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Technical Information
Studio: Universal
Home Video
Year of Theatrical Release: 1985
Disc Format: 1
single-sided, Dual Layer
Image Format: Anamorphic
(16x9 enhanced)
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Region Encoding: 1
Sound Format:
Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital 2.0 (pro logic)
Running Time: 111
minutes
Director: Robert
Zemeckis
Stars: Michael
J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover
MPAA Rating: PG
Disc Supplements:
- Commentary track with writer Bob Gale and producer
Neil Canton
- Live Q&A session with Bob Gale and director
Robert Zemeckis
- Enhanced conversation with Michael J. Fox
- Did You Know That? animated anecdotes
- The Making of Back to the Future featurette
Making the Trilogy: Chapter 1
- 8 deleted scenes
- Outtakes
- Makeup tests
- Production archives
- Original screenplay excerpts
- Teaser trailer
- Cast and filmmaker bios
- Production notes
- DVD-ROM features
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I know some of you readers will groan when
you read this, but they just don't make movies like Back to
the Future anymore.
I can't say how many times I've seen the film,
but it never seems to lose its appeal. There is a timeless quality
(pardon the pun) to the characters and story line that keep
the film fresh, even when compared to today's slicked up special
effects extravaganzas.
Part of what makes Back to the Future work
is the way in which it takes existing conceptions of time travel
and gives them interesting twists.
The story opens by introducing us to Marty
McFly (Michael J. Fox). In many ways, Marty is a typical kid:
he's a bit insecure, sometimes he gets into trouble (such as
being late for school), and he's convinced that his parents
hopelessly misunderstand him.
Things just never seem to go quite right for
Marty. His band is rejected in an audition for the school dance.
He's stuck riding around town on a skateboard, instead of in
the new truck he wants. Things even go awry with his girlfriend
when his plans for a weekend getaway are spoiled when his dad's
bully boss, Biff (Thomas Wilson), wrecks the family car.
Marty's best friend is Doc Emmett Brown (Christopher
Lloyd), a crazy scientist who fancies himself to be an inventor.
One night he invites Marty to the mall parking lot to show him
his latest creation. To Marty's surprise, Doc rolls out a De
Lorean sports car tricked out with all sorts of electronics
and gadgets. In short order, Doc Brown proves to Marty that
his newest invention, a time machine (in the form of the De
Lorean), actually works.
Circumstances conspire to get Marty into the
time machine and he accidentally sends himself 30 years into
the past, back to 1955. The De Lorean only had enough juice
for one trip, leaving Marty stuck in the past and his first
thought is to find Doc to ask for help. In his search, he runs
into his parents, who are now high school kids his own age.
Marty learns that his dad, George (Crispin Glover), has always
been picked on by Biff, and his mom, Lorraine (Lea Thompson)
doesn't seem to be as innocent as her older self claims.
Unfortunately for Marty, meeting his parents
has now prevented them from meeting. And in an even more unsettling
twist for Marty, Lorraine seems to have developed a crush on
him.
Since George and Lorraine are no longer destined
fall in love and get married, they won't ever have kids and
unless Marty can fix the problem, he won't ever be born. So
Marty must come up with a means to play matchmaker with his
parents. In the meantime, Doc Brown is trying to come up with
a means to send Marty back to the future.
Part of the appeal of film, even still, nearly
20 years after its theatrical run, is in the characters. Despite
their incredible adventures, the characters remain real and
are having problems that will likely always trouble teenagers.
Kids will always have a hard time envisioning their parents
as having gone through any of what they are going through. Kids
just don't accept the notion that their parents were also once
children.
Of course, perfectly written characters would
be nothing without performances. All of the actors manage to
perfectly inhabit their roles, giving them enough tenderness
and heart to make the audience care about what happens to them.
More than that, they seem to understand the intent of the comedy
in the film, never overreaching for a joke.
One final thing to note is that Back to the
Future is one of the those rare films that lends itself very
well to repeat viewings. The filmmakers went to a lot of trouble
to throw in many obvious and not-so-obvious sight gags, some
relating to time travel and some not. Part of the fun is in
picking up on some of those gags and in discovering something
new each time your view it.
:::back to
top |
The problem with catalog titles,
especially titles dating back to the 1980s, is that the quality
of the film is essentially a crap shoot. Therefore, the question
is in just how much work the studios are willing to put into restoring
some of these titles.
Back to the Future is a premier title for Universal.
There is simply no way they could get away with releasing this film
without taking steps to make it look as good as possible. Still,
having said that, it should be realized that, due to the filmmaking
processes of the time, a film such as Back to the Future simply
cannot ever look as fine as a modern production.
What Universal has done is to restore the film
to what is perhaps the best it has ever looked. There is a small
amount of dirt on the print and some grain is present in the composited
effects shots, but the overall image is fairly clean. The colors
are decent, if slightly muted. The contrasts are nice, with deep
blacks and adequate shadow details.
Surprisingly, most of the problems with the image
are DVD related, rather than issues with the original print. You
will notice some excessive edge enhancement at times and even some
(albeit slight) digital artifacting in a few shots.
This won't go down in the books as the greatest
transfer, but despite its problems, Back to the Future still looks
great.
:::back to top |
Even though films were treated
to surround sound mixes back in the 1980s, by today's standards,
these were not the greatest sonic experiences.
Back to the Future has been updated with a new
5.1 surround mix, but little has been done to add sonic information.
As a result, the surround field is somewhat weak, with few ambient
effects. In fact, only the most important action sequences, namely
the time travel bits, contain any great deal of surround effects.
The dynamic range is acceptable, but some more tightness in the
lows and expansiveness in the highs would have really helped out,
especially with Alan Silvestri's heroic score.
Don't get me wrong here, however. The disc sounds
good, for what it is. The only way Universal could have improved
on the sound would have been to do a complete digital remix, similar
to what was done for Superman: The Movie.
While such an effort would have sounded spectacular, it certainly
would have outrage the purist fans, who want the same experience
they remember from the theater.
This is a fine mix and certainly representative
of the best Back to the Future ever sounded during its theatrical
run.
:::back to top |
Universal has gotten it exactly
right on this disc (and the entire trilogy, for that matter) in
terms of extras. There is a lot of content, but it is not over done.
Each of the three discs in the trilogy offer up extra content directly
relating to each film, and each disc also has some content that
relates to the trilogy as a whole.
First up are several features that play along
with the film itself. Writer Bob Gale and producer Neil Canton offer
up a feature length commentary. Conspicuously absent is Robert Zemeckis,
who was either unavailable or unwilling to do the track. This track
lacks any real spark. There is certainly a great deal of information
presented, but Gale and Canton just aren't very dynamic here. It's
worth a listen for the big fans, but otherwise it's a fairly bland
track.
More worthwhile is a Q&A session with Bob
Gale and Robert Zemeckis. Recorded live just after a screening of
Back to the Future, this track isn't screen specific to the film,
but does discuss elements of the production quite extensively. This
track is pretty candid, in that there are several questions about
how and why things were done, including, for example, the firing
of Eric Stoltz from the role of Marty. Gale is far more entertaining
here, playing off his Zemeckis, than on the other commentary, and
both of them seem to be having a great time talking about the film.
This is the track most people will want to listen to.
Next up is a feature not available on the other
two discs: an enhanced viewing mode, featuring a retrospective interview
with Michael J. Fox. When a clock icon appears on screen (roughly
at the beginning of each chapter stop), you can access comments
from Fox. DVD's branching feature switches the image over to a non-anamorphic
version of the film with an inset window showing Michael. Sometimes
his comments are fairly brief, other times they run most of the
chapter. There is, however, one problem with this feature in that
it boots you out of the movie and back to the main menu at the layer
switch. At first, I thought this was a problem with my disc or machines,
until I noticed that some other sites were also mentioning it. I'll
be checking with my sources at Universal to see if they're aware
of the problem and what they intend to do about it.
Rounding out the stuff that plays along with the
film is a fun facts feature, that pops up little bits of trivia
(as text) while you watch the film. As I see this sort of feature
turn up more and more often, I'm finding that its growing on me
-- especially when done well. The comments here are a touch too
few and far between for my taste, but still very interesting and
worthwhile. I particularly enjoyed having one long-standing gripe
of mine settled. Near the end, when Doc is hanging from the clock
tower, there are some shots that clearly show him wearing shoes
with a Velcro closure. This has always bugged me, since obviously
Velcro shoes didn't exist in 1955. However, this feature explains
that these shoes came from "future" Doc's suitcase of
belongings in the De Lorean (featured in a deleted scene). It all
makes sense now.
We get a couple of making of featurettes. The
first of which is The Making of Back to the Future. This featurette
was made at the same time as the film and has some of that EPK feeling
to it. There are some nice behind the scenes bits, including some
shots of the making of the De Lorean time machine.
The second featurette is the first part of the
three part trilogy, Making the Trilogy: Chapter 1. Production values
are good here, but there is a lot of information repeated from the
commentary and interview tracks. This featurette gives us more talking
head comments and clips from the film than actual behind the scenes
footage and material, making this more of a fluff piece than anything
really in depth.
Next are a series of 8 deleted scenes. This is
the sort of material fans have been waiting for. Most of these scenes
were cut early enough in the production so that they never underwent
color correction, so they are pretty rough to look at. Still, they
are a fun addition. I can't see where any of them would have significantly
added to the experience of the film, but there are some funny bits.
The scenes all also feature optional audio commentary.
On the disappointing side are the included outtakes.
I have a hard time believing that with a production such as this,
that these are the best and funniest outtakes they could come up
with. None of them rate more than a few chuckles and for an otherwise
family friendly disc, these aren't something you'll want to let
the kids watch.
Finishing things up are some on-screen makeup
tests, production notes and photographs, cast and crew biographies
and the teaser trailer. DVD-ROM content includes the complete screenplay,
with scene links and the opportunity to access online materials
from Universal's site (the content is set to go live when the disc
streets). Finally, there is a public service announcement about
Parkinson's disease.
It's worth noting that the navigation of the special
features portion of the menu is a bit clunky in that access to the
additional pages of material is not intuitive. The arrow at the
bottom of the screen seems to imply that it will take you back to
the main menu, rather than the next page -- so watch for that while
you navigate.
:::back to top |
Back to the Future is
just one more of the heavily requested titles to surface on DVD
and a welcome addition it is. The film does look dated, but it holds
up remarkably well and is just as entertaining today as it was then.
The DVD does a fine job of presenting the film. Sure, a complex
and costly full digital restoration might have given us a bit more
picture and sound quality, but what we are offered here is certainly
acceptable and as good a presentation of the film as we've ever
seen.
Unfortunately, as part of a set, this film
is brought down by the two sequels, which are somewhat mistreated
on DVD. Alone, this disc is outstanding, but the box set as a whole
is only average.
:::back to top |
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| Aside from some adult language,
there's not much here to shelter the kids from. Yes, the film does
deal with a teenage girl falling for a boy who is actually her son,
but this is handled so innocently as to not be offensive. |
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| Reviews of Back to the
Future Part II and Back to the Future Part III
coming soon...
-- By Robert Wurth. Copyright © 2003. |
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