Remaking Back To The Future
A conversation in the office this morning
As I’m sure that everyone over the age of four has seen the film I won’t go into the plot in too much detail. The story would remain basically the same, just changing the obvious bits.
The original was set in 1985 and 1955. That was twenty-two and fifty-two years ago respectively. Bringing that up to date, if the film is set today then the past (thirty years in the case of the film) would have to be set in 1977. As the film is set in a small-town (Hill Valley) in America then we would still be able to use the milk-bar/cafe scenes, just changed (for 1977) to have either hippies in Volkswagen Campers, smoking weed and drinking beer. For the modern cafe, it would have to be a Starbucks.
The star of the original film is obviously the DeLorean they used as the “time machine”. A classic, niche car, fitted with huge exhaust vents, a nuclear reactor and, obviously, the most most important bit, the Flux Capacitor. For new re-make the car would have to be a BMW Mini Cooper or a Toyota Prius, still to running on nuclear and able to produce the required 1.21 Giggawatts required to create the vortex for time travel. Digital guages throughout, each individually programmable.
The story can remain pretty-much unchanged, with adaptations where required for the differences (such as the milk bar) between the two versions. The dance (1955) would be replaced with a love-in with a band that does covers of Jimi Hendrix and The Doors songs
Cast:
Dr Emmet Brown – Johnny Depp. (Awesomely weird. Would carry it off a treat.)
Marty McFly – Justin Timberlake. (Gotta have the kids interest.)
George McFly – Matthew Broderick. (Slightly nerdy)
Biff Tannen – Tommy Lee Jones. (Nasty character – Tommy does this so well.)
Jennifer Parker – Lindsey Lohan (not a great actor, bit it’s a bit part anyway…)
Mr Strickland – Billy Zane
It’s a good opportunity to get some new talent in too. The characters in Biff’s gang such as Skinhead, 3d, and Match would be an ideal jumping off point.
Obviously, if we were then to go on and re-make BTTF II and III the actors may have to be modified. In the original a mainly young cast was used and then make-up made them look older for the 1985 scenes. So, who to use for the cast. Johnny Depp would still work as Doc Brown looked old even in 1955. JT would be ok too as he’s just a whipper-snapper at 24 now! Biff would have to change, Will Ferrell would be the best choice. Actually, he might be the best choice to go with anyway!
sulz on April 5th, 2007
johnny depp, sounds like he can make the movie emulate the success of pirates of the caribbean. i like the michael j. fox version.