Monday Movie Moments: Back to the Future

Welcome to a new weekly feature here at Movies With Abe. There are great movies, and then there are great scenes. Ideally, the two come as a package deal, but sometimes there’s just a scene that’s memorable all by itself. Each week, I’ll be taking a look at a formative movie moment that may be notable for its style, content, technique, or something else altogether. Minor spoilers will be alluded to in each edition of the series, so please stop reading if you’ve somehow avoided seeing the movie in question.

This amazing science fiction classic is an incredible film whose campiness only makes it hold up better on the umpteenth viewing. Its dedication to relatively coherent theoretical science related to the idea of time travel is among its best assets, and therefore its most exciting scene is the one at the end of the first film where Marty needs to use the lightning that will strike the clock tower to propel him back to the future. The discovery that the cable is no longer connected means that Doc has to climb up onto the tower and manually connect the cable, and one of the best parts of the above clip is the way that Christopher Lloyd reacts so dramatically to everything. Alan Silvestri’s incredible score is a great assist as well, and as a result it’s a magnificent thing to see Marty go back to the future, made even more impactful by the disappearance of the DeLorean and the continued focus on 1955, as an amazed Doc dances in the street and celebrates the successful achievement of time travel. This is one of those films I could watch over and over, and this scene is one of the main reasons why.