the future that was

Remember when you were a kid and you first saw Back To The Future II where they go to the year 2015 and there are flying cars, hoverboards, self tying shoe laces, hoverboards and hydrating pizzas, how everything looked so clean and Utopian, and how the future was about to look like such a brighter and happier place.

Well its been twenty years since that movie was made (1989), now its 2009 and there are still no flying cars and no plans to make them!

Apart from great advancements in computers (the internet was unheard in BTTF's version of the future), what can we expect from further beyond than 2015?

A horrible dull future



The future that the 2006 movie Children of Men gave us was truly amazing, the year 2027 and not a child born in 18 years, the United Kingdom is the only country to regain law and society (just), while the rest of the world has become lawless, people are slowly losing it, life is dull and urban environments are stretched to the max in filth, violence, crime and general ugliness, this may happen in the future from a depression that crashes the current financial system meaning that law and order will fall soon afterwards reducing mankind back to the survival of the fittest.

A corporate run future

Man I hate corporations trying to sell me horseshit products I don't need!

But what if these corporations got together and gained more power above the government, of if they got so powerful they were allowed do business like sovereign countries, the 2008 John Cusack movie War Inc. took such a scenario showing a corporation (Tamberlain, based on the read life Haliburton) invading a fictional Middle Eastern country of Turaqistan for its vast oil reserves.



They then opened up the war destroyed control for business for big business.

This might be a stretch but think of this, in theory "anybody can run for president of the United States!"

I wonder who McDonalds wants up there?
I wonder who Diet Coke wants up there?

A totalitarian future



A future very like George Orwells 1984 were a small totalitarian government controls EVERYTHING everyone does every second of their lives, when 1984 came out it was more of a fear of what the world would look like if the Soviet Union took over.

However in 2002 when the US government proposed putting out an implantable RFID chip several hundred people speculated further saying it was the first step towards the rise of a totalitarian government in America (see video below).



The idea is that these chips will contain the money (hence digital money), from the chips the government can deduct the taxes you owe etc. etc. so you literally become a serf to them, and if you protest what they're doing they'll turn off your chip, and there is nothing you can do, you can't buy food you won't be able to survive!

This scenario may be more plausible in the mere future than the next one;

A future robot uprising


Be afraid, be very afraid

Man makes robot, robot gains intelligence, robot rebels against man and enslaves it.

I'm not going to bring up Will Smith's I Robot simply because I hate that movie with every fiber of my body (Will Smith totally sold himself), many sci fi movies show a robot uprising to be, first because they were programmed to think and feel and second after they've wiped out most of their creators (see Battlestar Galactica) they will want to look and feel like their creators.



A future of space travel



Firefly and Alien pull this off the best in my mind, a future where we will have truckers in space, where we discover a series of plants and emigrate to them, a future where space travel is just as common as car travel is on Earth today (okay maybe that's a push, as common as air travel), this scenario is a push considering how we haven't managed to send a man to Mars yet and the fact that our natural resources are on their way to depletion.

And the fact we're still kill each other over ideals, religion and resources shows that we'll probably never get that far in the future anyway!

how Back To The Future was nearly ruined!

Remember the lovable characters from Back To The Future?
Well the original script didn't take prisoners on ruining the future to be good movie.

Doc (known as the Professor) is a failed scientist living in an old abandoned theater where him and Marty pirate movies including Marty owning his own little porn tape empire in his school, Marty's family being losers is the same.

Instead of having a DeLorean as the time machine they have a fridge, think about that for a minute, instead of an awesome configured DeLorean they had a fridge!



Time travel in movies is seldom cool, but when you have a DeLorean as a time machine as in these movies it is cool!

And when Doc the Professor shows Marty his time machine Marty (in this version being the douchebag he is) states they should go into the mere future and get horse racing results!

The time machine is a fridge hooked to a mini nuclear reactor, and after they test it on the Professors monkey government agents come in and shoot him and Marty gets into the time machine and is warped back into the year 1952.

He walks around like an idiot loudly exclaiming he hasn't been born yet, he eventually meets up with the younger Professor who tries to figure a way to get him back, Marty after being told not to wonders into town and tries to invent rock n' roll early to get his own career going (literally within hours of arriving in 1952).

He finally comes around, realizes he has to get his parents back together, that bit is nearly the same as in the movie except when Marty plays the rock song the police are called saying its a riot.



Marty gets his parents together and him and the Professor drive the fridge to the 1952 Nevada nuclear test, going close to it a series of events nearly ruin their plan but in the end Marty makes it within a certain distance of the blast before it is triggered.

It is the end that completely gets me, not only was the original version really silly it was close to retarded near the end, the Professor meets him and Marty finds 1982 is very different, everyone has flying cars, robots and get this, the Professor never even made a time machine.

Rock n' roll music doesn't exist after that one "riot" at a school dance which makes little to no sense!

Luckily this never came to be and the Back To The Future we all know and love took its place!

Back To The Future too!

When a great movie is made there is always the sequel, the sequel is never as good as the movie it is following but always tries to live up to to its former self, this sometimes leads to the movie giving the audience the same 'meal' they enjoyed out of the first one, hence Die Hard 2: Die Harder, but I'm not going to go into that stupid stupid movie but instead focus on Back To The Future: Part II.

Back To The Future on one hand was a solid story set out well from start to finish to make it a good movie, in Back To The Future II (well the second half anyway) they went a bit crazy trying to top the first film completely by going into the first movie again!



Yes anything is possible when you have a time machine!

What was the coolest bit in the first movie, the skateboard chase in which Biff tries to ram Marty in his '46 Ford before Marty jumps the whole car catches his skateboard and watches Biff careen into the back of a manure truck and get himself and his car buried in shit.

How do you top something like that?

Well how about have Biff chase Marty in his '46 Ford while Marty rides a hoverboard from the future at night through a tunnel when Biff nearly catches him again only to have Marty be saved by catching a bit of rope attached to a flying DeLorean.



Then have Biff crash into another manure truck and get covered in shit again.

Another memorable scene from the first movie is Marty playing John B. Goode in the dance scene, but to add to the excitement of a song why not have his future self save his past self playing on stage by climbing over him and dropping sandbags on their heads.

It sounded crazy enough to work.

And finally the lightning scene from the first film, well have that repeated again by having the flying DeLorean being struck by lightning.

Then repeat the other scene from the first movie again to double the adrenaline rush!

So in this case does the sequel better the original?

It's your decision.

Doc Brown a seriously dangerous lunatic?

I've said before that the Back To The Future trilogy are one of if not my favorite series of movies, however after several viewings of each I have to wonder if the character Doc Brown is a complete and utter lunatic.

When we first see Doc in the first movie its after Marty sneaks out of his home from his loser family at one in the morning to see Docs latest experiment, a time machine made out of a DeLorean which he decides to test with his dog via remote control and actually looks surprised when it works.

He then reveals it runs off of plutonium that he stole from Libyan terrorists, which then choose that very moment to arrive shoot Doc and hunt down Marty who narrowly escapes from them and ends up in 1955.

Stranded he seeks the help of a younger Doc who explains he shouldn't know too much about the future or disrupt the space time continuum while in the past.

So after Doc nearly gets Marty killed from Libyan terrorists, Marty then ends up back in 1955 where he disrupts his parents first meeting endangering his own existence, while they manage to fix this problem he manages to send Marty back to 1985 via a lightning strike on the clock tower, Marty finds his family are no longer losers but has no clear memory of them in this way making it a little strange to live with them with no memory of 'that' past.


"Your daughter marries a black man!"

After all the pep talk Doc then returns in a flying DeLorean brings Marty and his girlfriend to the year 2015 in order to "change" his future, in the process they recreate the past of their town (Hill Valley) into an entire dimension of hell where Biff is very powerful and Marty's step father.

This was because his older self gave his younger self a Sports Almanac in 1955 to which Doc brings them back having Marty risk causing a massive paradox with his other self and having him nearly get killed by Biff who nearly runs him over in his car after he steals the Almanac back!

And just as its about to end in a happy ending Doc gets struck by lightning (while flying in a thunderstorm).


What traveling through time does to your car!

Marty stuck again in 1955 pursues the younger Doc after the older Doc (now stuck in 1885) writes him a letter giving him instructions about where he hid the DeLorean (after a microchip was fried), young Doc discovers he was shot in the back not long after he had wrote the letter so after digging out the 70 year old DeLorean fits ridiculously large tubes and light bulbs that serve as a microchip (and whitewall tires) sending Marty back to the wild west (a dangerous time) where he nearly gets shot and hung within a matter of minutes.

He finds his friend and ends up having a bounty on his back by Bufford Tannen (Biff's great grandfather) and ends up stuck there after rupturing a fuel line.

So after then having to outwit Bufford and not kill him they then hijack a train to push the DeLorean, this proves to be dangerous and affects hundreds of people in the past in the process.

Also Marty risks crashing into the ravine in 1885 or getting hit by a passing train on the other side in 1985 which happens luckily when he was stopped!

Of course Doc wasn't evil and along the line Marty recognised he was doing all the crazy things to help do good which is why he didn't go "fuck Doc" around the time he nearly got him killed by 1980's Libyan terrorists, a crazy 1950's farmer, has him endanger his own existence and then purposely get struck by lightning.



But in the end of the day Doc returns in a flying time traveling train after marrying a much younger woman from the 19th century and gives Marty a small present before leaving to somewhere that wasn't the future!