The Problem with #Back to the Future

Author of Threads of Darkness

To begin this discussion, I would like to point out that there will be spoilers. If you have never seen or even heard of this beloved movie franchise, then please run, not walk, to your nearest video store and purchase it. So, this summer I was partly laid up due to a fractured foot. Doomed to avoid unnecessary activity (such as walking), I found myself watching a bunch of old movies on cable. For whatever reason, HBO was insistent on airing Back to the Future movies, often out of order, and usually when I had nothing better to do. As I sat down and watched each movie (several times), I began thinking about the issues with time travel, especially when it comes to the cinema. During this line of logical thought punctuated by brief bouts of writing, I couldn't help but to begin pairing together some theories of my own involving the trilogy. In the first, second, and third movie, the protagonist Marty McFly travels through time and forever alters the course of history. In the first movie, Marty goes back in time on accident, unknowingly altering the lives of his family in the present. Now, in the second movie, a trip to the future somehow yields a trip to the past by the series villain, which changes the present for when Marty and Doc Brown return to the present from the future (did you get all that?). Last, in the third movie, there seems to be an issue where Doc gets struck by lightning and sent back into the old west, where Marty must rescue him from death (whatever). Specifically, in the second movie, when they return to 1985, everything has gone wrong due to future Biff’s influence on past Biff. Doc outlines how they must have traveled along an alternate timeline to bad 1985 because of this action, where the present Biff is extremely wealthy, has married Marty’s mother, and murdered his father. This whole idea of an alternate timeline that is actually the real timeline skewed off course really began to bother me, but not for the reasons you may believe. In the first movie, Marty goes back in time after witnessing the death of Doc Brown. In the past, shenanigans happen, and he returns to the present. However, the present has changed completely. His siblings are both successful young adults, and his father is no longer a complete weenie. Now, Marty has no recollection of these changes, which is strange because technically he should have experienced the change in his memories eventually. Sure, you may say that it shouldn't matter, because he was in the timestream (or whatever), but to his family, it could be completely likely that one day Marty wakes up and is a completely different person. Nature versus Nurture dictates that if the behavior of his entire environment was different growing up, and his family unit acts completely different, then Marty should be a different individual as well. Bear with me. In the second movie, they go to the future and future Biff goes back in time to give past Biff a sports almanac with all the winning teams for the last century. However, future Biff is able to come back to the future, even though the ripple effect should have been instantaneous (it was in the first movie for Marty), meaning that there was some sort of lock on Biff being able to go back to the future like Marty did (and just fyi, yes I do know about the deleted scene It still doesn't make a lot of sense). When Marty goes back to bad 1985 where Biff rules the city, Biff makes a comment about why Marty isn't in his Swiss boarding school. Now, what I cannot digest is that somehow Marty traveling back in time has erased the Marty of bad 1985. Doc is in a mental institute, so there is no way that he simply vanished without causing a fuss. Also, Marty’s father was murdered several years ago, and referred to as a local author, even though he didn't publish his first novel until the end of good 1985, but I digress (plot holes in time travel movies disgust me). Realization: In bad 1985, Doc and Marty are in two places at the same time. Since there are two Martys and two Docs, I can only make the assumption that the time machine isn't only functioning on the level of time manipulation, but rather has the ability to unlock paths to alternate (parallel) universes. Each time Marty makes a trip into the past, he causes a timeline digression which establishes a whole alternate universe, where the outcome is completely different. By establishing the conditions necessary for this alternate universe in the past, Marty is then able to travel forward into this future. So where is the problem? In most of these alternate futures, there was once another Marty. In the end of Back to the Future 1, we watch as Marty sees himself get in the time machine and go back in time. In turn, that Marty will inevitably have some sort of zany adventure that renders him unable to return to the future he knows. For that Marty, the future he knows will be one where his parents were successful, life was grand, and he likely runs into himself in 1985, which according to Doc, will destroy the fabric of the universe. In BTTF 2, Marty is still running around Swiss boarding schools, unaware that his doppelganger has arrived to cause problems. Once a future has been established, it remains that way forever, unalterable by a trip to the past. Really, all Marty can do is go back, alter certain variables of the past, and hope his trip forward yields the proper results in a newly created universe. Now, for those of you who wonder why I care so much, let’s go further down the rabbit hole. In quantum mechanics, an atom can exist in a state of superposition, meaning that it exists in every possible state until we take a measurement of it. If I hand you a box with a lone photon inside, it is in every possible corner of the box until you open the box and look inside. Then all of the possibilities must collapse into a single reality. Scientists who believe in alternate or parallel worlds believe that our very existence is in a state of superposition until we make choices. With each choice we make, we solidify our own current reality and cause offspring universes to pop up everywhere (I’m on the fence about this one, just so you know). Therefore, I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch to say that I fully believe that any sort of time machine may be able to fulfill the requirements necessary to shift to these alternative outcomes, yielding what we believe to be a changed future, when in fact it is simply a future that already existed due to all of the possible outcomes of a single choice. The point of this whole argument is this: when Doc has Marty leave his girlfriend in bad 1985 because she should just hop over to the original timeline when they change it back, he likely doomed her to a solitary existence in a nightmare world that makes no sense, where she eventually dies alone on the streets, wondering if her past life was some sort of schizophrenic delusion, or if she has died and gone to Hell. The Jennifer that Marty finds on her porch in BTTF 3 is not the Jennifer he knows, but rather an alternate Jennifer who was left on the same porch for god knows what reason by the same Marty that should have existed in the new good Back to the Future timeline. I call bullshit, Doc Brown.