I Have Too Many Thoughts
• So, Big is the weirdest comedy about child kidnapping I've ever seen. Josh's dad is almost completely absent, despite having what appears to be a healthy marriage, mainly because the presence of another parent would complicate things and introduce all kinds of questions like: Why haven't the parents called in the police or the feds? The movie is presented from the kid's view, which makes it lighthearted, but Josh's mom must've been eaten alive nightly by the terror of what must be happening to her boy, who's been missing for months. And then at one point Josh writes a letter to his mom set to a montage of baseball and video games, as if the film wants to mock her for worrying so. Sure, granted, Josh's actions aren't completely incomprehensible. He moves into a loft, buys a soda machine, and sleeps with Elizabeth Perkins; all pretty plausible fantasties for a kid in 1988. But there's a dark side to the story that's shoved to the corner, and it always feels weird to watch the adult Josh play with toys and order pizza when his mom is at home crying her eyes out.
• Back to the Future: Part III ends with an admittedly cheesy send-off from Doc Brown that the future isn't written yet, and you can make it whatever you want, so "make it a good one." And that's all fine, I guess. But if the future isn't set, then traveling from the established present into, say, 2015 wouldn't be traveling into the actual future, merely one of the possible futures available from your particular present. So while Marty went forward in time in the second movie to save his kid's reputation, it's not merely feasible, but highly likely that something else happened in the intervening 30 years to re-ruin the life of Marty Jr. Not to mention the headaches caused by going into the past to change the present, which would theoretically give Marty two entirely different and warring sets of childhood memories, one in which he's a poor loser and the other in which his family is well-off and seems to employ Biff as a house servant/man-slave. These two completely independent lives would likely split Marty's brain apart, but instead he just hops into a pretty weak-looking truck and drives around with Jennifer instead of succumbing to the eventual psychosis brought on by one consciousness attempting to contain two separate but equally true histories. What gives?
Comments: 15
What book is that, where the guy has 'warring sets of childhood memories,' as you say? And they threaten to drive him insane?
Back to the Future has always perplexed me, when I devote much more thought to it than it needs.
Is that a little bit of the Dark Tower I see creeping into your movie watching patterns?
The main plot-centered problem with the Back to the Future movies, and any other time travelling plot (especially those where someone goes to the past) is that once the past is successfully changed, the problem no longer exists in that timeline, which necessitated the person's trip back there in the first place. Which means that the trip would never have taken place at all.
"Sore thumbs. Do they stick out? I mean, have you ever seen a thumb and gone, 'Wow! That baby is sore!'
I agree with you about Big. I also never really bought into the premise after Josh finds himself terrified in that seedy hotel room.
you been watching HBO a lot recently?
Chris: Exactly. If you wanted to travel into the future (which doesn't seem possible, but still), you'd have to have a clone of yourself to serve as a placeholder. But that didn't work out very well for Lance in The Last Starfighter, so it probably wouldn't work for me, either.
Rachel: It's inspired by Stephen King's The Waste Lands. When I read it, I wanted to yell "Thank you!" because someone finally dealt with the problem in a realistic way.
Kevin: Word. As a kid I had no problem with it, but now I probably read too far into it.
Mark: Yup. Also, you're right. You think Doc Brown would've accounted for that.
Constance: "I myself am dipping into my road-trip fund to procure a shiny new tux, so look for me to dazzle."
Josh: Obviously, yes. HBO, Comedy Central, and "The Office" seem to compose 90% of my summer viewing.
I had a problem with Josh sleeping with Elizabeth Perkins. That's messed up. Did the same type of thing happen in the remake, um, I mean, in 13 Going on 30?
I, on the other hand, think a 13-year-old sleeping with Elizabeth Perkins makes more sense than the rest of that flick. Well, I know I wanted to sleep with Perkins since I was 13 (okay, even younger. I was a precocious kid). Still, it did seem weird about the parents.
Oh God, I love Big, I was 11 years old then and I thought that was the ultimate fantasy, Now that I am 30 I live pretty much like that, I collect my very well earned checks, have a credit card to buy books, comics and toys, I also have my own office all the while I still dress like a child...
Life can be awesome!
Yes, I know that I need to grow up.
hey dan. i'm in love with you.
house servant/man slave.
hahahahaha
I always just followed Back To The Future's divergent time lines logic, with a bit of Bill and Ted's Deus Ex Machina logic thrown in to keep my mind from collapsing.
Marty ran over the tree, and it became the Lone Pine Mall! Get it? Get it...
As regards the time travel paradoxes in BTF-III, you may enjoy the following site, which can't explain them either, but is very clever about just why it can't explain them:
Because I feel that no discussion of time travel is complete without it.
" One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. There is no problem with changing the course of history—the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.
The major problem is simply one of grammar"
Regarding Back To the Future and time paradoxes:
My biggest theoretical hiccup in the idea of time traveling into the future is the fact that when you leave your time, the present continues on.
For example: Say Marty leaves 1985 to go to 2005 while Biff stays behind. Okay, so in the ensuing years between 1985-2005 there is no Marty McFly for Biff to interact with. Therefore, there would be no future of his own for Marty to go visit as he just skipped over it by using the DeLorean. Hence, rendering any sort of "saving" your future child from criminal lives and the ilk completely null.
Why, yes, I do often think too much about popcorn movies....why do you ask?
Jul 9, 2007 9:26 PM