The Growing Awareness of Marty McFly

Rating: 8/10 (4 December 2016)

Few other movies, such as Goonies and Ghostbusters, may be as quintessentially representative of the 1980's as Back to the Future. The stories central focus is on everyday 1980's teen Marty McFly, played by the charismatic Michael J. Fox, who is sent back in time by Dr. Emmet Brown who is played in a career-defining performance by Christopher Lloyd. After Marty arrived in 1955, he accidentally interferes with the events that would bring his parents together and spends the rest of the movie trying to correct this mistake while also working with 1955's Dr. Brown to figure out a way to get home. While this film is mostly a plot driven good time, there is a theme of growing awareness that threads throughout the movie.
While many movies in the 80's focused on the coming of age of teenagers, such as The Goonies or Stand by Me, Back to the Future puts a slightly different twist on this theme. When we are introduced to Marty he is an ordinary teen who is reckless, likes to drink, play rock and roll, and give his parents attitude. We see this lack of respect or understanding of his parents in the dinner scene early in the movie. Then Marty is thrust back in time. While going through the process of trying to reconcile his interference with his parent's meeting, he gains an understanding of how his parents became the people they are in the future. Back to the Future puts a twist on the coming of age story here because they put Marty in the parental role who is increasing his awareness, but we also see his parents, played by Lea Thompson and Crispin Glover, come of age as well. We see Marty develop while he takes over the parental role in scenes where he is trying to instill confidence in his father or when he is getting on his mother for drinking and smoking. This latter instance results in his mother stating that Marty is acting like her mother.
The director, Robert Zemeckis, then uses the static versus dynamic character technique to demonstrate Marty's parent's growth. The bully Biff Tannen is a very static character. As the movie progresses, he doesn't demonstrate the capability for growth. In contrast, Marty's father George does grow as he eventually becomes more self-confident and stands up to Biff. Zemeckis also uses the motif of time to stress the theme of growing awareness. Throughout the movie, we see images of clocks, hear clocks ticking, and hear clock alarms going off. This motif causes the viewer to be very aware of the passage of time which is associated with growing wiser.
This theme is very effective throughout the film until the end. I think it would have been more impactful if Marty returned to the same home life he had at the beginning of the movie having gained an appreciation of who is parents are, but instead he is rewarded with the perfect life. Even though I believe the ending could have been changed to strengthen the theme of growing awareness, it is the movie's ability to resonate with viewers, who are all too aware of the passage of time and the lessons of life, that will allow Back to the Future to continue being a classic that will be revisited for generations.