the same degree as anime! Maybe it's not taken all that seriously because it's more than just good science fiction, and sci-fi nerds therefore don't see it as "legitimate".
There are a few choice quotes that I figure are going to legitimise this story as true sci fi:
Doc. "You're not thinking fourth dimensionally, Marty!"
Marty McFly : Wait a minute, Doc. Ah... Are you telling me you built a time machine... out of a DeLorean?
Dr. Emmett Brown : The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style? "
Dr. Emmett Brown : Don't worry. As long as you hit that wire with the connecting hook at precisely eighty-eight miles per hour the instant the lightning strikes the tower... everything will be fine.
[The DeLorean has just made the first time-jump]
Marty McFly : Jesus Christ, Doc, you just disintegrated Einstein.
Dr. Emmett Brown : Relax, Marty, I didn't disintegrate anything. The molecular structure of both Einstein and the car remain completely intact.
Marty McFly : Then where the hell are they?
Dr. Emmett Brown : The appropriate question is WHEN the hell are they.
[Talking about the time Machine]
Marty McFly : So does it run on regular unleaded gasoline?
Dr. Emmett Brown : Unfortunately no, it needs something with a little more kick - plutonium.
Marty McFly : Plutonium... wait, are you telling me that this sucker is nuclear?
Dr. Emmett Brown : No no no, this sucker's electrical, but it requires a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need.
Marty McFly : Doc, you don't just walk into a store and buy plutonium... did you rip that off?
Dr. Emmett Brown : Shhhhhh. Of course. From a group of Libyan nationalists. They wanted me to build them a bomb, so I took their plutonium and in turn, gave them a shiny bomb-casing filled with used pinball machine parts.
Dr. Emmett Brown : Great Scott!
[is checking to see if all the parts of the time machine are working before he takes off]
Marty McFly : ...Flux-capacitor... fluxing...