Make Your Own Future

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Since my parents were out of town this weekend and I didn't have dinner at their house, I decided to binge watch the "Back to the Future" trilogy this Sunday night instead. I realized something different about the movies now that I'm an adult that first unsettled me and then gave me a deeper appreciation for just how well written this trilogy is. Unlike other trilogies or anthologies, this wasn't written many years before it went to film, and the movies were filmed and edited in rapid succession. Sure, there are some errors, and it's kind of cliche like much that originated in the 1980s, but it's still one of my favorite franchises, and this realization just enhanced that. Growing up, I identified with Marty and felt the story was about him, his family, and their story. Now, I realize it's also really a story about Dr. Emmet Brown. Emmet is like me in more ways than I realized and more everyman than his character appears to be at first glance. Sure, he's a strange guy, but he's also just an ordinary guy. He's not seeking power or prestige or pelf. He's just trying to find a happy and peaceful life. He's not a superhero. He's an ordinary guy who makes ordinary mistakes who makes ordinary decisions that ultimately decide a happier fate for him than he originally intended. It's a story of hope about some ordinary people with an extraordinary opportunity who find satisfaction in the simple. It's my kind of story.

Emmet Brown is just a simple, nerdy, geeky guy pursuing his own interests regardless of what others think or say. In that way, I identify with the professor. What other kind of person would have pictures of famous scientists above his hearth? Brown uses sophisticated devices for the time, works on projects because they interest him, and is reclusive and introverted. Although he's also rich, he doesn't seem interested in opulence or appearances, and whatever he earns in whatever time period goes towards his scientific interests above all else. He is a man doing what he likes when he likes without the interference or involvement of others without regard for what other people think of him. He's not married or seemingly interested in women whatsoever. Wherever he goes, whether in his living room making inventions or to 2015 or to the old west, he constantly tries to find ways to make the world a better place. His inventions in 1955, his interventions with the McFlys in 2015, and his inventions/influence with the clocktower in 1885 all center around improving things around him. He's your standard everyday man who achieves great things but only really intended to lift where he stood. Emmet genuinely cares about others, including Biff's family. He comes across as the wise older mentor, but he's also a normal guy prone to the same shortcomings as everyone else, making him more personable, more believable, and more affable because although he's clearly smart he's also human.

Doc Brown makes mistakes that throw his life in turmoil. Since nobody, especially not he, ever traveled in time before, he is careful to avoid some things when traveling but makes other mistakes, which ultimately lead to his initial downfall. As with most scientists, he's naive enough to think that the Libyans can't find him and that they'll be satiated by his briefcase full of shiny pinball machine parts. He's careful, but he's not careful enough, and when the Libyans come for him, that really sets the story in motion. If not for Brown's mistakes, nothing would have changed to Marty's past. This entire franchise begins, not because of Marty's mistakes as we may think at first glance, but because of Brown's. Brown violates his own rules and lives at the end of part I, without which he would have never made more mistakes and necessitated future installments. He gets sloppy. People see the time machine who shouldn't, see the Delorean fly who shouldn't, and learn about its potential who shouldn't. By not paying better care to his surroundings, Brown inadvertently reveals to old Biff that there is a time machine, and Biff uses it to totally ablate Doc Brown's revised future happiness by going back and giving his younger self the almanac. Being the chivalric man that he is, Brown inadvertently alters time constantly, saving Clara from the ravine, falling in love, and then refusing to return to where he belongs. He knows you can't play dice with the universe, but his heart overtakes his head, his excitement overruns his logic, and his inexperience throws the entire universe into turmoil, not just things for the McFly family. His humanity and redemption from his mistakes are really the plot of this franchise.

Ultimately, however, Doc Brown discovers opportunity in this story to change his own future for the better. As the franchise comes to an end, you see a rejuvenated Doc Brown appear with his family. At the end of our story, he finds a way to continue to pursue science, to continue to travel through time, and to have a family. It's a story of hope and possibility, not just for Marty, but for Emmet. That titan of invention becomes a troubadour, and he finds his future in the past when his misadventures and mistakes culminate in an opportunity to meet and fall for Clara. Essentially, Marty saves Brown's life, literally and figuratively, as the trilogy concludes. Literally, he gives Brown a letter that prompts a bullet proof vest, and then he travels back in time and saves Brown from Griff by throwing a Frisbie and deflecting the bullet. Figuratively, Marty provides evidence that Brown's life has meaning through his work, since he finally invents something that works, and he gives Brown a chance at a higher purpose because Brown saves and then falls for Clara and has a family. He's depicting a man of about 60 years old by that movie although he's much younger, making Emmet Brown the only character I know from pop culture who is still older than I am when he realizes success. The entire series of events concludes with Brown's own words: "Your future isn't written yet. Noone's has. Your future is what you make of it, so make it a good one." Through their misadventures, both McFly and Brown find a better future than the one they knew when we first met them in 1985. Their relationship in essence transcends time.

"Back to the Future" is about making a better future for the people you love and about changing your fortunes. It's a story about redemption and second chances. It's a story about friendship. The unlikely friendship of Marty McFly and Emmet Brown provides both of them better chances at prosperity and happiness in their futures. It's a story about science. it's a story about hope. This story showcases how even when things go completely awry, even though it may come long after when you expected, you have a chance to be great if you act on opportunities that arise. Of course you are careful, but every life makes mistakes. We don't have to let our mistakes make us. Even Biff, the villain, ends up a better person in the story. Sure, he's a cowed sniveling simpleton, but he's no longer a bully, and he earns an honest living. It's a clean show. There is some violence, but there is little profanity, and Biff always ends up in manure not the profane metaphor used in modernity. It's a clean, family-friendly movie that gave me hope for a bright future as a boy and this weekend renewed my hope for a bright future now that I'm more Emmet than Marty.  I find hope in this new perspective on the story and how beautiful the storytelling is that there can be a happy end, a happier end anyway, even if you must wait longer than most for what you hope. With every choice you make, ever step you take, you decide your own story; you decide the person you'll be. It is possible to correct your mistakes, not with a time machine per se, but in such a way that you are aware of, open to, and acting upon them until you end up where you always intended to be- Back To Your Future.