This series will examine baffling decisions and characters from popular films.
Doctor Emmett Brown is a dangerous idiot on a cosmic scale, and the entire plot of Back to the Future 2 makes no sense.
At the end of Back to the Future, Doc Brown rushes up to Marty and Jennifer yelling they have to RUSH to the future. An exasperated Marty whines that he just got back, and wonders why they have to go at the moment. Doc Brown explains that their kids turn into assholes, and they need to fix it. Marty’s exasperation seems warranted, but it’s for all the wrong reasons.
THE FUTURE HASN’T HAPPENED YET! THERE IS NEVER ANY REASON TO RUSH TO THE FUTURE!
First, even if Marty and Jennifer left in his shiny new truck, and they went to the future the next day nothing would have changed. The future will still be there. He never once questions the screaming mad man on this. He’s just bummed out they have to leave. They could have waited days or even years if it truly needed addressed. Except of course, it could never properly be addressed in this manner. THE FUTURE HASN’T HAPPENED YET.
They do rush to the future anyway, and while many shenanigans occur, they do manage to keep Marty’s idiot son from getting arrested. GREAT! Except the only way this would matter is if they never go back to their normal time. Once that happens, anything could happen in the future including his son getting arrested. Maybe his son dies of SIDS now instead. THE FUTURE HASN’T HAPPENED YET EVEN IF YOU’VE BEEN THERE.
All of this would be a simple exercise in futility with no true repercussions, except that Biff from the future takes the magically thin sports almanac back to 1955 to give to himself. This creates the dystopian nightmare 1985 we all know and love. Doc explains that there is now two timelines, and they have to get back to their 1985. That’s all great and dandy, except there’s now an alternate timeline where everyone is suffering terribly. You have to assume that even after they fix things for themselves, everyone else has to fend in a world wrought by a maniac with a time machine traveling to the future for no reason. THE FUTURE HASN’T HAPPENED YET, BUT CAN RUIN THE PAST.
Through feats great and small they do manage to get back to their timeline, but not before Doc decides to go back to 1885 and ruin more people’s lives with alternate timelines. We can only assume that these timelines create entirely new universes as well, each perhaps worse than from which it was copied. To top it all off, at the end of Back to the Future 3, Doc Brown appears in 1985 from 1885, and has the audacity to say the following,
“It means your future hasn’t been written yet. No one’s has. Your future is whatever you make it. So make it a good one, both of you.”
Before Marty leaves 1885 to return to 1985 he also says:
“Marty, the future isn’t written. It can be changed. You know that. Anyone can make their future whatever they want it to be.”
Too bad Doc didn’t think of that before he rushed to the future for no reason and ruined billions of lives on Earth, and possibly ruined the entire universe. For this, Doc Brown, you are an idiot.
