Back to the Future IV: My Idea for a sequel

 

Back to the Future is one of the most iconic film franchises in cinematic history, it kickstarted the career of Michael J Fox and is likely the inspiration for Rick and Morty. The last entry in the series was over 30 years ago and while a continuation of the series is unlikely due to Fox’s ailing health, I’ve been thinking about a few ideas of how a possible “Back to the Future 4” could work so let’s take a look.

 

So there are a few things we can do with a Back to the Future 4, firstly there are a couple of actors from the films that are still around today like Christopher Lloyd, Elizabeth Shue and Lea Thompson who played Doc Brown, the 2^nd Jenifer and Lorraine McFly respectively. Now my pitch for Back to the Future 4 would focus on Marty McFly’s son Marty Jr seeking out Doc Brown and they end up going on some kind of time travel adventure, I like to think that a story like this could provide the audience with a similar dynamic to Rick and Morty because I imagine Marty Jr perhaps being around the same age as Morty is in that show.

But when it comes to the overall story, how would we put it together? For this story, I’ve looked to the Narrative theory of Tzvetan Todorov and the 5 stages of equilibrium. These stages consist of the following

• 1.      Equilibrium
• 2.      Disruption
• 3.      Recognition
• 4.      Repair the Damage
• 5.      Equilibrium Again

So to build the story from this, here’s what I’d do. Starting with equilibrium, we’d see the daily life of Marty Jr and that he’s being picked on by Biff Tannen’s grandson Griff and his life is very much a misery, the poor kid doesn’t even have a girlfriend which is something I can definitely relate to. Anyway, the disruption of that equilibrium occurs when Marty Jr goes to visit Doc Brown in his lab and asks him to take him on a time travel adventure, Doc of course refuses because he’s actually learned his lesson since 1985 and Marty Jr leaves, but not before stealing Doc’s original blueprints for a flux capacitor. He steals Griff’s car, takes it to an abandoned car garage and modifies it using the Flux Capacitor blueprints and the car surprise surprise is a DeLorean DMC 12 and Marty Jr has reconstructed the car well over 30 years since the original’s destruction. The recognition part of Todorov’s theory comes in when Doc discovers the original Flux Capacitor Blueprints have gone missing.

Doc manages to track Marty Jr to the abandoned garage just as Marty Jr finishes building the new Time Machine, Doc tries to talk Marty Jr down but he doesn’t listen and gets in the car, we’d learn through dialogue here potentially that Marty McFly Sr passed away some time ago due to an unknown illness and Marty Jr never got to say goodbye to him, Doc understands Marty Jr’s pain and tries to stop him but Marty Jr doesn’t listen and sets the coordinates for the date of Marty Sr’s death, October 21^st 2015.

Doc and Marty Jr end up in the past and hide the DeLorean somewhere it can’t be found, behind a Hill Valley sign, anyway Doc and Marty Jr argue about what just happened and Marty Jr berates Doc because it’s revealed he didn’t turn up to Marty’s funeral. We learn through some possible flashbacks that Doc lost his wife Clara just 2 weeks prior to Marty’s passing and couldn’t bear to lose 2 people he cared about, Marty Jr still yells at him for not coming to pay his respects and storms off.

Doc decides to find the tools necessary to repair the new DeLorean as the patched together car built by Marty Jr was a little unstable and the Flux Capacitor is damaged. Marty Jr decides to do what he set out to, to visit his ailing father in the hospital and say goodbye.

Now I want to take a minute to explain Marty McFly’s role in this movie, unfortunately his Parkinson’s disease has caused him to retire from acting and while I would love to see Fox return to this series, I don’t know if he really could but without Michael in the movie, I had very few options to use other than explaining the absence of Marty with his passing.

Moving onto the next component of Todorov’s theory, “Repair the Damage” where we see Doc using his know how with technology finds the parts necessary and because he has the DeLorean schematics committed to memory, is able to repair the time machine. Elsewhere, Marty Jr is at the side of his father’s hospital bed as he sadly passes away and with that, Marty Jr gets the closure he needed as does Doc who was in the background watching. Marty Jr and Doc decide to leave before the rest of the family can get here and quickly exit.

To close out the story with the final building block of Todorov’s narrative theory, we see Doc and Marty use the DeLorean to get up to 88 miles and hour and they finally get back to present day. Marty Jr and Doc return home and find nothing has really changed but that isn’t the part that matters to the story, what matters is that Marty Jr finally got the closure he needed on his father’s death and in the end that’s really what matters.

I didn’t really have a full story in mind for this but I hope that I’ve at least managed to capture SOME of Back to the Future’s Legacy and I hope that one day we’ll get to return to Hill Valley someday…