Shelly and I watched Back to the Future and Back to the Future Part II the other night. They were precisely as excellent as I'd remembered them from my previous hundred viewings. Shelly had never seen them, unbelievable as that sounds. (Girls are so weird!) We haven't gotten to Part III yet but will soon.
What freaked me out, however, is how close we've suddenly gotten to the year portrayed in Part II. When I first saw it, 2015 seemed an eon away; now it's right around the corner. And we're nowhere close to the high-tech society seen in the movie! What the hell went wrong? We've got only seven years left, people! Why aren't clothes automatically adjusting themselves to the size of their wearer? Why do video games still require us to use our hands? Why haven't lawyers been abolished?
These issues are what the candidates should be addressing in that political election I keep hearing about. Who can bring us closer to the vision that Zemeckis promised?
I can do without the flying cars. They look dangerous. But if I don't get a hoverboard pretty soon, I'll have a fit. And it better have Power, goddamnit!
Man, practically every blog entry in the last two weeks mentions me. I am pretty awesome!
Posted by: Shelly | June 09, 2008 at 07:36 PM
Did they have in the Internet in Part II? (I'll bet NO.) Did they still have newspapers in Part II ? I'll bet YES, but newspapers will be small potatoes not too long after 2015.
Historically wee tend to overestimate progress against the laws of physics and underestimate electronic progress. Energy constraints and environmental preservation suggest we will/should be using less and less energy. If so, we will be doing a lot less flying and a lot more staying at home exchanging bits.
Posted by: Roy | June 09, 2008 at 09:54 PM
There's no evidence to suggest that the Internet doesn't exist in BTTF Part II. Newspapers are still around, as they doubtless will be in our 2015; their precise relevance and importance in the fictional 2015 society is, of course, never explained. The flying DeLorean, moreover, runs on garbage, so it would not exacerbate the environmental issues of the future.
Posted by: Brett Yates | June 09, 2008 at 11:14 PM
First, the newspaper is already dead. It was killed by management that decided the best thing to do when faced with declining readership was to give people even less (both content and quality content). What about cell phones? did the movie have anything about that?
Posted by: Fred | June 22, 2008 at 09:02 PM
I've heard that the Asbury Park Press, at least, has gone way downhill in recent years.
I didn't notice any cell phones in BTTF Part II, but there wasn't any situation where the characters had any reason to use them, so we don't know that they didn't exist. The movie was made in 1989, and their existence was by then already known to the general public, so I'm sure Zemeckis could have predicted that they'd still be around in 2015, although I guess it might not have been clear how common they would become.
Posted by: Brett Yates | June 22, 2008 at 10:36 PM
I wonder when cell phones became "common''? I guess I've had mine 6-8 years, but I'm not even sure? maybe longer? I don't remember having one when nationals was in new orleans, for instance (1999), but I do remember breaking the one I had at Phoenix the first time we went there (I think 2002).
But I was probably behind the times. I also remember having newspaper-supplied phones that we used to take to high school sports games and give audio reports onto a phone line people could call in to (Fred Siegle for PRESSTO! - I think I had a potential future in radio!), and that would have been around 1990 or so.
The phones were huge, by the way, probably about triple or more the size of the current ones.
Posted by: Fred | June 27, 2008 at 01:27 AM