Back to the Future was a tremendous summer hit. It was helped in no small part by various homages and its iconic imagery. The character of Dr. Emmett Brown’s visual similarity to C.A. Rotwag in Metropolis is just one excellent example. Back to the Future’s popularity has remained high for the last twenty years because its strong material provides a depth of material from which entertainers can pull jokes, parodies, and cultural references. The movie itself continues to have a cultural influence. When people see a DeLorean going down the street, they don’t remember the cocaine bust scandal that devastated the company—they think time travel. The fun Back to the Future has with time travel parody is part of its joy. And if you want to have some extra fun, compare the actors and actresses in their old-age make-up to how they really look now, twenty years later, and you might reassess your hasty judgment call on the special effects.
When I was writing this review, I was trying to figure out a way to mention how a DeLorean auto club always manages to stay at the same hotel as lots of out-of-towners coming to the Spokane Comicon. I wanted to talk about how bad Hollywood is at intentionally trying to depict the future, and how so often the secondary props and dialog. But none of it encapsulateding it as well as making yet another parody of Back to the Future.
