Feature of the Week: Back to the Future

"Wait a minute, Doc. Are... are you telling me you

 built a time machine... out of a DeLorean?"

"The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine

 into a car, why not do it with some style!?"

I'm not going to lie. I'm definitely in an 80's mood this week. The strange thing is, I wasn't even born until the 90's. But lately, I've been listening to Bon Jovi non-stop and I keep getting the desire to watch 80's movies. So I figured I'd share one of my all-time favorites with you today, and if you already guessed what it is from the quote above, you are officially my new best friend. Back to the Future was released in 1985, the same year the movie takes place. Now, if you're not one for confusing time travel movies, you may actually be okay with this one; it really isn't that bad. Compared to a movie such as The Time Traveler's Wife, this movie is a piece of cake. 

So, let me take you through it. 

Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is your average 17 year-old kid. He is awesome with a guitar, he slacks in school, he loves his beautiful girlfriend... and his best friend is a 60-some-year-old eccentric genius messing around with plutonium and the space-time continuum. Average right? The movie starts out with  Doc (Christopher Lloyd), the mad scientist, calling Marty up to come see his latest and greatest invention, but he has to wait until 1:00 AM to come. Marty sneaks out, video camera in hand, and witnesses Doc's breakthrough: DeLorean-turned-time machine that is powered by the incredibly dangerous chemical plutonium. Doc explains it all, including when he got the idea for the flux capacitor (the gadget that makes time travel possible) back in 1955. However, the situation turns sticky when the Libyan terrorists that Doc stole the plutonium from come to get their revenge. Doc's luck ran out, but Marty was able to escape, with one tiny little problem: he's now stuck in the year 1955 with no plutonium to get him back home. Through a series of events, Marty finds both his parents and interferes with their first meeting. This means his parents never met, which in turn means he was never born. With the help of the Doc from 1955, Marty must get his parents back together and get home all before he either a) disappears altogether, or b) misses the lighting storm that could potentially get him back home (after all, everyone knows that both plutonium and lightning produce 1.21 gigawatts of power, right?). What happens next? I guess you'll just have to watch and find out.

If you like the first BTTF movie, I highly recommend the second and third as well. Neither movie is as good as the first, but they still rather rock. Check them out. They're a little long, but the time flies. (Ha! Punny.)