Back to the Future (1985)

HE WAS NEVER IN TIME FOR HIS CLASSES... THEN ONE DAY HE WASN'T IN HIS TIME AT ALL

What happens when you mix together time-travel, terrorism, high school, theft, science, murder, assault, attempted rape, incest, alcohol, drugs and rock n’ roll? You get one of the most beloved films in history, that’s what happens. You get a film that spawned two sequels, an animated series and a theme park ride, not to mention turning some weird-looking stainless steel car from Belfast into one of the most iconic vehicles in the world. It would also properly launch the career of a relatively unknown director, Robert Zemeckis, who had only a few films to his name at the time. With a guiding hand from Steven Spielberg, the film was the most successful film of the year of its release, and it’s a film that actually almost never got made. That film is Back to the Future.

In the year 1985, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) receives a message from his friend Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) that he needs help with his latest invention - a time machine built from a DeLorean and powered by plutonium stolen from Libyan Nationalists. After the Libyans gun down Doc, Marty escapes in the time machine, accidentally sending himself back to 1955. There, he meets both of his teenage parents, unintentionally interrupting their first meeting and endangering his own existence. He then finds the younger version of Doc and together they try to find a way to get Marty back home.

A few days ago, when talking about Away We Go, I asked to whether or not you had ever considered what your parents were like before you showed up. Well, as it turns out, this was the genesis of Back to the Future. Bob Gale, producer and co-writer of the film, was going through some things in his parents’ basement and happened upon his father’s high school yearbook. Finding his dad’s picture, and seeing that he was the president of his class, Bob wondered if he and his dad would have been friends had he met him in his youth. When Gale told his friend Zemeckis about his idea, they both began constructing a story. It would seem that in the beginning, it was a very different idea. The time machine was a fridge; the main characters were into pirating films; Doc’s pet was a chimp; and it required crashing an atomic test site to get home. It’s really difficult to try to reconcile those things into the film as it exists today.

Many of the main plot points were already in place (kid accidentally goes back in time and gets caught up in his parents’ courtship), but Gale and Zemeckis had problems finding someone to pick it up. Despite the stuff about the mother unwittingly falling for her son, most thought it was too light, citing the much more brazen antics of movie teenagers in the Porky’s series as an example of what was expected from such characters... I'll stop and let you get to grips with the creepiness of the implications of that. As it is, Gale and Zemeckis did not follow such examples, and the better for it. Over all these attempts to find the desired green light, the script was revised and altered to make things better or more cost-effective. The fridge became a DeLorean sports car; the characters became slightly less criminal… ish; the chimp became a dog; and the atomic test site was dropped altogether.

The script that would ultimately become the one we know today is some damn fine work. The characters are so well defined and memorable. Marty is actually cool as all hell, but he’s got his fair share of teenage worries and self-esteem issues, and his relationship with Doc Brown is kind of weird and yet makes sense, in that 80s movie sort of way. Doc Brown himself is brilliant and has become the standard definition of Zany Scientist – smart, absent-minded, enthusiastic, and just downright eccentric. The three different incarnations of George McFly, Lorraine Baines and Biff Tannen are excellent. In each reality we meet them, they are so different from the other, and yet so obviously the same.

And considering how easy it to stumble on time-travel, the story has been thought through with great care and consideration. There’s a dramatic principle that’s called Chekov’s Gun, named for playwright Anton Chekov, which says that if a gun appears in the first act, it should be used by the final act. Back to the Future uses this principle superbly, so every little thing has some significance to it, and most of it comes from such small, seemingly insignificant things. For example, the flier that tells Marty when the clock tower will be struck by lightning. The only reason he kept it was because his girlfriend wrote on it. If she hadn’t been going away, she wouldn’t have written anything on it, he wouldn’t have kept it, and so never have known about the lightning strike. But he wouldn’t have had that if some old woman hadn’t come up to him rattling a can about saving the clock tower, which was damaged because of the lightning strike. And there are the endlessly mind-boggling considerations, outside of the main plot, about how much of Marty’s reality was influenced directly by him, like Goldie Wilson deciding to become mayor, or the Twin Pines Mall becoming the Lone Pine Mall, or the invention of rock n’ roll. It’s all woven together so damn well.

Something to really appreciate about Back to the Future is that, although it is very much an sf romantic comedy, it takes so much of the story seriously. Beyond figuring out timelines and cause and effect issues, it remains a solid piece of work. If you removed all of the time-travel stuff, you’d still have something that works, and that resonates with so many people. It doesn’t mock its characters, it doesn’t belittle their plights, it doesn’t act like it’s all a bit of fun and that’s all there is to it. It acknowledges the darker aspects of things, which gives it all a greater sense of weight and purpose. When I said at the top about the murder and terrorism and attempted rape… all of that is in this film, and it’s not really shied away from too much either. However, the characters rise to their respective challenges. They all come good.

What makes Back to the Future so special, aside from the great blend of genres and themes, is that it all comes with a genuinely heart-warming central arc. And no, I don’t mean Marty. The real hero of this film is George McFly, who grows from someone who is virtually crippled by his lack of self-esteem to become an actual hero. He spends the whole film being so pathetic that you can only pity the poor guy, but he finds in himself the balls to stand up to his chief tormentor, and he does it when it counts the most. That’s the real test of a hero. I tell you now, if every bit of you isn’t one hundred percent behind George at his moment of triumph, you are dead inside.

Back to the Future actually had its 25 year anniversary last year, and so got a special digital re-release in cinemas, which I was most definitely there for. Now, I’ve seen the film more times than I can count, so watching on it the big screen, I was able to pay less attention to the story, and focus on the more technical things about the film. And by that, I mean Zemeckis’ direction. Good lord, it’s some fine work. He’s found such nice little touches here and there to help complete the world, and so much actually happens in the background. A lot of directors are content with working within the foreground of a shot, with the background filled random extras that either sit or walk and that’s about it. Zemeckis has got things going on back there. He’s not just directing his actors; he’s directing the film, and that’s so much rarer than you think.

One of the other things I was able to appreciate more was just how good everyone is in the film. No one is playing a role; they all simply are their roles. Pretty much every single person in Back to the Future is remembered for their work in it, and for damn good reason. Just look at the pretty much effortless cool of Michael J. Fox, how quickly it dissolves in front of 1955 Lorraine. Look at the wild-eyed, wild-haired eccentricity of Christopher Lloyd. And look at the multi-stranded performances of Crispin Glover, Lea Thompson and Thomas F. Wilson. Wilson’s Biff is every inch an imposing guy, a real threat in both his original 1985 and 1955 forms; but his new 1955 persona is all awkward and softly polite. Thompson is superb as Lorraine, a very promiscuous girl in her school days, who can become either a rather unhappy and alcoholic frump or a lively and active older woman. And Glover is just peerless as George McFly. In his 1955 self and original 1985 self, he’s so ill at ease that he virtually apologises for existing in every gesture and waver of his voice. Then look at his new 1985 version, a completely confident and strong-willed guy.

Just to illustrate what kind of effect Back to the Future had at the time, there’s a story about what happened a little while after its release. Despite the film beginning on October 25^th 1985, the release of the film actually came on July 3^rd. Such was the overwhelming popularity of the film that, in the early morning of October 26^th, the date of the initial time-travel, a group of people went to the Twin Pines Mall location to see if Marty would turn up in his DeLorean. Of course, he didn’t. And of course, no one actually thought it would happen… probably. However, that’s how much this film meant to people at the time. So much that a bunch of them would travel to some empty parking lot in the middle of the night on some October night on the pretence of seeing if the movie’s main character would blast into the night, leaving two lines of fire behind it.

And yes, I kind of wish that Michael J. Fox had shown up in a DeLorean just for the sake of it, too.

Back to the Future isn’t just one of those 80s films that hangs around because people are nostalgic about it. It’s a genuinely excellent film. The script is outstanding, the direction is great, Alan Silvestri’s music is spot on, the cast is on fire, and it’s a superbly engaging and wonderful watch. It really is difficult to think of a more inventive and joyous film experience than this.

American Ninja (1985)

THE DEADLIEST ART OF THE ORIENT IS NOW IN THE HANDS OF AN AMERICAN

Martial arts were big in the 1970s. Thanks to a major influx of kung fu movies on the grindhouse circuit, many of them courtesy of the legendary Shaw Brothers Studio, and the rise of the even more legendary Bruce Lee, the public taste for martial arts flicks was stimulated. By the time the 1980s had come along, American audiences wanted to see these skills in the hands of people they could more readily identify with onscreen. As such, there was an explosion of low-rent action films with a martial arts theme, making stars of people like Chuck Norris, Cynthia Rothrock, Loren Avedon and Billy Blanks. In 1985, there was another name added to that list. His name was Michael Dudikoff and the film was American Ninja.

Joe Armstrong (Michael Dudikoff), a reluctant private on an American army base in the Philippines, gets caught up in an attack on a military convoy by a group of rebels who are trying to steal the shipment and kidnap the base colonel’s daughter, who happens to be along for the ride. Using his apparent martial arts skills, Joe rescues Patricia (Judie Aronson), but everyone else in the platoon is killed, so his superiors turn on him. Meanwhile, those responsible for the attack want him dead and send an army of ninja after him.

Okay, it’s going to be kind of difficult to do any kind of serious review of this movie because it is so wilfully ridiculous. It’s meant to be. It was never really intended to be anything serious, rather just something that would sell tickets, popcorn and generally cash in on the American martial arts craze. As such, I’m going to resort to an occasional thing I do with bad films whereby I look at it from two different ways: Critic Hat On/Critic Hat Off… here we go.

Critic Hat On: What is going on in this film? Seriously. The conception of the film is so unbelievably hollow, it’s amazing the film doesn’t literally fall to bits in your hands. An American in the Phillipines with amnesia and exceptional martial arts skills finding himself in the US Army because of a court order? Are you kidding me? Did they throw this together in an afternoon? And why does no one know who he is? His name is on his shirt and his locker, and he would have to have gone through some degree of paperwork to get in, but no one knows his name. He’s just “the new guy.” And what is actually happening? A bad guy wants to steal a piece of military equipment, which is apparently a single rocket launcher, to sell to another bad guy. Who is this first bad guy? Where is he from? His accent would suggest French, but his name would suggest South American. The general’s daughter even refers to him as Senor Ortega. Surely it should be Monsieur Ortega. And why is he in the Phillipines? And the other bad guy, is he Italian? There’s something about him wanting supplies to fight Communists or something, but surely there are better ways of getting weapons than buying them from a crooked French/South American businessman who steals the goods from the local military base. And why does Ortega have a private army of ninja, who all wear different colour outfits like the world’s most threatening Benetton advert? Where did he meet this head ninja guy, known as Black Star Ninja because of a black star tattoo on his face? And why do the ninja all wear black when fighting the good guys, even in broad daylight? Ninja are meant to be stealthy, silent assassins, but this lot leap around the place and constantly give away their position long before attacking. And what kind of plan is this overall? If Ortega had the most senior officers on the base on his payroll, why did he have to hijack anyone? He seems to have an import/export business, so why can’t he just have stuff delivered? Seems pretty straightforward with a single truck and a bit of fudged paperwork. And pretty much everything involving the old gardener guy… what in the hell is going on here? How did he find the young baby Joe Armstrong? Why did he choose to keep him in the jungle and train him in the ways of the ninja? Since when is this guy a ninja? At one point he literally fades away because of his ninja skills. And did anyone working on this movie ever bother to find out what a ninja actually is, or was it just a case of watching another bad movie featuring them and going from there? Since when did ninjas follow the Bushido Code? All of the ninja in this film are appalling fighters, doing that ‘attack one at a time’ bit. And they constantly use the smoke pellets when it’s not necessary. And why, amongst all of his other weapons, does Black Star Ninja have a flamethrower and laser gun? That’s right, a laser gun. Why is Italian guy bothering with a rocket launcher when he could speak to Black Star and get himself a freaking laser gun?

That’s a little over 500 words worth of plot holes and half-baked ideas, and I haven’t even touched on the love interest, the best friend, the corrupt sergeant, the colonel, the rebels… Christ, this is weak.

Critic Hat Off: Who cares about the story? It’s really only there as an excuse for the action sequences. If you’re watching this movie for a good story, then it’s your fault you’re not enjoying it. America Ninja makes no claims at being good, just at being action-packed. There’s fist fights, gun fights, car chases and explosions. And besides, is it so hard to swallow the American soldier with amnesia and exceptional martial arts skills? You liked the Bourne films, and that’s not exactly as dissimilar a starting concept to this, is it?

Critic Hat On: The producers wanted their lead to have a kind of James Dean quality because… I don’t know why. So they cast Michael Dudikoff as their American Ninja, despite the fact that Dudikoff had absolutely no martial arts training or knowledge. I’ll say that again. At the time of making American Ninja, the guy playing the title role knew no martial arts whatsoever. Dudikoff doesn’t so much fight as throw poses in the hope that it looks good onscreen. When he’s required to actually act, he’s quite bad. Not the worst thing ever, but still not great. Frankly, no one’s particularly good in this. Most of them are really unconvincing, like Guich Koock’s Colonel Hickock (emote, for God's sake), which actually makes Dudikoff look better by comparison, but he’s still bad.

Critic Hat Off: One thing I will say for Dudikoff is that he really does go for it. You can see he’s trying to be good, and he literally throws himself into the action scenes, even if it’s not really necessary. This certainly goes towards our being able to take him a bit more seriously as a fighting machine. Also, he runs and jumps around with such readiness and skill, that I’m sure there’s a case to be made that Michael Dudikoff was a major figure in the development of parkour. Also, you can see a bit of a James Dean quality in Dudikoff… not in the acting department, just the looks, but still. And, come on, Steven James was awesome.

Critic Hat On: According to the IMDb’s trivia page on American Ninja, director Sam Firstenberg said that he loves this film because it has “a special quality of innocence, true friendship, love and youthful idealism”… what utter horseshit. What kind of a short-sighted idiot thinks that American Ninja has anything even remotely close to any of these themes in there? Why can’t he just admit the truth about the film? I’d at least respect him a bit more if he did. And the editing, good lord… The editing is so choppy, the action sequences so badly done that, in the beginning, you’d be sure that no one has actually thrown a single punch. It’s all close ups of fists and feet and then people falling over. They can’t even keep track of what foot is delivering the kick. At one point, Dudikoff kicks with his left foot and the following shot shows his victim falling away from his right foot. And the fact that there’s a flubbed line still in the film (“I will honour the… code, father.”) is just incompetence. And half of the vehicles seem to be made of nitro glycerin, since they explode on the slightest impact. If you’re going to blow up the car, at least make me think the crash was bad enough that a fire is a possibility. Also, the music seems to have been taken from one of the weaker episodes of The A-Team or Magnum P.I.. And don’t get me started on problems of simple logic between scenes.

Critic Hat Off: … no, no excuses. It’s incredibly piss poor work, even by crap 80s movie standards, and the director’s clearly delusional, but you’re still taking it far too seriously. Just enjoy the nonsense, you ass.

As you can see, I jumped around on this one a lot. American Ninja is bad. Really bad. It’s more hole than plot, the direction is terrible, the action sequences are a mess, the acting is woeful and it seems to have absolutely no conception as to what a ninja really is. However, picking on such things is really taking the film in the wrong spirit. It exists as something to be laughed at and enjoyed as “so bad, it’s good”. The proverbial perfect guilty pleasure. Personally, I can think of other films that do this better, but that’s neither here nor there. So long as you watch this with your brain switched off (or missing), you’ll likely enjoy this.