Back to the Beginning

To better understand the film Back to the Future (1985), we must understand the historical context and rhetoric this film is responding to. It is responding to terrorism, kidnapping, and a new rebel generation.

As you can see in the picture, the terrorists are of middle eastern descent. This is a reference to the conflict in the middle east. But what you cannot see in the picture is the VolksWagen bus the two terrorists are driving in, this is extremely significant. In 1972, Israeli olympians were taken hostage by a Palestinian terrorist group, Black September, in Munich, Germany during the 1972 olympics. 17 people where killed including five terrorist (CBS news story remembering the anniversary of the attacks in 2002, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/05/world/main520865.shtml).


What also may have influenced the terrorist aspect is the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, where over one thousand civilians were murdered in the streets of West Beirut, Lebanon (Journal of Palestine Studies, XXXII, number 1, autumn 2002 pages 36-58), this is where the terrorists in the Back to the Future are from. As well as the Lebanon hostage crisis from 1982-1992 where 96 foreign hostages, most of which were western European and American in nationality, were abducted. This is referenced by the picture Marty keeps with him of himself, his brother, and his sister (see photo here). The overwhelming feeling caused by 'disappearing family members' is paralleled within the movie while in the real world it is actually happening daily.


We can identify Back to the Future as science fiction because it deals with the space time continuum and what happens when people break or mess up the space time continuum. Such as when Marty plays Johnny B Goode on the guitar and the cousin of Chuck Berry calls Chuck Berry to tell him about a song that Marty learned that was originally Chuck Berry's song, but what this means is that Chuck Berry actually learned the song Johnny B Goode from Marty McFly, it is like what came first the chicken or the egg (picture seen here).  In addition we can look at one of the pictures before that I mentioned, the picture of Marty, his brother, and his sister and sees that his brother's head is missing; by getting hit by a car and saving his dad from getting hit it turns out that Marty disrupts the chain of events. The movie makes science fiction references left and right. Referencing Darth Vadar from Star Wars (1978) (picture seen here)

 and speaking of the 1950s as a time of believing anything because there was no one to trust not even the government. (As seen here, a child convincing his father that Marty in his radiation suit is actually an alien who has materialized into human form before their eyes.)

Some of the other films Robert Zemeckis has directed are Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Back to the Future Parts II (1989) and III (1990) as well as Forrest Gump (1994), Cast Away (2000), The Polar Express (2004), and Beowulf (2007). While Zemeckis has directed may of these great films they all occurred after Back to the Futur

e (1985). Films that may have influenced Back to the Future was Used Cars (1980) where he was also the writer just as he was for Back to the Future. Separately, he, Joel Silver, and Gilbert Adler created the Dark Castle Entertainment production company, a company whose films are mainly horror and mind-bending terror.