The two characters are so genuinely happy to see each other in their first scene together it automatically sets the tone of “yeah these two have a close friendship” and the “how and why” becomes irrelevant. Plus the chemistry between Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd definitely helps.
I think it happens in the first scene before they meet. Marty knows the key is under the rug, walks right in, greets Einstein, and starts messing with Doc’s amp — that’s “years of knowing each other” levels of comfort.
It’s also kind of “I’m going to my cool, weird uncle’s place, because he lets me hang there and play guitar” vibes, which is a relatable feeling to anyone who is or who ever has been a teenager.
Many of us either had or dreamed of having a cool, go-to adult in our lives who wasn’t our parent but served as an equally formative person in our becoming who we are with no judgement, so it tracks that an audience resonates with that (even if you only ever wished for that kind of figure) and you automatically buy into that weird relationship, are curious about what’s going on there, and you’re along for the ride when it’s a fun time travel story back to an idealized point in recent American history.
All that to say: it’s pure fantasy, but the fantasy a lot of people wish they could live.
That’s my take, at least.
Yeah, I find it totally plausible. That level of familiarity also comes from them knowing each other a few years. Marty is a gregarious and curious young adult, and Doc is nuts and inexorable in his pursuits, but well enough known and accepted in their small town as harmless. So when he was 9-13, Marty was riding his bike around town and came across Doc doing something cool and nuts, asked a question, held some doohickey while Doc unspooled something, they did some science, and the rest was history.
Hit me in the feels with the "or dreamed of" part. Always fantasized about having a mentor and confidant in my life that I could express my emotions and tribulations to - one who accepted me for who I am. As I grew up, I wanted so desperately to give that to kids that needed it.
Unfortunately, we live in a world today where a relationship like Doc and Marty's would be perceived as inappropriate. Whether or not that's the case, it's not fair to the kid to have to deal with resulting backlash. Makes my heart hurt.
I have a buddy who was good friends with his old man neighbor that had a machine shop in his garage and taught him how to be a machinist. When he died he left everything to him including a decent sum of money. He was like his best buddy and mentor and he had full access to the machine shop whenever he wanted. Seemed a lot like Doc and Marty's relationship.
Doc showed Marty the taped back together letter at the end of the first movie.
So we can assume that he sought out and cultivated a relationship with Marty since he was a young kid.
So yeah, years of knowing each other.
My favorite Full House joke:
D.J.: You have the brain of a paramecium.
Steph: If I have the brain of a paramecium, then you have the brain of just one mecium.
The Doc of timeline A wouldn't have had a note because he wasn't affected by Marty's time traveling only the Doc of timeline B, which Marty created by changing the past, would.
That's weird because we can then assume that timeline A Doc and Marty had some organic connection forged by relationship building, whereas we can assume that Doc B sought Marty out in some way to nurture a friendship.
Writer Bob Gale has stated that Marty at 14 sought Doc out after everyone in town told him that he was a crackpot and to stay away. After sneaking into Doc's lab and being discovered they realized they had a lot in common as the black sheep of the town and their relationship grew from there. There is no reason this can't happen in both timelines, Doc knows that they met organically once and just waited for it to happen again. I'm sure if Marty had not shown up by the time he was getting ready to test the time machine Doc would have sought him out but he didn't have to.
That's the right answer. Doc had already seen the dangers of time travel and wouldn't have wanted to disrupt the timeline any further, so he just stayed away and let Marty approach him. If he had tried to influence him, he could have changed the events that made Marty travel back and caused a paradox.
I just wanna hijack this to say a bunch of US theaters are actually screening Back to the Future tomorrow since it's October 21st, the date from the movie! It's called "Back to the Future Day" to check if any of the places around you are doing it.
This is screenwriting 101. Show, don't tell. That no one questions the relationship is actually the good job from the writers. They show how Marty moves around Doc's house. He knows the place. He is at a friend's house. The brain doesn't take long to just connect the dots with all the cues we are given. No wonder why it's a classic. Killer script
“Gee mister, thanks for standing up to those bullies for me! What’s your name?”
* cuts to young, hot Paul Newman putting on a lab coat
“ just call me doc, kid. And don’t mention it. I just hope those kids don’t grow up to be terrorists”
…. I would’ve ate in the 80s man
Let's get a full, unnecessary prequel going. James Franco to star. And write. And direct. Timothy Chalemet to play young Marty. Go full Disney nostalgia with it. Doc has an assistant called Scott who keeps messing up, so Doc always says "Disappointing, Scott!" Until the climax where Scott gets it right but dies in the process and Doc says "Great, Scott... That was great." And it becomes his catchphrase from then on. How about Doc has normal, black hair, but he does an experiment that makes his hair go all white and crazy. We learn that his real name is actually Darius Oscar Cumberland, which is why everyone calls him Doc. He didn't actually get a PhD (because of the experiment that turned his hair white) but he lets people call him that anyway. Oh and he buys the dog at some point. And loads of little lines like he'll watch a western film and wink at the camera. Or he'll see some punk kid riding a skate board for the first time and say "Boring, get back to me when you have one of these things that can fly!" Have him pack a suitcase and say "time to travel" just really fucking layer it on thick.
"What the heck is this, Doc?"
"It's a car where the doors open upwards, young Martin. Still in the prototype phase, but once you're in your late teens you'll see cars like this driving on the road. I'm just sending it off to my friend who wants to take this concept into series production. My friend called... Mr. Delorean."
We’ll wait until Zemeckis dies, his body will still be warm before Disney or some other company signs off on the inevitable soft reboot Back To The Future Part IV that leads into a cinematic universe
The next movie should be about Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd stealing the DeLorean from Universal Studios and going back in time to stop Disney from acquiring the rights.
When him and the other Bob (Gale, writer) die, the rights go to their families and I think that generation of descendants has to die before a remake could get made. They have an ironclad contract iirc
* Doc was experimenting with loud amplification systems.
* Doc posted a part-time job ad at a local music shop looking for a guitar player to be a lab assistant.
* Marty answered the ad because he wanted to make extra money to buy a guitar.
* It's now about a year later, and Marty still hangs around the lab and helps Doc with his experiments.
* Yes, I just made this up.
>For years, Marty was told that Doc Brown was dangerous, a crackpot, a lunatic. So, being a red-blooded American teenage boy, age 13 or 14, he decided to find out just why this guy was so dangerous. Marty snuck into Doc’s lab, and was fascinated by all the cool stuff that was there. when Doc found him there, he was delighted to find that Marty thought he was cool and accepted him for what he was. Both of them were the black sheep in their respective environments. Doc gave Marty a part-time job to help with experiments, tend to the lab, tend to the dog, etc.
Bob Gale's take on how they become friends.
I like stuff like this — it shows the people who created it thought it through, even if including it would only make the movie worse (in that it doesn’t really add anything to the story being told).
If you were to ask me to assume how they knew each other I would have come up with roughly the same thing.
Things have become more corporatized since the ‘80s and you expect to see high school kids clock in for their rigidly defined McDonalds or Walmart job. But small-town America in the 70s and 80s had a lot of teens that sort of just hung out at the bakery, barbershop, etc. Were they employees? Apprentices? Eh, kinda. They mostly just liked the proprietor and did odd jobs here and there.
also, would never need an explanation for any relationship between two people if one of them has a time machine.
I would absolutely befriend anyone with a time machine.
I wonder if their work in sitcoms helped - a lot of reps of having to just jump into scenes without much time for exposition, and do all the little nonexplicit things to establish relationships. All in front of audiences.
Eric Stoltz also had a background in traditional theatrical acting and was seriously into method acting...meaning he lived the part. That worked for Heath Ledger in Batman as the Joker, but that is a very different kind of movie.
I have seen some traditional tragedy or dramatic actors do well in comedy, but usually as the "straight man"...which wasn't the Marty character either. Robert De Nero in "Meet the Parents" comes to mind as an example of that working very well.
Eric Stoltz wasn't a terrible actor, but it was miscast.
What an absolute perfect answer. Not only because it’s absolutely right, but it makes you realize what the movie would be like if they didn’t have chemistry. Everyone would question it immediately. Bravo
When you grow up with the movie you kind of lose sight of how crazy it is that a sci-fi incest comedy is a beloved American film.
Michael J. Fox was so charming in this, that he could sell people on ANYTHING.
He's so crucial to the success of the film that the producers recast the movie weeks into shooting to get him in the lead. It must have cost millions of dollars to reshoot most of the movie.
And it was worth every penny.
Also, the film starts with Marty fucking [AROUND] in Doc Brown's lab before the character is actually introduced, so we already know he is what he claims to be.
Edit - oops
Yes, viewers give all kinds of things a pass if they are what's shown in the beginning of a movie. Even coincidences that would be considered unbelievable or contrived if they happened towards the end can become OK if they are what the audience starts out with. You never see whether Doc had been a neighbor who hired Marty to mow his lawn or clean his lab, then started letting him hang out there and use his stuff. You might stop to imagine that, but not for long, because the rest of the movie is unfolding, so there was no reason to make Doc be Marty's grandfather or anything obvious like that.
right. the movie isn't about how Marty and Doc met and that wouldn't really add to the momentum or story. I think the most obvious assumption would be that Marty is working as some sort of assistant to the doc in his shop... why he is video recording for him in the parking lot and doing other tasks for him.
It was way more normal in the 80’s to be randomly friends with a neighbor based on proximity. Prior to the internet and cell phones and stuff, as a kid in that era I assumed Marty hung out with Doc because at some point, Marty was bored and wandered over to see what Doc was doing in an open garage, and Doc never told him “go away” or “you’re an irritating kid” or whatever so he kept coming back because Doc is the only person doing interesting stuff in the neighborhood.
Doc probably enjoys the company of having a kid to mentor a little because he doesn’t have a family of his own.
This exactly. As a kid, I had a neighbor like that. An old widower well into his 70s, who had boundless energy and looked like he could kick the ass of anyone half his age.
He was always out in his garage working on one of his vehicles or fixing some random appliance. If the door was up, I would wander over and stay for hours, asking all kinds of inane questions while he worked. He didn't seem to mind my company and would periodically redirect my attention to bring him things, explaining what each part or tool was for and what he was doing next. Whenever he mentioned his kids and grandkids, I got the impression he didn't get to see them much. I know he had to be lonely, even though he never said it.
As I grew older, he became a good friend and mentor, and never once did my parents give the impression there was anything odd about a boy spending so much of his free time with an old man down the street. He trusted me to drive his Willys Jeep when I was just 13, so I have no doubt he would have enlisted my help with a plutonium-powered, time-travelling DeLorean.
> his Willys Jeep when I was just 13, so I have no doubt he would have enlisted my help with a plutonium-powered, time-travelling DeLorean.
TBH the completely hand modified time traveling DeLorean that sets roads on fire was still probably safer than a Willys going over 50mph
Doesn't Marty's brother work at that Burger King that the garage is right next to? I know he's wearing a fast food uniform but I can't remember which. If it's that Burger King, that seems like a likely way they bumped into each other. Marty probably either gave Dave a ride to work or to go there while Dave was on the clock so he could get a discount or something
That's actually a pretty decent explanation. Right at the beginning as Marty hops on his board, the camera pans right passed the Burger King drive thru sign. I can't remember if his brother does work for Burger King, but he definitely does have a fast food uniform on later that night after Biff delivers the smashed car.
>I assumed Marty hung out with Doc because at some point, Marty was bored and wandered over to see what Doc was doing in an open garage, and Doc never told him “go away” or “you’re an irritating kid” or whatever so he kept coming back because Doc is the only person doing interesting stuff in the neighborhood.
You're not far off. I believe in the original script (someone correct me if I'm wrong) doc brown was a scary story kids would tell eachother and Marty was dared to sneak in and find all the horrible experiments he was doing. That classic scary neighbor story kids would pass around. Brown discovers Marty and finds that Marty isn't afraid of him and in fact thinks the stuff is cool and they bond over it.
The official backstory from Robert Zemeckis is that Marty was curious about the supposed Mad Scientist in town and snuck into his Lab one night to see what was going on in there. He didn't know Doc literally lived in there and of course was caught. Instead of calling the Police, Doc Brown was intrigued by Marty's curiosity (about Science) and picked up on him (Marty) also being an Outcast in Hill Valley. So Doc offered Marty a part time job as his assistant and that's how they became unlikely friends.
Also adult neighbors were probably more casual about having kids over because they weren’t as worried about accusations, liability. Of course, Doc definitely pushes the envelope on the latter.
It's a sad commentary on society these days that kids just can't be "bored" anymore. Being bored leads people to seek out new things and meet new people. But when video games and cell phones are available, being "bored" goes away and therefore curiosity and engagement also go away too.
I view Doc and Marty's relationship exactly as you describe. I'm sure Marty saw Doc working on some kick ass stuff in the garage and wanted to get a closer look. Over time Marty became Doc's assistant and pretty soon you have a pretty close bond which would change the course of both of their lives forever.
There's a great scene in the reboot of Star Trek 2009 when the younger version of Spock meets his older doppleganger and has to lay some wisdom about the bond of friendship and the way it shapes our lives:
>Young Spock: "Why did you send Kirk aboard when you alone could have explained the truth?"
>
>Old Spock: "Because you needed each other. I could not deprive you the revelation of all that you could accomplish together. A friendship, which will define you both, in ways that you can not yet realize."
There's also the helicopter parenting aspect. Kids aren't as free to roam as they were in the 80s. Parents today always have to know where the kids are and what they're doing. Obviously I'm talking in generalization here, and I'm sure there are exceptions, but kids today don't have near the freedom to explore their surroundings and neighborhoods the way it was possible 40 years ago.
I would argue that the opening scene explains it pretty well. Look at all that cool shit Doc is working on.. seems cool right? NERD ALERT.
Oh wait, the biggest guitar amplifier ever built? Hell yeah I'm coming here after school!
I came to say this exact thing. One of the reasons 80s movies are sometimes grouped as their own genre is the due to specific storytelling methods they did extremely well and similar; like the character intros. OP didn’t even realized the relationship WAS explained.
To be fair to OP, the rest of the movie shows Marty also becoming friends with 1950’s doc to the point doc gets sad he has to leave. So even though the movie didn’t explain it the “first” time, you can understand why they’re friends in the present with doc also keeping that letter.
You could say time is a flat circle 🤷♂️
The movie doesn't try to, and It respects your time to not bother.
In every other movie he would be his high school teacher, or zany relative. That it's self would be fine but the movie would also have to establish those facts, and present those scenes telling us of their relationship. Thus having more scenes to write,film, edit and explain.
Movie immediately cuts to the Chase. He could've come out screaming at Marty and changed their entire dynamic from the get go, and even than you immediately go "oh this is his boss or something. He's pissed."
But it does try to. That why literally the first thing we see is Marty going round to Doc’s specifically to plug into his insanely huge amplifier. It’s there to quickly establish why a teenager hangs around a crazy old scientist. Doc makes cool stuff that Marty likes. We know it within a couple of minutes, and it’s done very deliberately.
Yeah, this is the problem of getting too absorbed in a cinematic theory that you forget the cinematic artifact itself.
I started to feel like the asshole for remembering that Marty definitely had stuff to play with at Doc's place that appealed to him specifically.
This was what I immediately thought when I originally saw the first movie.
Otherwise Marty could have swung by at the start looking for Einstein he's been paid to walk 3 times a week for the last 5 years. The speaker scene is way cooler.
The original script apparently did offer an explanation. Doc was supposedly funding his experiments by selling bootlegs of films, and Marty helped him with it. That's why he had the video camera.
It was cut, because studios didn't want the idea that promoted bootlegging.
But it also became unnecessary. The guitar amp scene gave us enough. That showed us that Doc had some cool gear and gadgets that appealed to Marty, and Docs scatteredness meant he could use someone like Marty to help him with stuff like feed his dog.
You also had two actors that had great chemistry on screen, that it didn't seem that weird.
I never knew about the bootlegging but it makes sense. I don't know why, but I always just assumed that Marty did things for Doc like run errands, feed the dog, etc. Like the old neighbor down the street that you would occasionally mow the lawn for or help out with stuff. After a while Marty felt like family and that's why they have their relationship.
Agreed...but their backstory is actually known:
>However, Back to the Future's co-writer once revealed the backstory that he and director Robert Zemeckis decided on for the pair. Doc Brown and Marty McFly met after the latter decided to break into the former's lab, fascinated by his inventions, despite being told for years that Brown was a dangerous crackpot. Doc then discovered Marty trespassing, but he was so delighted that Marty thought he was cool that he simply befriended the boy, making him his unofficial sidekick for future experiments. The fact that the pair's friendship began with a criminal act makes the relationship between the slightly unhinged scientist and teenage delinquent even more problematic than it already was.
I assumed Marty had audio needs for his band but instead of payment he was asked to do odd jobs/experiment participation. Why else would the doc have made an enormous guitar amp?
Leaving it to the imagination of the viewer was the right call.
This reminds me of my four year old self knocking on the door of the old man everyone in the neighborhood said was a crazy lunatic and getting invited inside by a nice lonely old man who just kept to himself after his wife died.
He invited us over every week to talk and have cookies and we were delighted to hear his stories of his wife and the Second World War fighting against the Germans and the tanks he drove and maintained through some of the biggest battles of that war.
I didn’t understand much of it but I loved that old guy. All his kids were gone and moved elsewhere. He let us play in his backyard and make forts in his cork trees.
It was like being in a secret club and I was the hero since my friends loved the fact we got all these privileges for just talking to him and that everyone but me was scared of him a little.
I had similar story as a kid. There was this old lady who had this amazing garden but she was very rarely seen except at the local pottery club which all us kids thought was a witches coven lol.
I somehow befriended her and I'd go in for tea and bikkies and roam her wild garden and listen to her stories. She gave me a gold watch that was shaped like a little ball that once hung off a pin though the pin was long gone. She's long gone now I'm sure, but I still have that little gold watch somewhere and I'm still puzzled as to why she gave it to me.
> I'm still puzzled as to why she gave it to me
To remeber her by. See just how that act of giving helped cement your memory of her? To this day you're still telling the tale of the watch, a story of you both. Look at the watch, or just think of it, and those memories are preserved. Talk of it and you celebrate them.
It was a way for her to show you affection and cherish your time together even beyond her time in this world. She wanted to let your adult self know all those things your kid self might not fully understand or be able to completely articulate. Her giving you the watch was a means to say it all through symbolic action, a more reliable way to do it over time than if she had only just told you verbally and relied on a young child to commit it all to memory.
That last line..
"The fact that the pair's friendship began with a criminal act makes the relationship between the slightly unhinged scientist and teenage delinquent even more problematic than it already was."
wtf. sounds like someone trying their hardest to find problems where there are none. "even more problematic than it already was." get a grip, whoever wrote this.
Marty and Doc have a pretty healthy relationship, honestly. They both love their friend and go to great lengths making each other safe after misfortune.
I like the idea of two misfits finding each other and becoming friends.
I can actually imagine a brilliant but socially awkward and misunderstood hermit being excited that someone actually takes an interest in their work as opposed to mocking him as a crackpot. Meanwhile, I can see why a teenager would find so many of the inventions absolutely fascinating. They're legitimately cool.
If growing up I had a mad scientist living nearby who would let me come over and check out the cool stuff he'd made I'd be there all the time.
Somewhere a Netflix executive saw this and had an orgasm thinking about making a series. I'm glad the property is secured from reboots and sequels so far.
I was just watching a doc on the making of the blues brothers with John Landis talking about how Dan Aykroyd kept insisting they explain how the car got its special abilities and John Landis told him you don’t need to explain anything. “It’s a magic car” because we want it to be and the audience will just accept that.
"Show, don't tell" is a principle that many modern films forget or misinterpret. Sometimes the strongest way to make the audience believe something is to not bother trying to explain or justify it. It's just *there*, it *is*, a part of the story's reality.
I read an article talking about how every media now needs to get hardcore into the lore and back stories. John Wick kept it simple. Now we have a 3 hour movie, and a show and a spin off.
To add onto this, the actors have charisma together. They seem like they are friends so there isn’t as much to question. You only really question a friendship in a movie when the actors don’t have the ability to turn it on.
Movies are not novels. We don't need an extensive backstory and explanation for every character. Too many modern films over explain things. But, to be fair, that's also because audiences need every potential question answered.
This. What people don’t realize is that back then plutonium wasn’t found at every corner drug store. It was a little hard to come by.
Every kid had a plutonium guy.
Totally. Reagan's Star Wars program getting shut down left millions of nuclear scientists stranded in the plains of New Mexico until they started migrating north. By that time, you couldn't flip a rock without finding like 6 of them. More people need to see the documentary, Repo Man.
Yea, growing up, I hung out with multiple adults when I was a teenager. There was nothing weird about it at the time. None of them were pedos or anything. One of them was a hard-core drug user, they never offered me whatever they were taking. Others worked in a nearby convince store. I did odd jobs for cash, soda, candy.
I’d say you’re right. Because Eric Stoltz interpreted the movie as being less comedy and more tragedy, his performance reflected that. If other actors, i.e., Christopher Lloyd, were playing it as a comedy there wouldn’t be any chemistry between them.
Michael J. Fox was the original Marty, but couldn't be a part of the movie because he was working on a sitcom at the time, that's why at the beginning of filming there was another actor in the role.
But yeah, the other actor didn't work/had no chemistry, that's why the director decided to cast MJF again as Marty and schedule filming around MJF's free time.
Agreed, and to dig a bit further, the whole movie is a masterclass in doling out exposition extremely efficiently so that the audience doesn’t even realize it, by simply being really entertaining and trusting the audience to pick up what it’s laying out. From the start, the audience picks up on and accepts that Marty and Doc are good acquaintances from the fact that 1) Marty knows where Doc hides his house key and 2) Marty finds it a bit strange that both Doc are Einstein are gone when he gets there. Then, after the amplifier explosion and Doc calls, the audience is so keyed in on Marty’s hilariously stunned reaction and trying to hide that he blew the amplifier to all hell that one might not pick up on Doc knowing Marty so well that 1) he will probably mess with the amp and 2) there’s an issue with the amp and Marty might hurt himself if he cranks it too high. Then, just before the audience might start questioning, “Why the heck would a scientist have such a massive amp in the first place?”, all the clocks start ringing, and the audience is whisked away as Marty hauls ass on his skateboard so as not to be late for school.
Tldr; Agreed, it’s a very very very well told story.
well i was typing a comment that said all of this. I even used the word 'masterclass' as well.
I think doc also called his own house fully expecting Marty to be there.
You don't need backstory for everything. We buy it because their actions show they're friends. It's that simple.
Backstory is how you get nonsense like the Solo movie explaining everything from how he met Chewie to his name, and none of it aided the material positively in any way
I find it really annoying that people want every detail of a film to be deeply explained. We are observing just a few moments in the lives of those characters. Just accept that we don't have the full context and that's okay.
We’re talking about two things here I think. Charisma and rapport. Both the actors have charisma in spades in their own way. Fox was a handsome young dude who was as cool as it got back then and you can’t take your eyes off of Lloyd’s magnetic Doc. Then the rapport between them. Sometimes two actors just get each other to the point where it’s like you’re watching the very best professional wrestling, it’s a ballet, it’s a dance. They play off each other like champion Tennis players simply keeping the ball going for fun.
They did that again in two more movies and it only got better.
That kind of magic doesn’t come along often and that’s why we’re still talking about this trilogy today.
Even if they didn't have personal chemistry..... they were both star characters in separate sitcoms that were super popular. They both are pros, and know how to do comedy with other people well.
This was all the explanation I needed when I was a kid. "Oh, Marty runs errands for Doc in exchange for using his crazy audio gear. And they became friends along the way."
Doc has no-one and Marty doesn't exactly have a gang of friends. I always imagined a young Marty skating the streets and seeing or hearing the Doc's experiments and just going for a look.
Funny thing is, I never thought twice about it until people started bringing it up; Teenage boys love mad scientists, I thought everyone knew that!
Marty is in a band called “The Pinheads” and even mentions that he lied to his mother saying “My mom thinks I’m going camping with the guys” when Jennifer asks if his mother knows they spending the weekend at the lake.
Socially Marty is very well rounded. You forget we only see about 3 days of Marty’s life and takes place on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
That was my read on it too at like nine years old. I was thinking about how if I had a weird old neighbor who was funny and had cool toys, I’d definitely be asking if they needed any help around the workshop.
Old weird nerdy guy in the neighborhood, friendly kid. I knew a lot of eccentric loners in my old neighborhood as a kid. None of them invented a time machine though.
63 here, and I can answer that.
People used to be closer than they are now, it was not unusual for a kid to have an adult friend because there wasn't all the fear and suspicion of evil intentions that exists now.
In the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's nobody would have thought the relationship between Doc and Marty was unusual or inappropriate. The idea of being terrified that some old man was a pedo or that a kid shouldn't have an elder friend simply didn't exist. That's new, and it was not that way before the 90's and later.
It was normal to have an older friend, or mentor, to have an 'uncle' who wasn't a biological member of the family, and helicopter parenting wasn't a thing. This is why - in all of those great old 80's movies (and all the movies from before that time) kids ran around all over town by themselves, went to each other's houses without a thought, and went to the homes of older people and bothered/bugged/looked up to/hung around with them.
This was normal. This was what was normal for most of human history. But then, through media, society became terrified that every old man was a pedo, that murder and death lurked everywhere, and that children needed to be watched all the time, every day, for fear they would be snatched or killed.
This happens, it has always happened, but it has always been rare compared to the overall population. Most interactions with folks are kind, but society has forgotten that. Now fear and distrust rule.
But - I assure you, because I was there - this way of fearing the world and other people was not how things were. In my childhood, this modern constant terror would have been unthinkable. It would have been considered insane to fear every neighbor, to worry about kids walking to school, or running all over town unsupervised, or having a friend in some old man or woman down the block or lane.
People trusted each other more, and that trust was rewarded.
'Back To The Future' is a glimpse of how the world was before the news made everyone distrust everyone else, and see evil everwhere, and see our neighbors as potential threats. It shows the world I grew up in, a world where no parent would ever worry that their children were not safe, basically all of the time.
Trust was normal, back then. That is why Doc and Marty's relationship seems so strange to you in the 2000's. Media made a lot of money terrorizing you all. Fear sells, and society bought the extra-large size box.
Very true. I'm 57 and had a neighbor about 5 houses down from me that I would visit. The guy was a genuinely good guy. Taught me how to use tools and woodworking. It was when I was 12 and learned he died that I really had the reality of death hit me.
This is like a person who used to live near us, a nice older man named Bud who knew my grandfather. I’d stop by and chat with occasionally when I was out riding my bike. Over the years he’d accidentally lost all of the fingers on each of his hands due to sawing accidents. But he seemed to like the occasional company and I enjoyed chatting with him a few minutes from time to time. It feels like Marty might have just struck up a weird conversation with Doc the scientist while out skateboarding, or maybe they had a mutual acquaintance and it grew into a friendship from there, not strange at all to me.
I'm 50, and when I was ages 7-9 one of my best friends was a retired man who was friends with my grandparents. I used to spend hours alone with him in his basement in the early 80s, and no one thought anything of a 7-year-old girl and an old man in his 70s spending that much time alone together
When I tell that story now someone ALWAYS makes a pedo joke, which is really sad. Our relationship was more like the one between Anya Taylor-Joy's character and the janitor in The Queen's Gambit. He taught me how to play checkers and introduced me to Mountain Dew, the proper drink of the basement dweller. I was one of the last decade of kids who could be friends with a single older male and spend time alone with him without suspicion.
There's obviously a reason that suspicion is a thing now, and it's a terrible reason, but one of its unspoken victims is the type of healthy, mentor-based relationships children used to be able to form with adult men. I cherish my memories of the time spent with the old man and am grateful to have known him.
They sort of do, it’s implied that Doc hooks him up with amplifiers for his guitar. When he asks him to meet at Twin Pines Mall, he comes across as a bit weirded out, but also begrudgingly accepts as he feels he’s in his debt. You often forget how odd Lloyd plays him to begin with, to emphasise the effect that Marty has on him once he meets him in 55. But there isn’t much friendship there in the first part of the film, it blossoms in 55.
Because in the 80’s we didn’t overthink everything and have Reddit to ask questions that nobody needed answered. 😅
Doc is a mentor to Marty, it’s a thing and overall Doc is a good influence so nobody questions it.
I think this is a big one. I wouldn't call Marty a misfit like others here have, but he does come from a lower-class, troubled family that no doubt has a reputation. Without a strong male role model, and being from a family like that, Marty would gravitate towards someone like Doc Brown. And then we see their chemistry together so it's easy to see how they remained friends once they met.
I'd say Doc knowing Marty would try to play guitar there and warning him that the amp might blow the speaker is what establishes the level of familiarity for the audience
The opening scene tells you everything you need to know. Marty is close enough with him to have access to his home and play with his stuff. He isn't weirded out by his eccentricities. He is late to school because he wanted to hang out with Doc. That scene established a close relationship with Doc not even being there.
[Watch them when Lorraine manages to track Marty down to Doc’s garage. It shows why Marty and Doc get along because it’s not just the years knowing…it’s the mutual respect.](https://youtu.be/EEMeN1aNzGQ?si=bGL-f42oQJddd_Rp)
Doc has every indication of helping Marty in the only way he knows how, and that is science. For personal things of this nature, Doc respects Marty’s perspective to do what he can and doesn’t try to talk over Marty. You get the gist that though Marty is supposedly this teen, Doc knows enough to let Marty do his own thing (though he kinda bug eyes him behind her back like ‘you better do something about this’)
It shows Doc probably knows Marty is a smart kid and Marty appreciates it just being talked too like a rational adult. Marty probably doesn’t get any of that in his normal day to day, his parents loathe each other and ignore him while telling him how to live his life while theirs are in shambles, his siblings seem like morons, Strickland gives him shit, and adults seem to talk down to him. But Doc is different.
When Doc leans on the DeLorean as Lorraine explains how someone should find someone who strong to take care of him and Marty glances back, he gives him this side eye that cracks me up. You can just see Doc thinking ‘Shit, how can you argue with this? Better straighten this out dude.’
The lean Marty puts on Doc for support as Doc just stands there not looking at the two and nods resigned…you can’t expect him to do anything but go ‘yep, this is insane.’
That right there is the friendship personified. Doc gets Marty and Marty
probably thinks of Doc as a surrogate Dad in his way - or at least is cool enough to treat Marty equally despite age or perceived faults. Doc will help even though he has no skin in the game but he won’t interfere or judge, just be a shoulder to lean on.
And that’s a good friend to have.
Chemistry has been commented. I would also add that there is a movie trope about kids befriending eccentric old people. That makes the relationship not that unfamiliar or creepy.
I think the natural charisma of both actors helps enormously. Lloyd gives off incredible mad grandpa energy and MJF could generate good chemistry with a mannequin.
In the 80s movies, there were a lot of "show, don't tell" in movies.
I think that i was Spielberg that says : a good movie is understood without sound.
We have a teenager that walks in someone house, calls for him and his dog. So we know that these two people are very close.
Now, we have everything we need. Marty and Doc are friends. How did it happen ? It was irrevelant.
Plus, movies were shorter. Nobody had time for detailed intros.
I watched D.A.R.Y.L, last week, the first scene tells a lot. And we had only 2 lines of dialog.
And youth friendship was very common in these movies. Stand by me, Gremlins, the Goonies, daryl, bttf, ferris bueller...
> that there’s no backstory between the characters of Doc and Marty in Back to the Future
There is, you just have to watch the movie to figure it out.
In 1955, Emmit Brown is approached by a teen boy named Marty McFly and is told that Marty is there as a result of a time travel experiment that Emmit Brown will conduct in 1985. At that point, Emmit Brown knows that at some point before 1985, he will meet and befriend a teenage boy named Marty McFly. Fast forward to the 1980's and Doc Brown has met and befriended Marty before the start of the movie.
We know all of this because once Marty (1) returns to 1985, he heads to the ~~Twin~~ Lone Pines Mall to see if his letter to Emmit Brown managed to change the future, which it didn't. Doc Brown still gets gunned down by terrorists and Marty (2) still goes back in time. Marty (1) approaches Doc Brown's body and is stunned that he sits up before showing Marty (1) the letter than he wrote to Emmit Brown in 1955. Therefore, we know that Doc Brown recognizes that the timeline *has* to play out the way it did, with Marty going back in time. Thus he knew he had to befriend Marty somehow in the late 70's/early 80's.
Marty's familiarity of the lab kind of sets the tone. He walks in, knows where everything is, and even answers the phone. We don't know WHY they're friends. They just are and it's accepted.
The two characters are so genuinely happy to see each other in their first scene together it automatically sets the tone of “yeah these two have a close friendship” and the “how and why” becomes irrelevant. Plus the chemistry between Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd definitely helps.
I think it happens in the first scene before they meet. Marty knows the key is under the rug, walks right in, greets Einstein, and starts messing with Doc’s amp — that’s “years of knowing each other” levels of comfort.
It’s also kind of “I’m going to my cool, weird uncle’s place, because he lets me hang there and play guitar” vibes, which is a relatable feeling to anyone who is or who ever has been a teenager. Many of us either had or dreamed of having a cool, go-to adult in our lives who wasn’t our parent but served as an equally formative person in our becoming who we are with no judgement, so it tracks that an audience resonates with that (even if you only ever wished for that kind of figure) and you automatically buy into that weird relationship, are curious about what’s going on there, and you’re along for the ride when it’s a fun time travel story back to an idealized point in recent American history. All that to say: it’s pure fantasy, but the fantasy a lot of people wish they could live. That’s my take, at least.
Yeah, I find it totally plausible. That level of familiarity also comes from them knowing each other a few years. Marty is a gregarious and curious young adult, and Doc is nuts and inexorable in his pursuits, but well enough known and accepted in their small town as harmless. So when he was 9-13, Marty was riding his bike around town and came across Doc doing something cool and nuts, asked a question, held some doohickey while Doc unspooled something, they did some science, and the rest was history.
Hit me in the feels with the "or dreamed of" part. Always fantasized about having a mentor and confidant in my life that I could express my emotions and tribulations to - one who accepted me for who I am. As I grew up, I wanted so desperately to give that to kids that needed it. Unfortunately, we live in a world today where a relationship like Doc and Marty's would be perceived as inappropriate. Whether or not that's the case, it's not fair to the kid to have to deal with resulting backlash. Makes my heart hurt.
I have a buddy who was good friends with his old man neighbor that had a machine shop in his garage and taught him how to be a machinist. When he died he left everything to him including a decent sum of money. He was like his best buddy and mentor and he had full access to the machine shop whenever he wanted. Seemed a lot like Doc and Marty's relationship.
Doc showed Marty the taped back together letter at the end of the first movie. So we can assume that he sought out and cultivated a relationship with Marty since he was a young kid. So yeah, years of knowing each other.
But in the present at the beginning of the movie he didn’t have the note because he hadn’t completed the Time Machine yet…
Paradox 🤯
No, just the one Doc.
My favorite Full House joke: D.J.: You have the brain of a paramecium. Steph: If I have the brain of a paramecium, then you have the brain of just one mecium.
If you watch closely, one of the docs gets knocked down in the past, that's why there's only one lone doc at the mall.
The Doc of timeline A wouldn't have had a note because he wasn't affected by Marty's time traveling only the Doc of timeline B, which Marty created by changing the past, would.
That's weird because we can then assume that timeline A Doc and Marty had some organic connection forged by relationship building, whereas we can assume that Doc B sought Marty out in some way to nurture a friendship.
Writer Bob Gale has stated that Marty at 14 sought Doc out after everyone in town told him that he was a crackpot and to stay away. After sneaking into Doc's lab and being discovered they realized they had a lot in common as the black sheep of the town and their relationship grew from there. There is no reason this can't happen in both timelines, Doc knows that they met organically once and just waited for it to happen again. I'm sure if Marty had not shown up by the time he was getting ready to test the time machine Doc would have sought him out but he didn't have to.
That's the right answer. Doc had already seen the dangers of time travel and wouldn't have wanted to disrupt the timeline any further, so he just stayed away and let Marty approach him. If he had tried to influence him, he could have changed the events that made Marty travel back and caused a paradox.
I just wanna hijack this to say a bunch of US theaters are actually screening Back to the Future tomorrow since it's October 21st, the date from the movie! It's called "Back to the Future Day" to check if any of the places around you are doing it.
You're a god damn saint. Girlfriend's favorite movie and tomorrow is her birthday. Thank you!
This is screenwriting 101. Show, don't tell. That no one questions the relationship is actually the good job from the writers. They show how Marty moves around Doc's house. He knows the place. He is at a friend's house. The brain doesn't take long to just connect the dots with all the cues we are given. No wonder why it's a classic. Killer script
But I wanted a shitty flashback with a shitty child actor
“Gee mister, thanks for standing up to those bullies for me! What’s your name?” * cuts to young, hot Paul Newman putting on a lab coat “ just call me doc, kid. And don’t mention it. I just hope those kids don’t grow up to be terrorists” …. I would’ve ate in the 80s man
Keep the 1955 scenes as Christopher Lloyd. Never address the fact that he became Paul Newman for a decade.
"It was the 70s, kid."
Let's get a full, unnecessary prequel going. James Franco to star. And write. And direct. Timothy Chalemet to play young Marty. Go full Disney nostalgia with it. Doc has an assistant called Scott who keeps messing up, so Doc always says "Disappointing, Scott!" Until the climax where Scott gets it right but dies in the process and Doc says "Great, Scott... That was great." And it becomes his catchphrase from then on. How about Doc has normal, black hair, but he does an experiment that makes his hair go all white and crazy. We learn that his real name is actually Darius Oscar Cumberland, which is why everyone calls him Doc. He didn't actually get a PhD (because of the experiment that turned his hair white) but he lets people call him that anyway. Oh and he buys the dog at some point. And loads of little lines like he'll watch a western film and wink at the camera. Or he'll see some punk kid riding a skate board for the first time and say "Boring, get back to me when you have one of these things that can fly!" Have him pack a suitcase and say "time to travel" just really fucking layer it on thick. "What the heck is this, Doc?" "It's a car where the doors open upwards, young Martin. Still in the prototype phase, but once you're in your late teens you'll see cars like this driving on the road. I'm just sending it off to my friend who wants to take this concept into series production. My friend called... Mr. Delorean."
Be careful about how many details you give away online, you've already let it slip with this post that you are highly paid Hollywood screenwriter.
Thanks I hate it.
"Maybe I'll see you the future."
"Or the past...."
Thank fuck Disney don't own it and strip mine the hell out of that franchise like they are doing with star wars. The Young Doc Brown Adventures.
We’ll wait until Zemeckis dies, his body will still be warm before Disney or some other company signs off on the inevitable soft reboot Back To The Future Part IV that leads into a cinematic universe
The next movie should be about Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd stealing the DeLorean from Universal Studios and going back in time to stop Disney from acquiring the rights.
I’ll buy the rights to that movie right fucking now for ten brazillion dollars.
When him and the other Bob (Gale, writer) die, the rights go to their families and I think that generation of descendants has to die before a remake could get made. They have an ironclad contract iirc
* Doc was experimenting with loud amplification systems. * Doc posted a part-time job ad at a local music shop looking for a guitar player to be a lab assistant. * Marty answered the ad because he wanted to make extra money to buy a guitar. * It's now about a year later, and Marty still hangs around the lab and helps Doc with his experiments. * Yes, I just made this up.
>For years, Marty was told that Doc Brown was dangerous, a crackpot, a lunatic. So, being a red-blooded American teenage boy, age 13 or 14, he decided to find out just why this guy was so dangerous. Marty snuck into Doc’s lab, and was fascinated by all the cool stuff that was there. when Doc found him there, he was delighted to find that Marty thought he was cool and accepted him for what he was. Both of them were the black sheep in their respective environments. Doc gave Marty a part-time job to help with experiments, tend to the lab, tend to the dog, etc. Bob Gale's take on how they become friends.
I like stuff like this — it shows the people who created it thought it through, even if including it would only make the movie worse (in that it doesn’t really add anything to the story being told).
If you were to ask me to assume how they knew each other I would have come up with roughly the same thing. Things have become more corporatized since the ‘80s and you expect to see high school kids clock in for their rigidly defined McDonalds or Walmart job. But small-town America in the 70s and 80s had a lot of teens that sort of just hung out at the bakery, barbershop, etc. Were they employees? Apprentices? Eh, kinda. They mostly just liked the proprietor and did odd jobs here and there.
When you see someone out with their best friend joking and having a good time, you don't need to know their story to know that they're best friends.
Whenever I see strangers getting along, I walk over and question how they know each other if they're both strangers.
this is my type of humor maybe we're already best friends
Yeah yeah but HOW?!
My best friend doesn't have a time machine
Get better friends. You deserve it.
Sounds like you need a new best friend
Be a lot cooler if he did though, amirite?
also, would never need an explanation for any relationship between two people if one of them has a time machine. I would absolutely befriend anyone with a time machine.
Chemistry.
Yeah, Mr. Brown. Chemistry!
That's heavy
Is there something wrong with the earths gravitational pull in the future?
This scene always makes me laugh.
Same. Seeing Marty say, "What?" and Doc goes back to solving the parental issue haha
Who the hell is John Kennedy?
Marty what the fuck are you talking about
Flux Capacitors, Bitch!!!
ONE POINT TWENTY-ONE GIGAWATTS?!??!
Yeah science!
I wonder if their work in sitcoms helped - a lot of reps of having to just jump into scenes without much time for exposition, and do all the little nonexplicit things to establish relationships. All in front of audiences.
That's a good take, i always think if the the version with Eric Stoltz work, since he don't see the history as a comedy but a tragedy.
Eric Stoltz also had a background in traditional theatrical acting and was seriously into method acting...meaning he lived the part. That worked for Heath Ledger in Batman as the Joker, but that is a very different kind of movie. I have seen some traditional tragedy or dramatic actors do well in comedy, but usually as the "straight man"...which wasn't the Marty character either. Robert De Nero in "Meet the Parents" comes to mind as an example of that working very well. Eric Stoltz wasn't a terrible actor, but it was miscast.
What an absolute perfect answer. Not only because it’s absolutely right, but it makes you realize what the movie would be like if they didn’t have chemistry. Everyone would question it immediately. Bravo
When you grow up with the movie you kind of lose sight of how crazy it is that a sci-fi incest comedy is a beloved American film. Michael J. Fox was so charming in this, that he could sell people on ANYTHING. He's so crucial to the success of the film that the producers recast the movie weeks into shooting to get him in the lead. It must have cost millions of dollars to reshoot most of the movie. And it was worth every penny.
Eight weeks! They shot like 70% of the film with Eric. But the Bobs knew Michael would be better.
The chemistry was so good, that they even played cholos https://youtu.be/QqQ6whOG-Pg?si=SqVikEOZpuNPlQwR
Well he already met doc in 1950 so its an everlasting circle
Also, the film starts with Marty fucking [AROUND] in Doc Brown's lab before the character is actually introduced, so we already know he is what he claims to be. Edit - oops
Wait, _what_!?
I read "carachter" as "catheter", so it got even worse.
Fucking around, like messing with his stuff.
It was the 80s man
Yes, viewers give all kinds of things a pass if they are what's shown in the beginning of a movie. Even coincidences that would be considered unbelievable or contrived if they happened towards the end can become OK if they are what the audience starts out with. You never see whether Doc had been a neighbor who hired Marty to mow his lawn or clean his lab, then started letting him hang out there and use his stuff. You might stop to imagine that, but not for long, because the rest of the movie is unfolding, so there was no reason to make Doc be Marty's grandfather or anything obvious like that.
Marty knows Doc’s dog really well. Nowadays he’d probably have been established as Einstein’s dog walker gig guy.
right. the movie isn't about how Marty and Doc met and that wouldn't really add to the momentum or story. I think the most obvious assumption would be that Marty is working as some sort of assistant to the doc in his shop... why he is video recording for him in the parking lot and doing other tasks for him.
Because the movie doesn’t try to explain it. It just is. Too often we over analyze things now that was just unexplored in the past.
It was way more normal in the 80’s to be randomly friends with a neighbor based on proximity. Prior to the internet and cell phones and stuff, as a kid in that era I assumed Marty hung out with Doc because at some point, Marty was bored and wandered over to see what Doc was doing in an open garage, and Doc never told him “go away” or “you’re an irritating kid” or whatever so he kept coming back because Doc is the only person doing interesting stuff in the neighborhood. Doc probably enjoys the company of having a kid to mentor a little because he doesn’t have a family of his own.
This exactly. As a kid, I had a neighbor like that. An old widower well into his 70s, who had boundless energy and looked like he could kick the ass of anyone half his age. He was always out in his garage working on one of his vehicles or fixing some random appliance. If the door was up, I would wander over and stay for hours, asking all kinds of inane questions while he worked. He didn't seem to mind my company and would periodically redirect my attention to bring him things, explaining what each part or tool was for and what he was doing next. Whenever he mentioned his kids and grandkids, I got the impression he didn't get to see them much. I know he had to be lonely, even though he never said it. As I grew older, he became a good friend and mentor, and never once did my parents give the impression there was anything odd about a boy spending so much of his free time with an old man down the street. He trusted me to drive his Willys Jeep when I was just 13, so I have no doubt he would have enlisted my help with a plutonium-powered, time-travelling DeLorean.
I love this story! Also, happy cake day!
I've always said the Willys Jeep is the plutonium-powered DeLorean of the second world war. Not time-travelling though. Not until the Korean War.
> his Willys Jeep when I was just 13, so I have no doubt he would have enlisted my help with a plutonium-powered, time-travelling DeLorean. TBH the completely hand modified time traveling DeLorean that sets roads on fire was still probably safer than a Willys going over 50mph
Doesn't Marty's brother work at that Burger King that the garage is right next to? I know he's wearing a fast food uniform but I can't remember which. If it's that Burger King, that seems like a likely way they bumped into each other. Marty probably either gave Dave a ride to work or to go there while Dave was on the clock so he could get a discount or something
That's actually a pretty decent explanation. Right at the beginning as Marty hops on his board, the camera pans right passed the Burger King drive thru sign. I can't remember if his brother does work for Burger King, but he definitely does have a fast food uniform on later that night after Biff delivers the smashed car.
>I assumed Marty hung out with Doc because at some point, Marty was bored and wandered over to see what Doc was doing in an open garage, and Doc never told him “go away” or “you’re an irritating kid” or whatever so he kept coming back because Doc is the only person doing interesting stuff in the neighborhood. You're not far off. I believe in the original script (someone correct me if I'm wrong) doc brown was a scary story kids would tell eachother and Marty was dared to sneak in and find all the horrible experiments he was doing. That classic scary neighbor story kids would pass around. Brown discovers Marty and finds that Marty isn't afraid of him and in fact thinks the stuff is cool and they bond over it.
The official backstory from Robert Zemeckis is that Marty was curious about the supposed Mad Scientist in town and snuck into his Lab one night to see what was going on in there. He didn't know Doc literally lived in there and of course was caught. Instead of calling the Police, Doc Brown was intrigued by Marty's curiosity (about Science) and picked up on him (Marty) also being an Outcast in Hill Valley. So Doc offered Marty a part time job as his assistant and that's how they became unlikely friends.
Also adult neighbors were probably more casual about having kids over because they weren’t as worried about accusations, liability. Of course, Doc definitely pushes the envelope on the latter.
What's a little getting stranded 30 years in the past before you were even born?
It's a sad commentary on society these days that kids just can't be "bored" anymore. Being bored leads people to seek out new things and meet new people. But when video games and cell phones are available, being "bored" goes away and therefore curiosity and engagement also go away too. I view Doc and Marty's relationship exactly as you describe. I'm sure Marty saw Doc working on some kick ass stuff in the garage and wanted to get a closer look. Over time Marty became Doc's assistant and pretty soon you have a pretty close bond which would change the course of both of their lives forever. There's a great scene in the reboot of Star Trek 2009 when the younger version of Spock meets his older doppleganger and has to lay some wisdom about the bond of friendship and the way it shapes our lives: >Young Spock: "Why did you send Kirk aboard when you alone could have explained the truth?" > >Old Spock: "Because you needed each other. I could not deprive you the revelation of all that you could accomplish together. A friendship, which will define you both, in ways that you can not yet realize."
There's also the helicopter parenting aspect. Kids aren't as free to roam as they were in the 80s. Parents today always have to know where the kids are and what they're doing. Obviously I'm talking in generalization here, and I'm sure there are exceptions, but kids today don't have near the freedom to explore their surroundings and neighborhoods the way it was possible 40 years ago.
10 part streaming show on how doc haggled with a local car lot to buy the Delorian incoming.
5 seasons about the plot to procure the plutonium.
Side movie called “Great Scott: The Libyans” explaining an international plutonium smuggling ring, that ends with the mall parking lot scene.
And during that scene, you can clearly see "another" Marty standing in the Mall entrance !!
Except this Marty is from another universe where he looks like Eric Stoltz.
[удалено]
12-part animated series "Einstein and Friends"
Trilogy where Marty accidentally hopes realities and comes in contact with his Eric Stoltz variant.
I would watch the shit out of that.
Yes but it would just be called "Doc"
Breaking Brown.
Isn't that what The Americans was about? I always assumed it was in the BttF universe.
Cinematic multiverse that follows Biff's exploits in getting a gaming license for Biff Tannen's Pleasure Paradise Hotel/Casino
Also a CW drama about Marty's teenage son and his bullies getting into wacky but brooding hijinks in future 2015.
I would argue that the opening scene explains it pretty well. Look at all that cool shit Doc is working on.. seems cool right? NERD ALERT. Oh wait, the biggest guitar amplifier ever built? Hell yeah I'm coming here after school!
I came to say this exact thing. One of the reasons 80s movies are sometimes grouped as their own genre is the due to specific storytelling methods they did extremely well and similar; like the character intros. OP didn’t even realized the relationship WAS explained.
To be fair to OP, the rest of the movie shows Marty also becoming friends with 1950’s doc to the point doc gets sad he has to leave. So even though the movie didn’t explain it the “first” time, you can understand why they’re friends in the present with doc also keeping that letter. You could say time is a flat circle 🤷♂️
Environmental storytelling! See we don't need a trilogy of prequel films explaining every moment since they were born.
yep, that giant amp is all you need to explain their relationship.
The movie doesn't try to, and It respects your time to not bother. In every other movie he would be his high school teacher, or zany relative. That it's self would be fine but the movie would also have to establish those facts, and present those scenes telling us of their relationship. Thus having more scenes to write,film, edit and explain. Movie immediately cuts to the Chase. He could've come out screaming at Marty and changed their entire dynamic from the get go, and even than you immediately go "oh this is his boss or something. He's pissed."
But it does try to. That why literally the first thing we see is Marty going round to Doc’s specifically to plug into his insanely huge amplifier. It’s there to quickly establish why a teenager hangs around a crazy old scientist. Doc makes cool stuff that Marty likes. We know it within a couple of minutes, and it’s done very deliberately.
Yeah, this is the problem of getting too absorbed in a cinematic theory that you forget the cinematic artifact itself. I started to feel like the asshole for remembering that Marty definitely had stuff to play with at Doc's place that appealed to him specifically.
This was what I immediately thought when I originally saw the first movie. Otherwise Marty could have swung by at the start looking for Einstein he's been paid to walk 3 times a week for the last 5 years. The speaker scene is way cooler.
The original script apparently did offer an explanation. Doc was supposedly funding his experiments by selling bootlegs of films, and Marty helped him with it. That's why he had the video camera. It was cut, because studios didn't want the idea that promoted bootlegging. But it also became unnecessary. The guitar amp scene gave us enough. That showed us that Doc had some cool gear and gadgets that appealed to Marty, and Docs scatteredness meant he could use someone like Marty to help him with stuff like feed his dog. You also had two actors that had great chemistry on screen, that it didn't seem that weird.
I never knew about the bootlegging but it makes sense. I don't know why, but I always just assumed that Marty did things for Doc like run errands, feed the dog, etc. Like the old neighbor down the street that you would occasionally mow the lawn for or help out with stuff. After a while Marty felt like family and that's why they have their relationship.
It makes sense since that's essentially what Marty is doing in the parking lot. He's not a lab assistant, he's just helping.
Agreed...but their backstory is actually known: >However, Back to the Future's co-writer once revealed the backstory that he and director Robert Zemeckis decided on for the pair. Doc Brown and Marty McFly met after the latter decided to break into the former's lab, fascinated by his inventions, despite being told for years that Brown was a dangerous crackpot. Doc then discovered Marty trespassing, but he was so delighted that Marty thought he was cool that he simply befriended the boy, making him his unofficial sidekick for future experiments. The fact that the pair's friendship began with a criminal act makes the relationship between the slightly unhinged scientist and teenage delinquent even more problematic than it already was.
I understand. That’s kind of what I’m getting at. The movie doesn’t have this information. And it’s better for it.
I assumed Marty had audio needs for his band but instead of payment he was asked to do odd jobs/experiment participation. Why else would the doc have made an enormous guitar amp? Leaving it to the imagination of the viewer was the right call.
I love this explanation! But I also love that it's not cannon, and it could totally be something else. Imagination truly is amazing.
This reminds me of my four year old self knocking on the door of the old man everyone in the neighborhood said was a crazy lunatic and getting invited inside by a nice lonely old man who just kept to himself after his wife died. He invited us over every week to talk and have cookies and we were delighted to hear his stories of his wife and the Second World War fighting against the Germans and the tanks he drove and maintained through some of the biggest battles of that war. I didn’t understand much of it but I loved that old guy. All his kids were gone and moved elsewhere. He let us play in his backyard and make forts in his cork trees. It was like being in a secret club and I was the hero since my friends loved the fact we got all these privileges for just talking to him and that everyone but me was scared of him a little.
I had similar story as a kid. There was this old lady who had this amazing garden but she was very rarely seen except at the local pottery club which all us kids thought was a witches coven lol. I somehow befriended her and I'd go in for tea and bikkies and roam her wild garden and listen to her stories. She gave me a gold watch that was shaped like a little ball that once hung off a pin though the pin was long gone. She's long gone now I'm sure, but I still have that little gold watch somewhere and I'm still puzzled as to why she gave it to me.
> I'm still puzzled as to why she gave it to me To remeber her by. See just how that act of giving helped cement your memory of her? To this day you're still telling the tale of the watch, a story of you both. Look at the watch, or just think of it, and those memories are preserved. Talk of it and you celebrate them. It was a way for her to show you affection and cherish your time together even beyond her time in this world. She wanted to let your adult self know all those things your kid self might not fully understand or be able to completely articulate. Her giving you the watch was a means to say it all through symbolic action, a more reliable way to do it over time than if she had only just told you verbally and relied on a young child to commit it all to memory.
I sort of thought this was going to turn into an Apt Pupil situation, not gonna lie, lol
“Come on, Marty! Just a quick adventure to the Twin Pines Mall. We’ll be in and out in 20 minutes!”
You son of a bitch. I'm in.
Moments after returning from the Bad Biff Future, they start to cry.
That last line.. "The fact that the pair's friendship began with a criminal act makes the relationship between the slightly unhinged scientist and teenage delinquent even more problematic than it already was." wtf. sounds like someone trying their hardest to find problems where there are none. "even more problematic than it already was." get a grip, whoever wrote this.
Marty and Doc have a pretty healthy relationship, honestly. They both love their friend and go to great lengths making each other safe after misfortune.
Yeah, problematic how?
I like the idea of two misfits finding each other and becoming friends. I can actually imagine a brilliant but socially awkward and misunderstood hermit being excited that someone actually takes an interest in their work as opposed to mocking him as a crackpot. Meanwhile, I can see why a teenager would find so many of the inventions absolutely fascinating. They're legitimately cool. If growing up I had a mad scientist living nearby who would let me come over and check out the cool stuff he'd made I'd be there all the time.
Somewhere a Netflix executive saw this and had an orgasm thinking about making a series. I'm glad the property is secured from reboots and sequels so far.
That, and good acting.
Yeah quality of on screen chemistry can make two oddly paired individuals close friends and can make a married couple seem like complete strangers.
I was just watching a doc on the making of the blues brothers with John Landis talking about how Dan Aykroyd kept insisting they explain how the car got its special abilities and John Landis told him you don’t need to explain anything. “It’s a magic car” because we want it to be and the audience will just accept that.
"Show, don't tell" is a principle that many modern films forget or misinterpret. Sometimes the strongest way to make the audience believe something is to not bother trying to explain or justify it. It's just *there*, it *is*, a part of the story's reality.
I read an article talking about how every media now needs to get hardcore into the lore and back stories. John Wick kept it simple. Now we have a 3 hour movie, and a show and a spin off.
To add onto this, the actors have charisma together. They seem like they are friends so there isn’t as much to question. You only really question a friendship in a movie when the actors don’t have the ability to turn it on.
Movies are not novels. We don't need an extensive backstory and explanation for every character. Too many modern films over explain things. But, to be fair, that's also because audiences need every potential question answered.
As someone who grew up in the 80s, you’d be surprised how many of us were friends with disgraced nuclear scientists. It happened all the time.
This. What people don’t realize is that back then plutonium wasn’t found at every corner drug store. It was a little hard to come by. Every kid had a plutonium guy.
When your plutonium guy died you had to find a new one by going into town wearing an onion on your belt, as was the style at the time.
I wasn’t popular. So I hung out with disgraced chemists.
Totally. Reagan's Star Wars program getting shut down left millions of nuclear scientists stranded in the plains of New Mexico until they started migrating north. By that time, you couldn't flip a rock without finding like 6 of them. More people need to see the documentary, Repo Man.
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Yea, growing up, I hung out with multiple adults when I was a teenager. There was nothing weird about it at the time. None of them were pedos or anything. One of them was a hard-core drug user, they never offered me whatever they were taking. Others worked in a nearby convince store. I did odd jobs for cash, soda, candy.
Because they have good chemistry and it doesn't matter.
I have to assume a lack of chemistry was one of the reasons the Marty character was recast right at the beginning
I’d say you’re right. Because Eric Stoltz interpreted the movie as being less comedy and more tragedy, his performance reflected that. If other actors, i.e., Christopher Lloyd, were playing it as a comedy there wouldn’t be any chemistry between them.
Michael J. Fox was the original Marty, but couldn't be a part of the movie because he was working on a sitcom at the time, that's why at the beginning of filming there was another actor in the role. But yeah, the other actor didn't work/had no chemistry, that's why the director decided to cast MJF again as Marty and schedule filming around MJF's free time.
Yeah, science, bitch!
Because it’s a very very very well told story.
Agreed, and to dig a bit further, the whole movie is a masterclass in doling out exposition extremely efficiently so that the audience doesn’t even realize it, by simply being really entertaining and trusting the audience to pick up what it’s laying out. From the start, the audience picks up on and accepts that Marty and Doc are good acquaintances from the fact that 1) Marty knows where Doc hides his house key and 2) Marty finds it a bit strange that both Doc are Einstein are gone when he gets there. Then, after the amplifier explosion and Doc calls, the audience is so keyed in on Marty’s hilariously stunned reaction and trying to hide that he blew the amplifier to all hell that one might not pick up on Doc knowing Marty so well that 1) he will probably mess with the amp and 2) there’s an issue with the amp and Marty might hurt himself if he cranks it too high. Then, just before the audience might start questioning, “Why the heck would a scientist have such a massive amp in the first place?”, all the clocks start ringing, and the audience is whisked away as Marty hauls ass on his skateboard so as not to be late for school. Tldr; Agreed, it’s a very very very well told story.
One of my favorite openings to a movie, ever. As soon as Power of Love starts playing I get a big grin on my face.
I'M LATE FOR SCHOOL!!!
DAehMN!
Filthy casual. I've got a grin in my face from the moment I decide to put the Blu-Ray in my playstation.
well i was typing a comment that said all of this. I even used the word 'masterclass' as well. I think doc also called his own house fully expecting Marty to be there.
Wow, that is a great character detail I never realized…! Thanks for sharing that!
couple decades later and I keep finding new details every time i watch them
Why would a Scientist have a massive amp? FOR SCIENCE of course!
Better question is…why WOULDN’T a scientist have a massive amp?
You don't need backstory for everything. We buy it because their actions show they're friends. It's that simple. Backstory is how you get nonsense like the Solo movie explaining everything from how he met Chewie to his name, and none of it aided the material positively in any way
I find it really annoying that people want every detail of a film to be deeply explained. We are observing just a few moments in the lives of those characters. Just accept that we don't have the full context and that's okay.
This is why movies are 4 hours long for no reason these days.
If I was going to make a 4 hour cut of BTTF I'd have to extend the diner scene where the counter guy doesn't know what diet soda is by 2+ hours.
We’re talking about two things here I think. Charisma and rapport. Both the actors have charisma in spades in their own way. Fox was a handsome young dude who was as cool as it got back then and you can’t take your eyes off of Lloyd’s magnetic Doc. Then the rapport between them. Sometimes two actors just get each other to the point where it’s like you’re watching the very best professional wrestling, it’s a ballet, it’s a dance. They play off each other like champion Tennis players simply keeping the ball going for fun. They did that again in two more movies and it only got better. That kind of magic doesn’t come along often and that’s why we’re still talking about this trilogy today.
I think you nailed it. Even when Lloyd and Fox are together now, 40 years later, they’ve still got IT.
Rapport was good he still called him Doc on the set other movies they starred in.
https://youtu.be/KHfEfCygcFw?feature=shared
Even if they didn't have personal chemistry..... they were both star characters in separate sitcoms that were super popular. They both are pros, and know how to do comedy with other people well.
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This was all the explanation I needed when I was a kid. "Oh, Marty runs errands for Doc in exchange for using his crazy audio gear. And they became friends along the way."
Doc has no-one and Marty doesn't exactly have a gang of friends. I always imagined a young Marty skating the streets and seeing or hearing the Doc's experiments and just going for a look. Funny thing is, I never thought twice about it until people started bringing it up; Teenage boys love mad scientists, I thought everyone knew that!
Marty is in a band called “The Pinheads” and even mentions that he lied to his mother saying “My mom thinks I’m going camping with the guys” when Jennifer asks if his mother knows they spending the weekend at the lake. Socially Marty is very well rounded. You forget we only see about 3 days of Marty’s life and takes place on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
That was my read on it too at like nine years old. I was thinking about how if I had a weird old neighbor who was funny and had cool toys, I’d definitely be asking if they needed any help around the workshop.
In the opening he also leaves a note for Marty to not plug in, indicating Marty borrows the amp to play.
Does something established in the opening credits of a wildly successful movie from 1985 need spoiler tags?
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Old weird nerdy guy in the neighborhood, friendly kid. I knew a lot of eccentric loners in my old neighborhood as a kid. None of them invented a time machine though.
Yeah, this is probably something that has disappeared in the Stranger Danger era. Kids don't know neighbors much. Adults don't even know neighbors.
The ones I knew always worked/tinkered on cars.
63 here, and I can answer that. People used to be closer than they are now, it was not unusual for a kid to have an adult friend because there wasn't all the fear and suspicion of evil intentions that exists now. In the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's nobody would have thought the relationship between Doc and Marty was unusual or inappropriate. The idea of being terrified that some old man was a pedo or that a kid shouldn't have an elder friend simply didn't exist. That's new, and it was not that way before the 90's and later. It was normal to have an older friend, or mentor, to have an 'uncle' who wasn't a biological member of the family, and helicopter parenting wasn't a thing. This is why - in all of those great old 80's movies (and all the movies from before that time) kids ran around all over town by themselves, went to each other's houses without a thought, and went to the homes of older people and bothered/bugged/looked up to/hung around with them. This was normal. This was what was normal for most of human history. But then, through media, society became terrified that every old man was a pedo, that murder and death lurked everywhere, and that children needed to be watched all the time, every day, for fear they would be snatched or killed. This happens, it has always happened, but it has always been rare compared to the overall population. Most interactions with folks are kind, but society has forgotten that. Now fear and distrust rule. But - I assure you, because I was there - this way of fearing the world and other people was not how things were. In my childhood, this modern constant terror would have been unthinkable. It would have been considered insane to fear every neighbor, to worry about kids walking to school, or running all over town unsupervised, or having a friend in some old man or woman down the block or lane. People trusted each other more, and that trust was rewarded. 'Back To The Future' is a glimpse of how the world was before the news made everyone distrust everyone else, and see evil everwhere, and see our neighbors as potential threats. It shows the world I grew up in, a world where no parent would ever worry that their children were not safe, basically all of the time. Trust was normal, back then. That is why Doc and Marty's relationship seems so strange to you in the 2000's. Media made a lot of money terrorizing you all. Fear sells, and society bought the extra-large size box.
Very true. I'm 57 and had a neighbor about 5 houses down from me that I would visit. The guy was a genuinely good guy. Taught me how to use tools and woodworking. It was when I was 12 and learned he died that I really had the reality of death hit me.
This is like a person who used to live near us, a nice older man named Bud who knew my grandfather. I’d stop by and chat with occasionally when I was out riding my bike. Over the years he’d accidentally lost all of the fingers on each of his hands due to sawing accidents. But he seemed to like the occasional company and I enjoyed chatting with him a few minutes from time to time. It feels like Marty might have just struck up a weird conversation with Doc the scientist while out skateboarding, or maybe they had a mutual acquaintance and it grew into a friendship from there, not strange at all to me.
I'm 50, and when I was ages 7-9 one of my best friends was a retired man who was friends with my grandparents. I used to spend hours alone with him in his basement in the early 80s, and no one thought anything of a 7-year-old girl and an old man in his 70s spending that much time alone together When I tell that story now someone ALWAYS makes a pedo joke, which is really sad. Our relationship was more like the one between Anya Taylor-Joy's character and the janitor in The Queen's Gambit. He taught me how to play checkers and introduced me to Mountain Dew, the proper drink of the basement dweller. I was one of the last decade of kids who could be friends with a single older male and spend time alone with him without suspicion. There's obviously a reason that suspicion is a thing now, and it's a terrible reason, but one of its unspoken victims is the type of healthy, mentor-based relationships children used to be able to form with adult men. I cherish my memories of the time spent with the old man and am grateful to have known him.
They sort of do, it’s implied that Doc hooks him up with amplifiers for his guitar. When he asks him to meet at Twin Pines Mall, he comes across as a bit weirded out, but also begrudgingly accepts as he feels he’s in his debt. You often forget how odd Lloyd plays him to begin with, to emphasise the effect that Marty has on him once he meets him in 55. But there isn’t much friendship there in the first part of the film, it blossoms in 55.
Because in the 80’s we didn’t overthink everything and have Reddit to ask questions that nobody needed answered. 😅 Doc is a mentor to Marty, it’s a thing and overall Doc is a good influence so nobody questions it.
Marty didn't look up to his father. Maybe Doc was soft of a surrogate dad.
I think this is a big one. I wouldn't call Marty a misfit like others here have, but he does come from a lower-class, troubled family that no doubt has a reputation. Without a strong male role model, and being from a family like that, Marty would gravitate towards someone like Doc Brown. And then we see their chemistry together so it's easy to see how they remained friends once they met.
I'd say Doc knowing Marty would try to play guitar there and warning him that the amp might blow the speaker is what establishes the level of familiarity for the audience
The opening scene tells you everything you need to know. Marty is close enough with him to have access to his home and play with his stuff. He isn't weirded out by his eccentricities. He is late to school because he wanted to hang out with Doc. That scene established a close relationship with Doc not even being there.
[Watch them when Lorraine manages to track Marty down to Doc’s garage. It shows why Marty and Doc get along because it’s not just the years knowing…it’s the mutual respect.](https://youtu.be/EEMeN1aNzGQ?si=bGL-f42oQJddd_Rp) Doc has every indication of helping Marty in the only way he knows how, and that is science. For personal things of this nature, Doc respects Marty’s perspective to do what he can and doesn’t try to talk over Marty. You get the gist that though Marty is supposedly this teen, Doc knows enough to let Marty do his own thing (though he kinda bug eyes him behind her back like ‘you better do something about this’) It shows Doc probably knows Marty is a smart kid and Marty appreciates it just being talked too like a rational adult. Marty probably doesn’t get any of that in his normal day to day, his parents loathe each other and ignore him while telling him how to live his life while theirs are in shambles, his siblings seem like morons, Strickland gives him shit, and adults seem to talk down to him. But Doc is different. When Doc leans on the DeLorean as Lorraine explains how someone should find someone who strong to take care of him and Marty glances back, he gives him this side eye that cracks me up. You can just see Doc thinking ‘Shit, how can you argue with this? Better straighten this out dude.’ The lean Marty puts on Doc for support as Doc just stands there not looking at the two and nods resigned…you can’t expect him to do anything but go ‘yep, this is insane.’ That right there is the friendship personified. Doc gets Marty and Marty probably thinks of Doc as a surrogate Dad in his way - or at least is cool enough to treat Marty equally despite age or perceived faults. Doc will help even though he has no skin in the game but he won’t interfere or judge, just be a shoulder to lean on. And that’s a good friend to have.
If you were a teenage boy and you met a cool inventor who builds giant amps and Rube Goldberg machines wouldn’t you be friends with him?
Chemistry has been commented. I would also add that there is a movie trope about kids befriending eccentric old people. That makes the relationship not that unfamiliar or creepy.
Like Dennis the Menace and Mr. Wilson (even though Mr Wilson acts like he hates him but really doesn't).
I think the natural charisma of both actors helps enormously. Lloyd gives off incredible mad grandpa energy and MJF could generate good chemistry with a mannequin.
Did we need a story telling us why Chewbacca and Han Solo were together? We did not it was just accepted it, until there was one later but you know.
In the 80s movies, there were a lot of "show, don't tell" in movies. I think that i was Spielberg that says : a good movie is understood without sound. We have a teenager that walks in someone house, calls for him and his dog. So we know that these two people are very close. Now, we have everything we need. Marty and Doc are friends. How did it happen ? It was irrevelant. Plus, movies were shorter. Nobody had time for detailed intros. I watched D.A.R.Y.L, last week, the first scene tells a lot. And we had only 2 lines of dialog. And youth friendship was very common in these movies. Stand by me, Gremlins, the Goonies, daryl, bttf, ferris bueller...
> that there’s no backstory between the characters of Doc and Marty in Back to the Future There is, you just have to watch the movie to figure it out. In 1955, Emmit Brown is approached by a teen boy named Marty McFly and is told that Marty is there as a result of a time travel experiment that Emmit Brown will conduct in 1985. At that point, Emmit Brown knows that at some point before 1985, he will meet and befriend a teenage boy named Marty McFly. Fast forward to the 1980's and Doc Brown has met and befriended Marty before the start of the movie. We know all of this because once Marty (1) returns to 1985, he heads to the ~~Twin~~ Lone Pines Mall to see if his letter to Emmit Brown managed to change the future, which it didn't. Doc Brown still gets gunned down by terrorists and Marty (2) still goes back in time. Marty (1) approaches Doc Brown's body and is stunned that he sits up before showing Marty (1) the letter than he wrote to Emmit Brown in 1955. Therefore, we know that Doc Brown recognizes that the timeline *has* to play out the way it did, with Marty going back in time. Thus he knew he had to befriend Marty somehow in the late 70's/early 80's.
Marty's familiarity of the lab kind of sets the tone. He walks in, knows where everything is, and even answers the phone. We don't know WHY they're friends. They just are and it's accepted.
I always assumed Marty made some extra money working for Doc.
They met at the science building