Imaginary Worlds - Great Scott! It's The Future!

Episode Date: October 21, 2015

In this bonus episode of Imaginary Worlds, I look at how Back to the Future Part II might have been a better movie if it took place in our 2015 -- yes, the one without flying cars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Hey, everybody. This is a special bonus edition of Imaginary Worlds this week, which had come out today, October 21st, 2015. Because as we all know, today is the day that Marty McFly arrived in the future. The future. And if you've been on the internet today, I'm sure you've probably seen a lot of these articles, which are basically the gist of it is,

we were promised flying cars, and we got Twitter. What the hell? And you know, it's funny, I actually did a story about flying cars a couple of years ago, and they do kind of exist. Like, people are actually trying to make them. Same with hoverboards. I mean, there's a lot of videos of people who claim to have actually made real hoverboards. This is real, folks. This is the real hoverboard right here. The new images just released by Lexus of a skateboarder floating several inches above the pavement, above the ramp. But they are still very, very much in prototype. 3D movies, definitely better than they used to be,

but, you know, there's not like a giant hologram shark that can leap over a marquee. Whoa, Doc, we're really here in the future. Huh, looks different from how I imagined it. In fact, this sort of sense of disappointment has been going on so long that the website College Humor produced this cartoon. You gotta fit in, Marty. Quick, put these on.

Oh, rad. I bet they're like futuristic self-lacing sneakers, right, Doc? What? No, they're called Crocs. And Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox filmed these commercials for Toyota. We've got 3D movies. We got fingerprint technology. Those self-tying sneakers. I'm waiting for those. There are also all these counter arguments, like there was an article in the New York Times last weekend that argued, no, no, you know, if you squint and look hard enough, we did end up in the 2015 they predicted.

Because, you know, if you look at Hill Valley in that world, there's been this urban renewal from the 1980s in the downtown, as they imagined it would, you know, be a downtown you can imagine right now. Or look how mediaated their world was with screens everywhere. Okay, I want channels 18, 24, 63, 100, 98, 7, and weather channel. But I think we're forgetting one really important thing. Back to the Future 2 was a huge disappointment. Because I remember at the time, all the trailers and all the commercials were showing images of the future, and then we went to the movie movie and that future lasted basically just the first act.

And the second act, they went back to this dark dystopian 1985, which was all messed up. And then they had to fix it by going to the original timeline in 1955. And the movie just turned into this kind of action-packed caper. They just didn't have the heart and soul of the original film. But here's the thing that I've been thinking lately. If Robert Zemeckis had a crystal ball and somehow actually imagined 2015 as we live it, I don't think that would have been disappointing.

I think it actually would have been a really great film. Because when you think about it, in the original film, the big joke is not just that Marty knows the future, but that Marty is this kid from the future, meaning he's cool and he's a rock and roller and he's getting laid. I mean, you know, think about how like most high school films, the hero, like their entire quest

is to get a boyfriend or a girlfriend. And Marty starts the film with an awesome girlfriend. And he and Jennifer want to go camping that weekend. And his mom is upset because she can tell that they're having sex and probably going to have sex up there. And it's just a very normal thing that a sort of post 1960s teenage kid does. And he brings that sort of confidence, sexual confidence back with him to the 50s, which is kind of what gives him his real sort of superpower back then among teenagers. But if you take that Marty and transport him to 2015, all of a sudden he's a prude. And particularly if you discovered that his kids in a 2015 high school were sexting and just putting all sorts of

inappropriate stuff on Snapchat. You know, he'd be completely horrified by cyberbullying. Marty would actually be a stand-in for today's parents in the guise of a teenager, lecturing them and telling them how back in their day, they didn't do this and that and everything was better. And then that dialogue could totally echo his mother's dialogue in 1985 before we discovered what she was really like as a teenager in 1955. I mean, that would just been a great, clever social commentary. and why I never really developed it any further is because then it begs the question, so his mom had feelings for him in 1955. Does that mean he and his daughter in 2015? I think we're in really creepy territory.

Which is why maybe in the end, we should just stick with flying cars and hologram sharks.