Hollywood classic: 40 years “Back to the future”: When our sci-fi was today

In “Back to the Future” by Robert Zemeckis, the hero Marty McFly from 1985, embodied by Michael J. Fox, is catapulted into 1955. There the crazy brilliant scientist Doc Brown asks him, played by Christopher Lloyd: “Who is President of the United States in 1985?” Answer: “Ronald Reagan.” The incredulous -mocking reaction: “Ronald Reagan? The actor? And who is Vice President – Jerry Lewis?”

Reagan himself had to laugh so loudly during a demonstration in the White House that he asked to briefly reunite the film because he had not noticed the subsequent dialogue.

If you look at the job today, you have to involuntarily remember who will hold in the Oval Office Hof today – and that reality has exceeded every fiction here in a previously hardly imaginable way.

Otherwise you can see some things differently with the time interval of today. But the film trilogy kept their attractiveness.

The first film – which was originally supposed to remain the only one, the two sequels only occurred due to the unexpectedly great success – had its launch in the USA on July 3, 1985, in Germany on October 3 ’85.

When in 2015 there was still a distant future

It is a fascinating – and perhaps also worrying – thought that today there is a greater time interval between 1985 and our present than between 1985 and 1955. And the 50s in which Marty sees back in the first film were really a completely different world than the 80s.

The first two films are characterized by the fact that they are limited to a temporal frame that does not exceed the range of a human life. In almost all films with time machines, it either goes back very far into the past or very far ahead of the future. In contrast, with “Back to the Future I” and “II”, it is only a few decades.

In the second film, Marty travels to the future with his fiancé and Doc Brown – which is the past for today. With their silver Delorean, the three head for October 21, 2015.

Today there is an additional charm from the fact that it turned into yesterday. The screenwriters – Bob Gale and Director Zemeckis – have quite foreseen: communicates via a video telephone, there is a rain radar, and a poster advertises an absolutely bizarre thought for surf vacation in Vietnam – at the time of the film, about 15 years after the end of the war. The fact that the state -of -the -art computer of the year 1985 would be a piece for the antique business in the medium term was also a correct forecast.

The screenwriters did not predict the Internet

However, in the real year 2015 the time, however, has gone over the fax machine, very modern to develop the film. Flying cars, floating skateboards, self -sausage shoes and clothing, which adapts or dries in the size of the respective carrier, have not materialized. Unfortunately. The screenwriters have not predicted the most serious change from the period between 1985 and 2015: the spread of the Internet.

The films also have a philosophical level. They remind you that every life is determined to a large extent by chance. If the coordinates only move a little, you miss a potentially decisive encounter or a formative event – and everything is different. There is hardly anyone who would not like to have the opportunity to undo a certain action from his past.

Do you really want to know how your own life continues?

The scene of the films is a fictitious small city town that was built on the central square of the Universal Studio site as a scenery city. This had the advantage that it could be adjusted depending on the time period.

In the third part, when Marty and Doc travel back to 1885, you can see how the town hall is being built with the clock, in which lightning in the first part of the lightning. A good gag is here when Marty is asked in the Wild West how he learned to shoot so well. His answer: “Space Invaders” – a computer game published in 1978.

Again and again there is speculation about a fourth part of “Back to the Future”, but so far it has never been concretized. Christopher Lloyd is now 86, but somehow still looks like 40 years ago.

Michael J. Fox, on the other hand – he is 64 – has hit a hard Parkinson’s fate. They are exactly those that you would rather not know about it in advance.

RTLZWEI shows all three parts of the trilogy in a row for all film and nostalgia fans from 8:15 p.m. on Thursday (July 3rd) from 8:15 p.m.: “Back to the future” (1985)+ 10:35 p.m.: “Back to the future II” (1989)+ 00.40-02.45 p.m. The future – in Concert “) with film music in some German cities (Duisburg, Frankfurt/Main, Nuremberg, Bielefeld, Berlin) – also in Austria (Vienna, Linz). From March 2026, the film will be on stage as a musical.

Musical in Hamburg 2026 concert series RTLZWEI