Analysis: “Back to the Future” and “The Wizard of Oz”

From comments DSC said:

In BTTF, Marty must get his parents together and be at the clock tower by the lightning strike to return to the present.

Bruno, that’s not the goal after act one. In fact, the goal is just to get back, isn’t it? The mother complication comes in later, and then Doc realizes that Marty must get his parents together. Isn’t that the midpoint?

The serious complication — that if Marty doesn’t get his parents back together in the past, he and his sister won’t ever come into existence in the present — does represent a transition in the story by elevating the stakes. It also emerges as a subplot that plays out what Marty needs.

In most movies, the Protagonist goes through some sort of emotional, psychological, and/or spiritual metamorphosis. That change occurs as they pursue a goal. And that goal can be typified in this way:

What the P wants: Their External World (conscious) goal
What the P needs: Their Internal World (unconscious) goal

By the end of Act One, these two narrative elements should have been set up, even if the P is still unaware of their internal need or aware of it, but actively repressing it.

In Back to the Future, what does Marty want? His goal at the end of the story’s set-up is to get back to the present. That’s his conscious goal.

Now ask yourself: What does Marty need? We can start to answer that question by considering what we learn about Marty in Act One:

* He is disconnected from his family, especially his parents, doesn’t identify with them, and thinks he’s cooler than them. Indeed his obsession with music is probably fueled in part by his desire to differentiate himself from them.

* I would go even further to say that Marty’s ashamed of them, it’s embarrassing to be associated with his family.

* We can go even further to say that Marty is angry at them, especially his father. Note how distraught Marty is with George on P. 17 (1985 draft) after learning that Biff wrecked the family car, crushing Marty’s hope of getting away with Jennifer: “Marty shakes his head and steps over to his father outraged.”

* Finally there’s predestination, where Marty has to confront the possibility that he will end up like his family. Remember Strickland’s comments (P. 7): “You’re a slacker. You remind me of your father when he went here — he was a slacker, too… No McFly ever amounted to anything in the history of Hill Valley.”

In other words, Marty has a family, but he doesn’t feel like they’re his family. Therefore one way of looking at it is to say that Marty needs to see his family in a new light, he needs to connect with them — he needs to feel like his home is actually a home.

In this respect, it’s interesting to compare Back to the Future to The Wizard of Oz:

Both Protagonists suffer from a similar problem: They have a home that doesn’t feel like home. Dorothy is an orphan, the only youth living in a world of adults, she feels like a distraction to her aunt, uncle, and the men who work there. She expresses her plight in the song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Likewise as noted, Marty feels disconnected from his family, especially from his parents George and Lorraine.

Both Dorothy and Marty have a Trickster character in their lives who at times gets them into trouble and at other times helps them: Professor Marvel for Dorothy and Doc Brown for Marty.

Both Dorothy and Marty travel to a distant and strange land: Dorothy to Oz, Marty to the 1950s.

Both Dorothy and Marty find characters there who are familiar to them, but significantly different in form: Dorothy with farm workers Hunk, Hickory, and Zeke as Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion, Marty with George and Lorraine as teenagers.

Both Dorothy and Marty go on a ‘journey’ with these key characters, confronting obstacles and challenges together.

But it’s in regard to their respective needs that these key characters play a dramatic role with Dorothy and Marty’s metamorphosis. Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion are Dorothy’s Attractor characters because through her experiences in Oz, she connects with them emotionally — they become her friends — and that provides a conduit for her eventual transformation, summed up by the last line in the movie, “There’s no place like home.” Likewise the teenage versions of George and Lorraine function as Marty’s Attractor characters and as he sees them in a new light — his father was a peeping Tom, his mother was sexually curious, etc — he realizes that they are much more like Marty, in other word typical teenagers, that Marty would ever have known had he not gone back to the past. So instead of disconnected, ashamed, and angry at his family, he comes to understand and eventually accept them.

Indeed Marty has to believe in them, especially George, that despite his milquetoast persona, George has the inner strength to summon up a right-hook and deliver it to Biff in order to win Lorraine’s affection.

There is a significant plot difference: Dorothy’s adventures in Oz change only her and no one else, while Marty’s foray into the past actually alters the shape of the future, so that when he returns to 1985, he finds a newer, better, and cooler version of his parents. However by the end of the movie, the message is much the same in Back to the Future as in The Wizard of Oz — home is where the Protagonist should be, their need combined with their want at the resolution of the story.

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