Movie Critique: Back To The Future Essay Example

The movie Back To The Future is a fictional movie that was set in 1985, where a seventeen-year-old Marty McFly. It focuses on this seventeen year who was taken back in time 30 years to 1955 by a time machine that his Doc Brown created. His parents were classical nerds, and it was shown in the movie that his father was afraid to stand up for himself while his mother was an alcoholic. The year 1955 was the time Marty's parents fell in love. The turning point of the movie was when Marty accidentally prevented his parents from meeting, hence endangering his future (Ostwalt, 2016). Thus, the rest of the film spends on Marty solving this while helping his parents overcome the challenges they faced at the time. His actions at this point ultimately changed the future, where the audience finds that his family had transformed and lived in the upper-middle-class suburbia contrary to when he left.

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The movie has a unique setting which is based on a character known as Marty McFly. The film in all its trilogy focuses on ensuring that Marty's existence is continued as well as save the family while keeping the actions in the movie on the development of the characters. Also, the narrative follows the audience in the loop while changing the main characters in terms of their progress throughout the movie.

The movie is impressive considering the amount of information that is packed into the opening minutes. Within the first minutes, the film has taken the audience into a captivating scene packed with details. The start of the movie shows the bizarre laboratory of Doc Brown, who is depicted as a rather strange guy based on his characteristics. However, this scene shows a strong foreshadowing showing a man hanging from a clock which looks like the end of the movie (Zemeckis, 1985). The plot development also shows foreshadowing with the newscaster narrating to the audience about the stolen plutonium. It is at this instance that the audience is introduced to the main character Marty McFly, with the end of the shot seen at the time when Marty's skateboard hits the plutonium. This act helps us understand the nature and wild behavior of the kid and what the audience expects of the kid. All these actions are seen in the first instance the movie starts.

As the movie proceeds on, we get to learn more about Marty. It is in this scene that we learn that we that the kid is a rebel and a rocker. We are yet introduced to another character called Michael J. Fox, who is an individual whose performance is characterized by twitchy, and squinty-eyed. It is this performance by Michael J. Fox, that does a great job at introducing Marty as a character who is insecure and in constant hapless panic. The scene further shows Doc calling Marty and setting a meeting that will happen later in the movie. The audience is also introduced to the fact that clocks are slow, which is an indicator that Marty is late to school. In the next step, the viewer can predict that Marty's next destination is the school, which helps in the forward movement of the story (Engelen, 2007). The audience can then deduce that the main character is not a model student.

The first twelve minutes of the movie is packed with activities that help the audience understand the concept of the film and what to expect from it. The story further continues and shows the audience the type of person he is, as skates to school. At school, we are introduced to Jennifer, who is Marty's girlfriend as she tries to sneak him into school. However, they are caught by Mr Strickland, who overheard, Marty talking about Doc (Dwyer, 2015). Although at this juncture, the audience has not yet met the doctor, they have a clear mental image of the individual. The teacher further introduces us to one of the characteristics of Marty when he accused Marty of being a slacker like his father. We come to learn of this characteristic later in the movie, and at this juncture, the audience already has a hint of what might in the film, when they travel back in time happens.

The movie introduces the band in which Marty plays, which is known as The Pin Heads, while they are auditioning for the dance. Despite Jennifer watching them proudly, the group is rejected. The trait of rejection is already unknown characteristic of Marty, help put a cap on the storyline that has been previously set in the previous scene. The scene ends with school being skipped and Jenifer and Marty going home through the town square after school (Galvane, Ronfard, & Christie, 2015). It is great how the movie develops the characteristics of Marty, and the fact that all these elements of the film happen in the first few minutes of the film makes a great movie.

Conclusion

One of the main themes of this film is change as shown in the time between 1955 and 1985, in town as well as Marty's parents. Despite the movie being about showing changes that are seen in Marty's parents at different times of the years, it ended up showing the audience the difference in the character of Marty. The movie is a great one accomplishes in developing each character from the first minutes and illustrates the theme of change in the movie. The plot of the film and its scripts alone beside the visual effects makes the movie a pleasure to watch and learn a great deal from it.

References

Galvane, Q., Ronfard, R., & Christie, M. (2015, May). Comparing film-editing. In Eurographics Workshop on Intelligent Cinematography and Editing, WICED'15 (pp. 5-12). Eurographics Association.

Dwyer, M. D. (2015). Back to the Fifties: Nostalgia, Hollywood Film, and Popular Music of the Seventies and Eighties. Oxford University Press.

Ostwalt, C. E. (2016). Visions of the end: Secular apocalypse in recent Hollywood film. Journal of Religion & Film, 2(1), 4.

Engelen, L. (2007). Back To The Future, ahead to the past. Film and history: A status questions. Rethinking History, 11(4), 555-563.

Zemeckis, R. (1985). Back To The Future [Film]. USA: Universal Pictures, Amblin Entertainment, U-Drive Productions.