A-List: Back to the Future Part II
Predictions It Got Way, Way Wrong
By J. Don Birnam
October 20, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
It is that date that now is upon us and that has prompted a revisit of the trilogy across the world and the Internet. It is no exaggeration, in fact, to say that Future Day is a worldwide event. I am currently traveling in Myanmar (hint: it’s far away from fictional Hill Valley, California) and spotted an ad at a bar for screenings of the movie on October 21st (some of the pictures from the country are over at Instagram).
Part of the reason for the fascination is that, unlike many other classic movies about the future, we have now reached the promised date of the film and are able to assess what the filmmakers predicted right and what they got wrong. We've already looked at the best quotes from the trilogy. Today, we explore predictions about the future that Back to the Future, Part II, got way, way wrong.
It’s fun and games, of course, because the sequel, while obviously not as well received as the first movie, was a success in its own right, and holds up much better than most other sequels to popular blockbusters. And, for all the stuff that we will today mock Zemeckis and Gale for missing, it is actually incredible how much they got right. Marty McFly Jr. wears a visor that is remarkably similar to Google Glass, and in any event, the societal comment about teenagers being trapped by technology at the dinner table has proven exactly correct. Old Biff pays for his taxi ride to the suburbs with his finger and, while we are not quite there, my finger does activate the proxy pay feature of my phone, which then pays for me at some machines. And while perhaps newspapers don’t come with changing displays, the transition to online from print is analogous and prescient, if a bit exaggerated.
The hits don’t end there - the screen phone call that is remarkably similar to FaceTime (but the use of the now obsolete fax machine was a huge screw up), instantly updating news, and the moves towards conservation and clean energy reflected in the main square at Hill Valley are but other examples - but let’s turn now to some of the obvious misses.
5. Synthetic food.
To be sure, plasticized food that lasts long is already a thing - it has been since the space program sent astronauts into space for months, if not earlier. But when the McFly family makes pizza by opening a six inch wide bag that in three seconds gets blasted into a family size half-pepperoni, half-veggie, the screenwriters predicted a future for food that is nowhere near what we have today. In fact, food preparation does not seem to have changed dramatically or sped up in any appreciable way, if at all, since 1985.
Hopefully the 2015 McFly family has Domino’s Pizza on speed dial.
4. Weather altering government service.
Doc and Marty arrive to a rainy Hill Valley, but Doc gaily announces that the weather is due to change to sunny within minutes. It does so, all thanks to the National Weather Service, which has found ways to alter the weather.
It’s hard to tell whether this is one of the predictions that Gale threw in as a joke or not (obviously, they knew they weren’t going to accurately predict the future 100%), but in the 1980s, with the Cold War (remember that?) still a thing, government spending on scientific research was still popular and promising.
Not so today. Not only is cutting spending the fashion of the day, we are looking to scale down government services from the Post Office to NASA. Let alone the fact that weather control is scientifically years away, if not impossible, but it simply does not appear that there is any appetite for looking into this any time soon.
It looks like Marty and Doc are going to need an umbrella when they arrive to 2015.
3. The Hover Board.
With a movie that is about teenage fun, and given that the skateboard plays a key role in two pivotal scenes in the trilogy, it is no wonder that a Mattel-sponsored Hover Board became one of the iconic predictions in BTTF II. And while it is known that we do in fact have the materials and knowledge necessary to produce a Hover Board (companies have, throughout the years, introduced them, and again in the last few weeks given Future Day), their use appears nowhere near to become ubiquitous. Perhaps it is the expense, or the danger of the floating, or the impracticality of a skateboard in the age of vehicles and the disappearing pedestrian. However fun it looks to use a Hover Board, it does not appear that we will be pedaling against thin air in 2015.
When Marty makes his getaway from Biff’s grandson, he’s going to have to use his roller blades. Or maybe there will be an app for that.
2. The Cubs Winning the World Series.
The Cubs winning the World Series as a prediction in BTTF II has been the subject of much talk of late, particularly given that two things are happening: the Cubs have still not won the World Series since 1985 (1908, in fact) and are in the playoffs this year.
Regardless of the outcome of this year’s MLB playoffs (and it ain’t looking good for the Cubbies, down 0-2 in the NLCS against the Amazins as of this writing), I’m going to go ahead and call the prediction wrong for several reasons.
In the scene (which also, hilariously, contains a preview for Jaws 16), the Cubs are set to defeat a team from Florida that has a gator as its mascot. Although it is pretty impressive that BTTF II predicted that there would be a team from Florida - in fact, since 1985, two MLB franchises have appeared in the Sunshine State - neither the Marlins nor the Rays (who are, technically speaking, from Tampa anyway), are in the playoffs.
What’s worse, the writers failed to predict that MLB would greedily expand its postseason into three (almost four if you count the Wild Card) rounds, from the two that existed in 2015, making it impossible calendar-wise for the World Series to end by October 21.
In other words, if by some miracle the Lovable Loser do pull off their first World Series win in over a century, as predicted by the BTTF II writers, will we really give them any credit?
1. Flying cars. We know that Zemeckis and Gale did not really think that cars would be flying in 2015. There has never been any push to achieve that technology and, frankly, cars traveling along the Z axis doesn’t seem feasible at least while humans are driving them.
It is possible, of course, that computer-operated cars (which are making an appearance on the road these days believe it or not) will represent a step towards flying vehicles, assuming that the cost is not prohibitive. But in the meantime, the central feature of the movie, which as we discussed last time was put in by the accident of the writers’ joke about roads at the end of the part I, is nowhere near fruition.
One has to wonder, of course, how Marty and Doc’s adventures would have unfolded had Doc not had a flying DeLorean to save Marty from the roof of Biff’s emporium hotel in the apocryphal 1985, or whether Doc would have been struck by lightning and sent back to 1885.
Speaking of 1885…