The One Totally Random Thing Back to the Future Got Completely Right
After almost three decades of waiting, it’s finally here: Today is “Back to the Future Day.” For those out of the loop, Back to the Future Day is the precise day when Marty McFly took the Delorean for a spin and wound up in a world full of hoverboards and 3D movie posters in Back to the Future Part II. Some of the movie’s predictions failed to come true, but as it turns out, Back to the Future Part II is more indicative of what 2015 is than what we’d have thought. Sure, there are plenty of technological inaccuracies in the movie, like society’s over-reliance on fax machines or the popularity of a pizza hydrator, which is basically a reverse-Shrinky Dink situation, but for food.
There are enough eerie coincidences in the movie, though, that have people wondering if screenwriter Bob Gale and director Robert Zemeckis actually traveled in time. For example, it’s hard to ignore the film’s hologram-like news report broadcasting the Cubs World Series win against Miami? Ok, maybe it wasn’t insane to predict that Florida would get its own baseball team one day (the Miami Marlins didn’t being playing as the Florida Marlins until 1993). But who would’ve thought the cursed Cubs could possibly have a chance to win the World Series? Not anyone who was a fan of the team 30 years ago, that’s for sure. And while the Marlins aren’t in the playoffs this year, the Chicago Cubs are currently up against the Mets in the National League Series, just one stop away from a shot at the World Series. Admittedly, the Cubs are down three games to none, and have virtually no chance to beat the Mets, but it’s still pretty interesting that the team made it this far this year. Still though, this is not a prediction that came true.
There are other aspects of the faux-future that are close but not quite there. Like, we know your hearts were set on having a flying car of your very own, so it must be tough to realize that the flying cars in the movies not only defy gravity but also the limits of 2015 scientific ingenuity. But at least we have hoverboards! Or, you know, “hoverboards.” Even though they’re still technically on wheels, and thus not actually hovering, Wired reports that there are three different hoverboards that are already in existence, which to me is way cooler than flying a metal deathtrap that everyone will undoubtedly be forced to operate. At least with a hoverboard, you can channel your inner Marty McFly while you zip through ongoing traffic. But this is still a prediction that didn’t quite come true.
And then there are the predictions that are so technologically savvy and progressive than what we have today—the Delorean running on household waste, instead of the carbon-based fuel we’re still ultra-reliant on—that it makes us a little bit sad.
However, there is one major thing that Back to the Future envisioned as being reality on October 21, 2015 that is totally and completely accurate, and all the more horrifying because of it, namely, that the movie’s villain, Biff Tannen, is an exact parallel to America’s villain, Donald Trump. Think about it: Biff Tannen is a casino-owning jackass, married three times, built his fortune during the 1980s from dabbling in casinos, hotels, and real estate, and has a shockingly bad hairstyle. Unless there was a guidebook on “How to Become America’s Villain” out there that we don’t know about, but that Gale and Zemeckis did, we think this is a case of truly psychic, nightmarishly surreal prediction. And an impressive one! Although, we have to say, if only one thing had to come true from the movie, we really wish it wasn’t the rise of Donald Trump.