Give me... 5 reasons to love Back To The Future

There are movies that are appealing to anyone, at any given time, no matter what circumstances. Back To The Future is definitely one of those films. As long as I can remember I loved that film. How could you not immediately fall in love with? Or so I thought until a couple of days ago I watched it with my girlfriend who had never seen it before. To make a long story short, she didn't love it. Hell, she didn't even seem to like it very much.

That made me think, what is it exactly that makes this film so great in my eyes (and the eyes of pretty much every other movie geek out there). That's why I came up with a list of 5 things that make Back To The Future awesome.

1. The tight script

Say whatever you want about this film (and believe me, there's a lot that has been said about it) but Back To The Future is driven by an extremely neat script. There's pretty much no throwaway scenes in it, everything that happens is either to logically further the plot or deepen the characters. This is especially astounding if you think about the fact that we are dealing with time travel here. Don't get me wrong, there's some logical paradoxes (every time travel movie is plagued by those) but apart from those forgivable shortcomings there's not a single scene that this film could have done without.

2. The memorable characters

The characters themselves are not terribly complicated but they are highly memorable, fun to watch and (probably most importantly for the viewer's engagement) have a relatable arc. In fact all of the actors are doing such a great job in their respective roles that they have been type-cast ever since. Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly is THE ultimate teenager of 80s cinema (yeah, that's right, forget about Ferris Bueller and the rest of the John Hughes crew), Christopher Lloyd is on top of his game as crazy but ingenious Doc Brown, Crispin Glover is perfect as the awkward nerd George McFly and there couldn't be a better actor for dumb bully Biff Tannen than Thomas F. Wilson. Kudos to the people responsible for the casting and kudos to the actors themselves, everybody shines.

3. That kick-ass score

Although there are two fairly dated 80s songs by Huey Lewis in the movie, the one acoustic thing you'll remember about Back To The Future is that awesome theme by Alan Silvestri. From the moment we hear it for the first time (which is also the first time we see the DeLorean) to the final scene, every time this music plays it makes you want to punch the air. Yeah, it's that good.

4. The mixture of genres

Back To The Future was one of the most successful films of the 80s and I think a good chunk of that success comes from its massive appeal to all kinds of audiences. You can watch it purely as a sci-fi movie with its time travel plot or you can watch it as a highschool comedy full of one-liners. There's action in there as well as a love story (with the love story first between Marty and his mother which is creepily Freudian and then later switching to a more straight-forward affair between Marty's mother and father). We have a whole lot of 50s nostalgia in there as well as references to Star Wars, Star Trek and 80s rock. You can safely say there is something in the movie for everyone without compromising on any part.

5. Establishing talent behind the camera

Back To The Future was an important stepping stone for everybody behind the camera. It was only the third feature length movie for director Robert Zemeckis after the flop Used Cars and the derivative Romancing the Stone. The success of Back To The Future helped him to go on to direct more crowd-pleasers like Forrest Gump, Cast Away and, most recently, Flight. Producer Steven Spielberg was already well established as a director at the time but BTTF together with the success of Gremlins and The Goonies around the same time proved he had the makes of a great producer as well. The same can be said for producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, later going on to produce Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, The Sixth Sense and the upcoming Star Wars sequels.

So there you have it, how can you still not think that Back To The Future is the greatest thing since sliced bread? No? Well, then go ahead and enjoy these couple of BTTF gifs: