Back to the Future

I remember seeing Back to the Future for the first time. I was thirteen and stuck for what to get my best friend for Christmas. I told her that rather than a present, I'd pay for us to go to the cinema. Secretly I was really keen to see The Goonies, but she watched an episode of Film 85 and was keen to see Back to the Future. Since it was her day out, I complied and loved the movie. I had major reservations at first. It looked like a film about older kids, how was I meant to relate to them? But when I realised they needed to be that age for the romance stuff and the whole car-driving thing to be going on I relaxed some more and got really wrapped up in it. I collected all the stickers in the Panini sticker album, practised drawing the movie poster and generally just really enjoyed it.

I did have some outstanding reservations when Back to the Future II came out, though. The futuristic times seemed to be set too soon for all the massive cultural changes they were showing - the crazy 3D movie posters, the hover boards and so on, and of course I was proven right. The sequels, as often, were inferior anyway.

But I still love the first movie. I was amused and fooled by the meme that spread around the internet, popping up on the likes of Facebook and Twitter (where I first encountered it) saying that July 5th 2010 was the day that Doc Emett Brown had set the machine for when he wanted to travel 25 years into the future. It made me feel a little old, and also nostalgic.

It turns out it was all a hoax. Somebody had photoshopped a screenshot of the time machine controls and spread the rumour around, but at no point in the movie does anyone set the controls for 2010. And yet... it could so easily have been true, and still it's all wrong. I've no idea what the sequel movies use as their setting years any more, I'll have to rewatch my box set, but their future had no internet, no ubiquitous mobile phones, and a distinct lack of worldwide friendships. I'll keep this in favour of the hover board and ill gotten betting riches, any day.