One thing I never understood about Back to the Future

[CHAPPERS]

I get all the flux capacitator stuff and how rubbish is good fuel and stuff and even the bits about lightening providing just the right amount of gigawatts needed to send the Michael J Fox back to the future but one thig that always puzzled me is......



How the f*** does this not hurt??

 

[Kryten]

 

[Brighton Breezy]

 

[Easy 10]

One thing I never quite grasped in Back to the Future was that family photo Marty had, where he started disappearing from the picture. This was happening because Marty was pissing about with the past, and unintentionally decreasing the likelihood of his future parents getting together and copulating, due to the fact that Martys mum started fancying him instead of his dad.

I'm not convinced it would work like that though. If you have existed in the future, then you cannot "un-exist" in the past. You are due to exist at some point as you have had your picture taken in the present. Even though when you travel back, you havn't actually existed yet, you HAVE existed in one possible future, and your picture is proof of that. So surely a picture taken in the present and taken back in time cannot actually alter, no matter what you do to change the future, as what happened in YOUR future has happened in your own past before you travelled back to before it happened.

It almost disproves itself. Following its own theory, the picture itself would not exist, because if Marty is disappearing from the picture because he did not exist, then the photo would not have been taken in the first place as who's to say the other family members in the picture would have followed the same course of events leading up to that picture being taken had Marty not existed - their lives would have followed a completely different course.

See ?

 

[SULLY COULDNT SHOOT]

My god...Easy!!!!! Do you do any work? I had to concentrate for ten minutes just to understand all that!!!!

 

[Marc]

thats some good divulging Easy, heres more:
http://www.moviemistakes.com/film106/page1

 

[CHAPPERS]

Never try and work out the events contained in the Back to teh Future films, you'll end up making yourself fall over.

 

[Artois]

The whole Time Travel scenario for the Back to the Future series is described in DETAIL HERE



Nice one Max, made me giggle.

 

[Easy 10]

My god...Easy!!!!! Do you do any work? I had to concentrate for ten minutes just to understand all that!!!!

I do try, but its this kind of thing I find myself worrying about. Its a distraction, I must admit.

 

[tedebear]

but if you shag someone in the future and then go back to the past - does the offspring of the aforementioned fade from any photo too??

 

[Marc]

but if you shag someone in the future and then go back to the past - does the offspring of the aforementioned fade from any photo too??

WHAT? does that mean no album Smash or Americana?!?!









TAXI!

 

[tedebear]

quick today Crabbers !!

 

[Marc]

I Thank You

 

[Artois]

I get all the flux capacitator stuff and how rubbish is good fuel and stuff and even the bits about lightening providing just the right amount of gigawatts needed to send the Michael J Fox back to the future but one thig that always puzzled me is......



How the f*** does this not hurt??

 

[Easy 10]

I watched this again last night on the Sci Fi channel, and was struck by another impossibility.

Near the end of the film, when Marty comes back to 1985, he sets the clock to 10 minutes earlier than when he originally left, to give him time to warn the Doc about the Libyan terrorists who kill him that night (he was supposed to use their plutonium to make them a nucleur bomb, but instead he gave them a bomb made out of spare parts from a pinball machine and used the plutonium for his flux capacitor).

Anyway, Marty arrives back 10 minutes before he left, but he gets held up because the car conks out. So he runs to the mall, and see's the Doc get shot again by the Libyans. He then see's HIMSELF jumping into the DeLorean and making his escape, going back to 1955. Now I can take on board the time travel aspect, and (other than the discrepency with the family photo I bang on about in the earlier post) the time travel side of it kind of pans out ok. BUT - how is it possible for there to quite literally be TWO Marty McFlys in one place at the same time ? He can only possibly have ONE body mass. Just because he is jumping backwards and forwards through time, he cannot physically exist as two seperate body masses in any one given moment.

That simply does not make sense.

 

[CHAPPERS]

I watched this again last night onnthe Sci Fi channel, and was struck by another impossibility.

Near the end of the film, when Marty comes back to 1985, he sets the clock to 10 minutes earlier than when he originally left, to give him time to warn the Doc about the Libyan terrorists who kill him that night (he was supposed to use their plutonium to make them a nucleur bomb, but instead he gave them a bomb made out of spare parts from a pinball machine and used the plutonium for his flux capacitor).

Anyway, Marty arrives back 10 minutes before he left, but he gets held up because the car conks out. So he runs to the mall, and see's the Doc get shot again by the Libyans. He then see's HIMSELF jumping into the DeLorean and making his escape, going back to 1955. Now I can take on board the time travel aspect, and (other than the discrepency with the family photo I bang on about in the earlier post) the time travel side of it kind of pans out ok. BUT - how is it possible for there to quite literally be TWO Marty McFlys in one place at the same time ? He can only possibly have ONE body mass. Just because he is jumping backwards and forwards through time, he cannot physically exist as two seperate body masses in any one given moment.

That simply does not make sense.

Shut up.

 

[Lammy]

It's the 4th dimension Easy.

 

[Easy 10]

Care to elaborate Lammy ? I had yet another sleepless night wondering about all this, so if anyone could shed some light on it, I'd be grateful.

(btw, none of this detracts from what is a true classic of a film. I LOVE it. Spielberg is a genius).

 

[Marc]

Parrallel (sp?) Universe and all that Easy, it works in conjunction with the space/time continuem or something!

 

[Easy 10]

Oh, its probably something to do with quantom physics then.