What is the measure of a classic film?
Does it spawn classic lines that people still quote decades after the fact?
Does it forever bind the actors of the film to something they made in their 20s?
Does it hold up on repeat viewings?
Does it appeal to young and old alike?
In the case of Back To The Future, it ticks all four of those boxes.
Cinemas put the famous time travel comedy back on the big screen recently to mark its 40th anniversary, and we figured there was no time like the present to revisit the 1985 classic.
It’s hard to imagine a film landscape without Back To The Future, but the film itself had a difficult time getting made.
The film’s torturous production has been well-documented, and the film has one of the most famous instances of a casting change in movie history.
Eric Stolz was originally cast to play Marty McFly, and filming had actually commenced with Stolz in the lead role before the fateful decision was made to axe Stolz in favour of Michael J Fox.
Again, it’s difficult to imagine anyone but Michael J Fox in the lead role, but the production went through endless combos of young and old stars alike to play Marty McFly and Doc Brown.
Future stars like Johnny Depp, Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Junior auditioned or were considered to play Marty, while stars of the moment such as Ralph Macchio, John Cusack and C. Thomas Howell were also in the running.
Fox was the first choice, but his commitments to the hit series Family Ties meant that he was unavailable.
After shooting for a few weeks with Stolz, the production felt that Stolz simply was not the right man for the role, and a workaround was reached with Fox, where he would shoot Family Ties during the daytime and Back To The Future at night.
Director Robert Zemeckis is well-known for his “pain is temporary, film is forever” mantra, and despite Fox later recalling the double-jobbing era being the most exhausting period of his life, the results spoke for themselves.
For the role of Doc Brown, everyone from Henry Winkler, Eddie Murphy, Danny DeVito, Gene Hackman, Robin Williams and John Cleese were considered (and if comedy nerds had their way, Chevy Chase or Steve Martin would have been in there, too)
Christopher Lloyd ended up with the role, and it’s fair to say it became the role that defined his career.
Lloyd was known to audiences for his role on the sitcom Taxi when Back To The Future began filming, and it will be the role that will be the first line in his obituary.
Lloyd is said to have thrown the script in the bin when he first read it, only for his wife to convince him to give the script another read – the rest, as they say, is movie history.
The chemistry between Fox and Lloyd is what makes the film really sing; the script (which is taught in film schools as an example of a perfect screenplay) reads great, but it needed the right duo to bring it to life.
The script, written by director Robert Zemeckis and his film school friend Bob Gale, is a perfect example of how to set up a premise, introduce a world and characters, and tie all the threads together.
1985 was a bumper year for great scripts – Back To The Future was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars alongside the Terry Gilliam sci-fi dystopia Brazil, but the winner that year was Witness, Harrison Ford’s finest hour.
Back To The Future may have lost that battle, but it did end up winning the war.
A big part of why the film has endured is the timeless hook at the centre of the film; what if you knew your parents when they were in school?
The film is just risque and adult enough so adults can still enjoy it, but it has a great central premise and sense of adventure to hook kids in.
In the film industry, the term “four-quadrant” refers to a film with the broadest appeal possible, and similar to when we revisited Jaws for its 50th anniversary, Back To The Future is a film that can appeal to just about anyone.
Zemeckis and Gale have been custodians of the franchise, meaning the franchise has just three movies, a cartoon TV show, and one musical.
The fact that Zemeckis and Gale haven’t caved and greenlit a legacy sequel with Fox or Lloyd or allowed an ill-advised remake to happen has helped keep the film in pristine condition.
Zemeckis’ career has seen its fair share of ups and downs – he later went on to win an Oscar for Forrest Gump and directed the classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but also went down the rabbit hole of soulless, flat CGI as seen in The Polar Express and 2022’s Pinocchio.
A big part of why Back To The Future was such a big hit in 1985, and is still fondly remembered 40 years later, is simple: people love nostalgia.
In a full-circle way, audiences loved Back To The Future in 1985 because it was crammed with 50’s nostalgia, and now in 2025, audiences love Back To The Future because it gives audiences nostalgia for 1985.
For a film that has themes about how not everything was better in the past, it is ironic that the culture surrounding the film has embraced everything the film warns against.
Yes, things were slightly better in our grandparents’ generation because they could afford a house, they went out for milkshakes and danced to Chuck Berry, but that doesn’t mean it was paradise.
The weaponisation of nostalgia has come to affect everything from politics to music, and Back To The Future might have the best message of all; it would be cool to go back in time, but the same issues that plague us today are still present now.
When some studio head decides to remake Back To The Future, and it will happen, because audiences can’t be trusted and pay to see original films, it will be impossible to capture the charm of the original.
It’s very hard to make the same timeless film, twice.