"Damn! Damn damn!"
It is with a heavy heart that I read about Universal Studios' plans to do away with the "Back To The Future" ride come Labor Day. Not only because BTTF was a killer ride -- sitting still in a makeshift DeLorean, you really felt like you were flying through space and time -- but because "BTTF" remains one of my favorite movies. Every line in that movie was clever, and Christopher Lloyd was genius,
Farewell to a classic.
Interestingly, "BTTF" took place in 1985, and involved travels back to what then seemed like ancient history, 1955 -- 30 years earlier. In just eight years, it will be 2015 -- 30 years after Marty McFly went on his journeys. It's amusing how little the present resembles the bleak 2015 envisioned in "BTTF2." And it's remarkable how little things seem to have changed between 1985 and the present, compared to how much they changed from 1955 and 1985. I can't imagine a 2015 remake of "BTTF," where Marty travels back to see his parents in 1985, could be anywhere near as clever or amusing.
A personal story about the BTTF ride. The first time I went on it I was with my 50 year old mother and 75 year old grandmother. This was a woman who hadn't been on any amusement park ride in at least 15 years. When the ride ended and we got out of our cars, she was completely convinced that we had physically traveled through all those different places -- not literally time traveled, but that we were on some sort of gigantic track that took you through a giant dinosaur set, through an ice cave and back through present day Hill Valley. She didn't believe us when we told her it was all projected on a screen and we eventually decided to let her think it was just as amazing as she'd originally experienced it.