Back to the Future on the Big Screen

Courtesy of Universal

Readers of this column know I’ve got a special place in my heart for Back to the Future. Even though I know there are probably “better” movies out there, I’ve long considered it my favorite. I’ve watched it dozens of times, often at defining stages of my life.

As a kid, I watched it for the DeLorean and the action. A few years later, when I started noticing girls, Lea Thompson was my first Hollywood crush. As a teenager, I marveled at the time travel paradoxes and the risqué jokes that used to sail over my head. It was the last thing I watched as a single guy, on the morning of my wedding day. Coincidentally, it was the first movie I watched after I became a dad.

But none of those viewings ever took place in a theater. Instead, they involved edited-for-television broadcasts, old VHS tapes, DVDs and Blu-rays. So when I heard the Fox Theatre’s annual Summer Film Festival would feature Back to the Future, I made seeing it a priority. I’m so glad I did; it’s easily one of the most exhilarating moviegoing experiences of my life.

I know what some of you are thinking, mostly because my wife asked me the same question: “Why are we driving an hour, paying $10 to park and buying tickets to watch a movie that is already sitting on a shelf in our house?” The answer makes perfect sense to me, though you still might think I’m crazy. There’s a massive difference between watching a DVD in your living room – even on a massive screen with a killer sound system – and seeing a classic at the Fox.

I was in movie nerd heaven and my wife had a great time too. (Admittedly, her fun came from rolling her eyes and laughing at her geeky husband.) Back to the Future is already a funny, thrilling and practically flawless piece of entertainment, but seeing it in a gigantic venue with thousands of fellow fans only intensifies the viewing experience.

Before Robert Zemeckis spent a decade or so obsessed with motion capture technology (and the creepy, dead-eyed characters that go along with it), he was a filmmaker with a remarkable knack for marrying high-concept plots to charismatic, relatable characters. The screenplay he co-wrote with Bob Gale is a masterful example of how to take a deeply sci-fi premise and use it to tell an engaging, unexpectedly emotional story that practically every moviegoer can identify with.

Think about it: once you strip away the DeLorean, the flux capacitor and the time travel mumbo jumbo (which I love, don’t get me wrong), the film is a relatively simple story of a self-involved teenager realizing that his parents used to be kids too. As such, Gale and Zemeckis understand that it’s crucial to keep the focus on the characters and mostly relegate the sci-fi elements to a few chunky exposition scenes and well-placed punchlines.

They also reserve the big special effects sequences (which are downright quaint in hindsight) as payoffs for the big emotional moments. Think about it: when Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox, in the most iconic role of his career) initially travels through time, we’re still reeling from the murder of his scientist friend Doc Brown (the inimitable Christopher Lloyd). As Marty eventually escapes his 1955 purgatory, we’re still on an emotional high from watching his dad (the delightfully weird Crispin Glover) finally stand up to bully Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson, the film’s secret weapon) and win the heart of his dream girl (Lea Thompson, who remains crush-worthy after all these years).

Not to mention the hilarious, heavy metal-infused rendition of “Johnny B. Goode” Marty performed at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance a few minutes earlier, or Doc saving the day by zip-lining from the clock tower. Then, when we’re forced to watch in horror along with Marty as Doc is shot yet again, we realize we’re watching the Marty from a week earlier launch this entire story into motion. To quote our hero, it’s a heavy realization when we consider how much the character has grown throughout his journey.

When you think about the plot on a literal level, there’s absolutely no reason why it should work. A wannabe-rock star teenager watches his scientist mentor get shot to death by terrorists and flees to the 1950s, only to find himself sticking up for his clueless father and fighting off the oedipal advances of his mother? That’s insane. Yet the talented cast and masterful screenplay make it simultaneously convincing and charming.

Watching Back to the Future on the big screen further establishes the film’s perfect construction. The pacing is ridiculously fast, the dialogue is clever and every narrative element works to serve the overall story. Even seemingly unimportant lines hint at jokes and plot points to come. There’s not a single unnecessary scene or character.

The film holds up remarkably well 30 years later. (That’s right – Marty and Doc are traveling to our present in Back to the Future Part II.) A lot of ’80s movies are so dated by now that it’s almost impossible to watch them, but Gale and Zemeckis cleverly sidestep this pop culture landmine by setting most of the story in 1955.

As such, the era’s horrible haircuts and poor fashion choices are only on the screen for a mercifully brief amount of time. It’s something few filmmakers would’ve thought about in 1985, but it’s a smart touch that contributes to the movie’s rewatch value. However, since we’re currently in the middle of an ’80s nostalgia boom, the Fox Theatre crowd howled at all the cultural markers.

Something else the Fox screening highlighted was the importance of film as a communal experience. Sure, almost everyone in that room had seen the movie countless times. But we all got to watch it together, laugh together, cheer together and feel our chests swell with excitement when Alan Silvestri’s legendary score filled our ears. It’s a night I’ll never forget.

I can’t recommend the Fox Theatre’s Summer Film Festival enough, so I’ve included the rest of this year’s lineup below. For ticket prices and other info, visit foxtheatre.org/shows-and-events/2015ccsff or reach out to me through e-mail, Twitter or Facebook. I’ll be happy to point you in the right direction.

Beetlejuice (July 18 at 7:30 p.m.)

The Princess Bride (June 20 at 7:30 p.m.)

Jaws (July 16 at 7:30 p.m.)

The Breakfast Club (July 18 at 7:30 p.m.)

Ghostbusters (July 30 at 7:30 p.m.)

The Sound of Music Sing-Along (Aug. 2 at 1:00 p.m.)

Saturday Morning Cartoons (Aug. 15 at 10 a.m.)

Braveheart (Aug. 15 at 7:30 p.m.)

Legends of Silent Film with Mighty Mo (Aug. 16 at 4:00 p.m.)

Frozen Sing-Along (Aug. 29 at 1:00 p.m.)