I have written on this blog before about Back to the Future Day in 2015 and what an effect it had on me. It was a time in my life when I could reach into the mindset of my past, and was a rare time in that part of my life when I really though hard about my distant future. I got really into the celebration of the day, and I cross examined BTTF2 like crazy. Yet what stuck with me more than anything was this notion that just like on that day in 2015 I was reaching into my past mindset as a child that saw that movie in the theater in 1989, I considered the concept that I would hopefully be five or ten years into the future looking back on BTTF Day 2015 as a milestone in my life.
On the five year anniversary of BTTF Day there wasn't much to celebrate. That was crucially during the nightmare year of COVID, right before another nasty election cycle. I didn't take much note of the anniversary I looked forward to, except to realize that I finally was a dad like I wondered if I would ever be back in 2015. For the most part that day passed without too much fanfare on my part. I guess I didn't want to linger on the fact that I had lost Xena since 2015, and that I was scared Luna was soon to follow.
This year was the year of the ten year anniversary, and when I realized that this summer I kinda dreaded it. So much of my life changed in the last five years- heck the last two years- that I was scared I would break down when the day came and I found myself in a nostalgia trap wondering if I had gone backwards in my life. The dogs were gone, the house was gone, my life as I knew it in 2015 and 2020 was gone. But I had put that spike in the ground to look ten years back, and I couldn't deny that my life in 2025 was something the me from 2015 couldn't have imagined.
Luckily on the tenth anniversary I didn't break down. In fact I didn't even realize on that day it was that day. It was the day after I realized that I had missed the tenth BTTF Day anniversary, my life being so busy and full I guess I didn't have time for introspection. Partially that left me relieved, but partially it also made me sad. BTTF Day was such a big event in my life, and I put a lot of thought on that day what ten years out would look like. It passing without notice wasn't at all what I expected. Made me feel like a stranger to myself.
Luckily at the end of October Universal decided to re-release the original BTTF for its 40th anniversary the weekend of Halloween. I only knew about it because my Google feed- still remembering I loved BTTF stuff from ten years prior- popped up an article for me talking about how good the 4D experience was. I immediately planned to buy tickets and go to celebrate my own little anniversary. Back in 2015 I actually never watched the first movie- only the second and third- so I hadn't actually seen the original since childhood, and it felt like a good time to revisit it.
During BTTF Day 2015 I wasn't really concerned with BTTF2 so much as I was concerned with its vision of the future. I remember in the theater being sad when Marty when back to his present, as the object of my obsession that year faded into his rearview. Sure the rest of the movie played- and its Trump visions were surprising even then- but my focus was the future segment and how it made me feel as a kid. That was the part I spent so much time in 2015 obsessing about, when my life was simpler and my future felt more ahead of me still. The clarity of BTTF Day that year did stick with me, but eventually the inspiration it gave me to have big changes in my life fizzled out. In 2025 I was dealing with the repercussions of not changing as a person much since 2015, much like Marty was dealing with the repercussions of playing with time in the trilogy. Change was thrust onto me by 2025.
The weekend of Halloween this year overall was sort of a sad one for me for that reason. I got to see my dad on Halloween which was great, and something I will probably wish I could do again ten or twenty years in the future. But it was my first Halloween without Finn since he was born, and the gravity of that fact wasn't sitting right with me when contrasted with the nostalgia anything BTTF brings to my mental horizon. But the day before the movie I spent most of it hanging out with Adam, the one friend who really embraced BTTF Day with me back in 2015. We went hiking with River in the greenbelt and talked about our similar lives, me feeling fortunate that I had someone in my life today from my old life in 2015 that understood what I was going through in 2025.
On the day of the movie replay this year I mostly used it as a carrot to clean my place, knowing that once I got out of the theater I would likely be too sentimental to be productive. In a way that was a good benchmark to show how I had changed in between being 33 and 43, how productive I have become. I rolled up into the theater by myself- just like I did for the replay of BTTF 2 on BTTF Day in 2015- and sat down for what was a really revealing experience. When watching the original this year I noticed many details that never stood out to me on the small screens of my childhood- like all the Burger King trash in Doc's place or the fact that the opening segment did a great job setting up the story to come.
More than anything I marveled at what a time machine BTTF1 was. In 2025 the "present" of 1985 is as foreign as the past of 1955. The 80s furniture and Pepsi cans and cars and attitudes (like Marty checking out other women right in front of his girlfriend) was a stark contrast to the world I knew in 2025. The only thing that looked the same was the mall, but otherwise life has left that world in the past pretty much completely.
Another thing I noticed was what a social commentary BTTF1 was. In BTTF2 Marty goes to a future that is clean and shiny like a modern theme park, but in the first movie it was the past that was clean and shiny. Marty's 1985 was filled with homeless people, porno movie theaters, police helicopters, graffiti, and liter. In BTTF2 its made clear that Marty goes back to a hellish 1985 because of Biff, but in the first movie the fact that his actual 1985 was kinda hell was pretty obvious. Sure he had two TV- still the mark of progress in 2025- but his house was crapier than what his mom grew up in and the town itself had a lot more green space in 1955 (and later 2015). It was revealing to know that even in 1985 the decline of the American lifestyle was apparent, and even though the sequel had an optimism about the future that vision wasn't likely shared with everyone when that movie came out in 1989.
One upgrade for 2025 was the DBOX seats, it was fun feeling the rumble of the car as it hit 88 MPH. Also I appreciated the fact that certain scenes in BTTF2 that I examined inside out were gags of the original- something I missed when I was going over everything in 2015. Mostly I realized that I was happy that in 2025 re-releasing movies is a popular activity. On one hand it sucks that we don't have as many original pictures as in the 80s, on the other hand I would have been upset if the tenth anniversary of such an important day to me would have passed without me doing something to commemorate it.
When I left the theater I felt sad, lonely. Like finishing a book I wanted to read for years only for the ending to not be what I expected. I sat in the parking lot and called my mom- something else I might wish I could do in 20 years- and we chatted about how we are going to meet soon and how I actually wasn't doing that bad in 2025. We talked for about a half hour, and then I went home feeling happy that a combination of my Google feed from 2015 and my push to go to the movie theater more in 2025 mixed together to give me a satisfying end to a moment in my life I had looked towards for a decade. It reminds me of my favorite part of my story of BTTF Day in 2015- more than the articles, more than hunting down that newspaper, more than all the pictures I took:
The Christmas of 2015 I was talking to Finn's cousin Tate- then as old as Finn basically is today- and he told me he had recently watched the BTTF movies with his parents as their way to celebrate the day. I asked what he thought of it, asking the question with my mindset of "does the 2015 of today line up to what you saw?" But Tate surprised me, he said he loved the movies and that they made him "look forward to the future" much like they did for me as a young boy. For him it didn't matter that the movie had technically pointed at 2015- the future it showed with shiny city squares, hoverboards and flying cars was still a happy future he could look forward to. That optimism gave me a lot of peace in 2015, and it still gives me peace today knowing that the real legacy of the series isn't in predictions or plotlines, but as a preserved slice of American optimism that we could sorely use ten years later.
Next up is 20 years out hopefully, and comparing what my life looks like then to what it is today. At that point I will be in my 60s- older than Doc Brown in the movie- and Finn will hopefully be an adult man with his own future ahead of him. I can't wait to see what kind of man he will be, and I can't wait to one day share the BTTF trilogy with him (today its a little too much unlike the Minions for him to care).
But I know more than anything 20 years out it won't be the BTTF Day of 2015 I will be nostalgic for, or how I celebrated it ten years later. It will be for today- a plain regular day when I get to go pick up a six year old Finn and spend the night with him. It will be for the time in my life when I was the world for my son, and his future was the future I really wanted to see.
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