1 of 6 | Christopher Lloyd (L) and Michael J. Fox star in “Back to the Future,” returning to theaters Friday. Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 24 (UPI) — Back to the Future, returning to theaters Friday, became a phenomenon following its 1985 release. The film’s enormous popularity led to fans celebrating significant dates from the movie each October and November, with viewers now able to revisit the movie for its 40th anniversary.
Then at the height of his Family Ties fame, Michael J. Fox stars in Future as Marty McFly, a teenager living in Hill Valley, Calif. The character is a high school bandleader who is friends with the town’s infamous scientist Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd).
After Doc invents a time machine, Marty is accidentally sent back to 1955 in his place. In the past, he has to convince the younger Doc to invent a time machine and figure out how to send him back to the future.
Along the way, Marty prevents his father, George (Crispin Glover), from meeting his mother, Lorraine (Lea Thompson). With his own existence at stake, Marty has to play matchmaker for his teenage parents, all the more challenging when Lorraine develops a crush on her future son.
Back to the Future originally opened in theaters July 3, 1985, but the month of October is featured prominently in the film. For example, Oct. 26, 1985, is the date Doc unveils his time machine to Marty at the Twin Pines Mall.
For years, fans have met at the Puente Hills Mall location every Oct. 26 at 1:15 a.m. to celebrate the film. Another significant date is Oct. 21, 2015, the day when Marty and Doc visit the future in the sequel Back to the Future Part II. Marty spends the week of Nov. 5 to 12 in 1955.
The McFly family story proved universal for viewers in 1985 and has for many ever since. Perhaps it helps that a cool time-traveling DeLorean helps fix the family’s lives, but it is a narrative truth that what matters to one family will matter to viewers.
In 1955, Marty sees that George was always the wimp he is as a father, but Lorraine was way cooler than she ever let on. As a mother, she claimed she never made out with boys in parked cars, but she actually did, and drank and smoked too.
Young viewers who sense their parents are teaching them to do as they say, not as they did, appreciate that confirmation. Perhaps it is also important to remind parents that a little rebellion was healthy.
On a deeper level, Back to the Future is about patterns that repeat throughout your life. If you don’t break them, you’re doomed to pass them on generationally.
Town bully Biff (Thomas F. Wilson) makes George do his homework in 1955 and his paperwork in 1985. George always falls for the “your shoe’s untied” and “Hello, anybody home” teasing/borderline physical assault at both ages.
Marty seems more well-adjusted, but he fears rejection too much to take the chance to send his music to people who could actually help. A rejection from a high school dance audition (Huey Lewis in a cameo) destroys him.
These patterns even continue in the sequels, as Biff’s grandson has the exact same skateboard chase as his grandfather, this time only with hoverboards. It’s not just a callback, it’s a dramatization of the same behavior leading to a similar result.
The clock tower finale is such a thrilling sequence that it appears in all three Back to the Future films. It’s in the sequel when they return to 1955, and it opens Back to the Future Part III.
The sequels introduce Marty’s aversion to being called “chicken,” which is a form of peer pressure he has to overcome. It seemed out of the blue at the time, but now it seems many people jump into fights when being proverbially called chicken.
In 15 years of social media, all it takes is a random stranger hopping in their mentions and people will spend hours arguing back and forth. So perhaps Marty’s Achilles heel wasn’t so random, and hopefully everyone can learn to walk away from such bait.
Back to the Future came out one year after a much darker time travel movie, The Terminator, and was decidedly more optimistic. Back to the Future said you can change the future or present.
The Terminator, meanwhile, was conflicted about the prospect. Skynet certainly thought they could eliminate John Connor by killing his mother in 1984. Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) could not prevent the nuclear war with robots in that movie, but she succeeded in doing so in the sequel.
In Back to the Future, the changed history forces George to stand up to Biff, preventing what could be a very serious sexual assault at the high school dance. This sets George on a course of taking charge of his own life, making him a better husband in the future.
This is such a powerful message that at one local 2018 screening, a seven-year-old girl seeing the film for the first time screamed, “Yay!” when George punched Biff. That is also a testament to fans of Back to the Future becoming parents and sharing it with their kids.
Perhaps if George had set boundaries with Biff earlier it wouldn’t have come to violence, but violence was probably the only language Biff would ever understand. It’s also relevant that Marty was going to stage an attack for George to intervene, so he inadvertently prepared George for the real thing.
Such scenes are why we love these characters long after the jokes have played out. In 1955, nobody knew what a Pepsi Free was or that TV aired reruns. In 2025, few people have ever drank Pepsi Free and regularly watch old episodes on streaming, leading modern viewers to look at Marty quizically on the other end now.
The end of Back to the Future was never meant to be a setup, but as a kid in 1985, who couldn’t help but imagine the future Doc, Marty and his girlfriend Jennifer (Claudia Wells) were visiting? That future exists now, both in the sequel they released four years later, and in reality.
It remains hard to accept that the real 2015 is in the past after spending 30 years anticipating the year. Doc would say the future is what you make it, so there’s still time.
For the reasons above and many, many others, Back to the Future has not gotten old in 40 years. Despite anchoring itself in the years 1985 and 1955, the storytelling ensures it will remain relevant until the end of time.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
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