Comments on: Marty McFly’s Grim Future [BTTF Week]

By: Amazing Kris

Amazing Kris — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 11:26:28 +0000

I sit somewhere in the middle with you, my friend. You present valid thoughts worth pondering. All the naysayers on either side are nitpicking for the sake of argument. Some of them likely waste a lot of their philosophy profs’ time.
I have a tack-on that has niggled at my brain for nigh on fifteen years:
His siblings have high-profile jobs that pay well, but they still come to mom and dad’s for breakfast? Even IF we need to see his brother out of the fast food uniform to believe he’s not a zero, I don’t.
(I like that one comment someone made about there being two DeLoreans in the old west… I didn’t consider that.)

By: Stuff. « Twenty Palaces

Stuff. « Twenty Palaces — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 12:32:57 +0000

[...] Back to the Future 4: Escape from Guantanamo. Marty McFly is in serious [...]

By: Lando

Lando — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 07:19:05 +0000

Your conclusions on the implications of Doc and Marty’s time travel are short sighted. If you had considered time travel further, you realize that it is logically impossible to alter the past in a linear or block universe. Anything that portrays an alteration of the past as having an effect on the present is a fantasy and as such, is subject only to the whim of the creator. Because the world of BTTF allows for changing of the past, it bears no resemblance to our own and it is therefore foolish to expand on the possible storyline.
In your BTTF IV scenario, you introduce the idea of a “parallel universe,” but parallel universes aren’t tied by cause and effect. If Marty originally traveled to a “parallel” universe and introduced his parents, then that is a separate universe that is similar, but unrelated to his own. He did not “change” the past, he acted upon the present of a universe remarkably like his own twenty years earlier.

So yeah. Sorry to rain on the parade, but if you’re going to point out flaws in Back to the Future, it’s only too easy to point out the flaws in your assessment. Yes, I’m a nerd, but for a website called overthinking it, I thought I’d give it some thought. I didn’t explain why altering the past is logically impossible. If you care, you might want to start here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_paradox. You could also read some real science fiction. Heinlein has a slew of stories dealing with time travel and its paradoxes.

Word. Have I overthought it?

By: slotbun

slotbun — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 21:56:34 +0000

Just found this article through Stumble Upon.

I have over-thought BTTF as well. My biggest problem with it is that when they travel to 2015 at the start of BTTF2. In the first film, when Einstein travels one minute into the future Doc says that he jumped over that minute to arrive in the future, so they must have jumped over the thirty years into a future where Marty, Doc and Jennifer have been missing for all that time.

By: Derrick

Derrick — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:40:54 +0000

and thats the way the fourth movie should end in a paradox, complete chaos.

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 16:53:25 +0000

Wait, hold on a minute. If Marty and Doc go back in time to convince Doc not to make the time machine, how do they get back, or even go back in the first place. If they’ve convinced the Doc not to build the time machine, it should cease to be and everything related to it would be undone. They’d have created a paradox.

By: Gab

Gab — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 00:21:27 +0000

Steve, you win. Not sure *what* exactly, but it’s totally yours.

By: Steve McC

Steve McC — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:18:33 +0000

Mike and Maggy seem to think this is just any fanboy website. Guys, it’s called OVERTHINKING IT.
See?
OVERTHINKING IT. It’s the point. The raison d’etre. It can just go on and on and that’s why it is what it is and not bloody AintItCool.
Geddit?? Good. Now, wipe up that drool.

By: Matthew Wrather

Matthew Wrather — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:15:19 +0000

Right. This is more proof that BTTF doesn’t follow the Star Trek “Yesterday’s Enterprise” model of time travel, where the measure of reality is internal consistency.

BTTF follows the action-comedy “what the hell” model of time travel (and ethics, by the way), where the measure of reality is consistent awesomeness.

By: John Ruschmeyer

John Ruschmeyer — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 15:56:55 +0000

The thing I’ve always wondered about is what happens to the “other” Marty, the one that vanishes from the Lone Pine Mall at the end of BTTF?

Given his different previous life experiences, would he have the same experience in 1955? Or would he accidentally create a third (or even a duplicate of the first) timeline?