This is totally babies (Posts tagged GPOY)

Page 185

btothef

Marty sasses Doc for his sucky demonstration (“Why don’t we just set fire to me now instead of going to all that trouble?”) and Doc shrugs and says it’s just a demonstration, obviously things will be different in real life. It should work. Marty questions the use of the word “should” and Doc - kinda tears into him.

Well, how can I guarantee you this will work? It’s a scientific experiment…

He then goes on to list things that could go wrong, including:

a cop car cuts Marty off
“that beautifully engineered car breaks down during the run”
Marty misses the hook
an old lady out wandering the streets at 10:04 pm steps in front of the car (seriously)
lightning strikes early or late
the newspapers got the time wrong

And that last point actually raises kind of a big issue! We’re told that lightning struck at exactly 10:04 pm, and the characters know this because that’s when the hands on the clock froze. But the clock tower wasn’t built with a second hand! For all we know lightning strikes at 10:04 pm and 35 seconds, which is a concern any plan Doc and Marty have that relies on split-second timing.

When I was a kid and believed movies didn’t make mistakes because an adult would’ve caught them at some point so clearly the problems I saw had logical solutions, I decided that at some UNSEEN point in the story Doc wandered into the clock tower to examine the gears and determined that it was 10:04 pm and zero seconds (or maybe one second, the movie stretches things out for dramatic impact). If he couldn’t get access to the gears, then he snuck out one night to the clock tower ledge (which we know he can get access to so this totally works) and examined the clock hands SUPER carefully with a protractor so that he could measure their angles and from that deduce approximate seconds. However, none of this is ever shown anywhere EXCEPT IN MY IMAGINATION THAT IS and so having Doc draw attention to the idea that the time could be off, without offering a solution to this obvious plot hole all the characters seem to be deliberately overlooking, is a super weird choice. I guess it’s there to build a kind of crappy suspense, because we’ll all be wondering if this whole plan is stupid until the end?

All that aside, this page DOES end on an awesome note:

There was a knock at the door. Doc Brown and Marty exchanged anxious glances.
”Biff,” Marty said. “Somehow he got out of the shit and followed me.”

And I love love love the “SOMEHOW” there, like it’s inconceivable to Book Marty that once someone is sitting in a pile of shit they would not try brainstorm some escape out of it (“maybe I should stand up, and leave the shit?).

Also, we future people about people trying to “get out of shit” all the time (i.e., “My roommate is so lazy: he’s always trying to get out of shit like doing the dishes”) that to me the phrase “get out of THE shit” is hilarious and 100% what I’m saying from now on.