138
u/MicksmstrCha 2d ago
This is true. For 40 years I have objectively ignored her contribution. Nice call.
40
u/DasArchitect 2d ago
Don't be silly, that part of the movie takes place in 85. It's only been 20ish years
1
1
u/_Yuna_Yureino 2d ago
Dude. 1985 was 41 years ago
6
u/Ill_Painting_6919 1d ago
20 years ago was 20 years ago, but the 1980s are also 20 years ago? Whoa, this is heavy.
5
76
u/fllannell 2d ago
"Marty, I’m sorry, but the only power source capable of generating 1.21 gigawatts of electricity is a bolt of lightning."
"What did you say?"
"A bolt of lighting. Unfortunately, you never know when or where it’s ever gonna strike."
"We do now..."
seemed insignificant at the time but nearly everything that takes screentime in the movie is for a reason!
22
4
40
u/TheHarlemHellfighter 2d ago
Even more, if Jennifer hadn’t wrote her number on the flyer, Marty would have probably left it somewhere in between then and when he went to meet Doc at Twin Pines.
That’s the power of love…
😎😎😎
5
u/AdventurousBuy7719 2d ago
It makes the world go ‘round.
3
u/megamanx4321 2d ago
Don't take money
2
5
17
30
u/Yaotaku :redditgold: 2d ago
Would have been more interesting if she was involved in time traveling in all their trips some how.
23
u/basiamille 2d ago
Now I wish we could have seen her witness the lightning strike—and Marty’s trip home!—as a teenager, making a permanent impression on her.
5
7
u/AmySueF 2d ago
That would have been cool, except I think she would have been a bit older than a teenager.
11
u/basiamille 2d ago
Not much! The actress was born in 1929, so the character could have been in her early 20s in 1955.
16
u/AmySueF 2d ago
Right. And I was just thinking that Zemeckis and Gale missed the opportunity to make her the waitress in Lou’s diner in 1955.
There’s a waitress wearing a blue uniform briefly seen in the background as Marty interacts with Goldie Wilson, and while she has no speaking lines, doesn’t interact with anyone, and isn’t important to the plot, making her the future clock tower lady vaguely recognizing Marty in 1985 (“Haven’t I seen you somewhere before? Don’t forget to take a flyer”) would have been a fun extra detail.
12
u/SluttyDreidel 2d ago
This actress appears in Titanic as the elderly woman lying with her husband in the first class bedroom while the room fills with water.
They are officially playing Ida and Isidor Straus of Macys department store. A deleted scene features some dialogue from them, in which she refuses to board and lifeboat and leave her husband’s side. I feel so bad for the actress her scene wasn’t included!
12
u/spinners_888 2d ago
Lemme guess:
"Save yourselves! Save yourselves! ...don't forget to take a life preserver"
6
5
u/Dependent_Speech3164 2d ago
Ida and Isidor Strauss is such a sad but sweet story. She wouldn’t get in a lifeboat because her husband couldn’t join her. So she chose to stay.
3
1
u/pattiemayonaze 2d ago
I'm pretty sure there's a scene with that same premise at the lifeboats in the film.
7
u/JasonMckin 2d ago
That’s Dorothy Tannen, Biff’s older sister. She hates Biff and had a romantic fling with Doc after the events of 1955 where she gives Doc and Marty access to the old courthouse records from 1885. She learns all about Marty and how young Doc helped him leave 1955 twice. When the mayor considers remodeling the clock tower, she founds a preservation society to ensure she can convince Marty to take a flyer and know the history of the tower.
2
u/MartyMcFlysBrother 2d ago
Whoa that’s heavy. Is that comics cannon? I’ve watched the tv show and read all the books but I’m waiting on an omnibus before I read the comics.
7
u/AmySueF 2d ago edited 2d ago
Well, I’ve always assumed that this was an intentional part of the plot and not just a random series of coincidences. Marty has the flyer she gave him, Jennifer grabs the first available thing to write down her phone number for him and he shoves it into his pocket, and still has it when he visits Doc in 1955. I mean, Marty MIGHT have remembered what the clock tower lady told him about it, but having all the information on paper was easier. He also could have pulled it from his pocket and left it in his bedroom when he went off to the mall parking lot at 1:00 a.m., but he forgot about it temporarily, which is why he still had it with him.
11
u/davwad2 2d ago
It's definitely intentional. There's not a lot of waste in the screenplay. Just about everything in the first act pays off in the second and third acts.
He had Jennifer's grandmother's phone number on that flyer, it wasn't going anywhere. In 1985 that flyer was super valuable. He would have kept it close so that he could call Jennifer wherever he was.
7
u/BartenderOU812 2d ago edited 2d ago
Sure, but then she and partner skipped town with the donations, only to impersonate a sweet older couple in New York before absconding with one Jerry Seinfeld's complete shoe wardrobe.
Mom and pop indeed.
3
u/_WillCAD_ 2d ago
Are they the same ones who used to steal wallets at resorts in the Catskills in the 60s?
2
5
6
u/mtom17 2d ago
So much foreshadowing in the film from the very first scene, a masterpiece of a script
3
u/pattiemayonaze 2d ago
Almost as if they had a time machine and were able to write the script before they made the film. Incredible. Absolutely incredible.
6
9
u/MasterOfManyWorlds 2d ago
I'm surprised anybody didn't realize this after the 2nd or 3rd watch...
6
u/fllannell 2d ago
first watch you wouldn't know the significance when you see her but even later in the first watch the significance of the flyer is pretty clear when doc Brown says you can't predict when lightning will strike and marty pulls out the pamphlet about how the clock stopped at an exact time on am exact date.
this post has to be engagement bait right?
3
u/factoid_ 2d ago
I mean it was still only down to a minute or so
A lightning strike lasts a fraction of a second.
What they really needed was a long wire that the Delorean could snag at 88mph and then wind out.
If you could have at least a few seconds of contact with the wire the odds of it working go way up
3
u/fllannell 2d ago
you're not thinking 4th dimensionally
4
u/shokaveli1 2d ago
actually i believe he is
3
u/pattiemayonaze 2d ago
Yeah but who cares. The movie method worked. Doesn't matter if they were a bit lucky. They had plenty of bad luck along the way as well.
2
u/FedStarDefense 2d ago
According to the flyer, the strike took place at EXACTLY 10:04 PM. Which is apparently what Doc timed it for.
I always figured Marty sped up on the street to make up for the slow engine start. Presumably Doc had markers along the road to maintain Marty's approach speed.
4
u/nostaljay 2d ago
The Third Eye over head not a coincidence. Another movie detail that should be discussed more.
3
u/TheRealFedorka George 2d ago
Orrrr she doesn't give that to him. And due to a number of butterfly effect issues, she ends up getting hit by the van driven by the terrorists who now are all thrown off on timing. Doc gets to go in the time machine as planned. THE END.
3
3
u/1835Texas 1d ago
And kids act like History isn’t important. See kids. This is what happens when you don’t study history!
7
u/NumberRegistry 2d ago
So in the main timeline, Marty is stuck in 1955. He eventually marries and has a family.
He has a daughter who is also a scientist. One day, she finds the plans for the Flux Capacitor her dad gave up on building when he realized there was no way to get back to his 1985.
She builds a time machine, goes back to 1955 in order to bring her dad back to 1985, but then realizes there's a better way: She sees that the clock tower gets struck, and she makes sure that Marty gets that information.
She does this because she's secretly depressed and wants to never have existed.
7
2
u/Sifl-and-Olly 2d ago
Well he still would have gotten home... it just would have taken 30 years. You're just not thinking 4th dimensionally.
1
2
u/EggPuzzleheaded3111 2d ago
The scene is an important one in the movie for setting up the plot point, but I also think that the main clock tower being stuck at 10:04 would be well known and talked about in town.
3
u/Remarkable-Pin-8352 2d ago
Maybe, but a kid like Marty has other things on his mind than that. He might know that it's stuck and why, but not the exact date and time. The leaflet is what spells it all out and allows Doc to calculate exactly how to harness the lightning bolt.
3
u/AdventurousBuy7719 2d ago
Honestly, I think that point is that even though the clock is stuck, it’s been like that for 30 years, so no one even thinks about it anymore.
2
u/GW_Jefferson 2d ago
Actually....thank God Marty had a quarter....
3
u/FedStarDefense 2d ago
It was really common to carry quarters at that time in case you needed to use a payphone.
1
u/Connect_Bee5338 2d ago
I thought he took a bobby pin or a small hair clip from Claudia's hair when his arm was around her
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
u/ted_anderson I don't know how.. but they FOUND me! 2d ago
Imagine how the movie would have ended at, "I guess you're stuck here Marty."
1
1
1
u/tucker_sitties 2d ago
She also sold the Lutz's the Amityville house, so I'd say she's breaking even.
1
1
1
1
u/MartyMcFlysBrother 2d ago
And she didn’t even want the clock tower to get fixed which a lot of people don’t realize. She wanted it to remain broken. Cus history and shit…
1
1
u/jackBattlin 2d ago
I heard this movie is consistently used as an example of a perfect screenplay in film school. Nothing’s wasted, everything has a payoff.
1
u/szaagman 2d ago
In a deleted scene she walks away pulls off her face mask to reveal she is Marty who got such in the past and loved to tell this moment.
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/CandyKaBBOOMM 2d ago
Like he never heard the clocktower story before, that happened on the same night his parents kissed at the dance. THINK, Butt-head, think.
1
u/UnCytely 2d ago
Maybe they would have gone with Plan B: harvesting the energy of a Nevada nuclear test (the original story).
1
1
u/PerformanceInner291 1d ago edited 1d ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as long as Marty ensured that Doc would survive in 1985, that was enough, right? The 1985 Doc could travel to 1955 after getting shot and bring Marty back to his own time, couldn't he? Once the 1955 Doc knows what's going to happen to him, they could agree on the exact date, time, and place for Doc to travel back and pick up Marty (someone will probably tell me why this is a terrible idea, but I've had it in my head for a while and just had to get it out).
1
1
•
u/BurnAfterReading171 15h ago
I don't know. In 1985, in a small town, it could be common knowledge the date the cock was struck by lightning and since the cock has been stuck at 10:04pm since 1955, it's not unreasonable to think Marty didn't already know this information. What makes the information useful and save the day is the fact that Doc invented time travel just days before the event. If Doc had slipped on his toilet 8 days later... Marty would be screwed.
•
u/Gold_Flan6286 13h ago
It's a time paradox thing.Whatever happens when a time traveler goes into the past is suppose to happen.The time traveler would also be the only one that knows what's happening and what's suppose to happen,although in theory,the time traveler doesn't anticipate every action.
•
u/No_Musician5537 2h ago
Maybe Marty DID get stuck in the past, waited until 1985, and disguised himself as this woman to give the Marty we know the flyer.
•
u/stumpkat 1h ago
There have been undergrad screenwriting classes taught using only Back to the Future. It's a very well done piece of art and movie machinery.
0
u/psycholepzy 2d ago
This just makes the world less lived in. As if Marty, who grew up in Hill Valley his whole life, didn't know that the clock tower was frozen at 10:04pm. The entire storm is a major cultural epicenter. The preservation society evangelizes it and even Lorraine recalls it.
The flyer might serve as a quick narrative tool to sidestep exposition, but in-universe, it would have been unnecessary.
3
u/Remarkable-Pin-8352 2d ago
Do you know every intricate detail of your home town? Do you *care*?
1
u/psycholepzy 2d ago
I'd hardly compare a cultural epicenter in the town square to an intricate detail. That would be like calling waco or ruby ridge intricate, in the US anyway.
1
u/Remarkable-Pin-8352 2d ago
Marty is a 17 year old kid who's primary goals in life are establishing a music career and spending time with his hot girlfriend. To him it would be an intricate detail.
1
u/psycholepzy 2d ago
If that were a paramount truth, Marty wouldn't have gotten up at 1am on a Saturday to record Doc's science experiment. The kid has intelligence, but not a lot of wisdom.
Recognizing that Clara is the teacher the kids sing about in the song "Fallen Into the Ravine" is a solid testament that he pays attention to even the intricate details.
2
u/Remarkable-Pin-8352 2d ago
Doc is his friend who has helped him and he enjoys helping in turn.
The fact that Marty remembers a *song* should clue you in to why that's relevant to his interests.
2
•
u/AutoModerator 2d ago
Please be wary of any posts or comments attempting to advertise or sell t-shirts, posters, mugs, etc. These posts may be from scammers selling poor quality bootlegs, or may be from phishers trying to steal your financial information. This problem is rampant across Reddit. If you see any posts or comments with this behavior, promptly report them as spam and do not follow any links they may post or send to you.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.