“Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.” That’s what Doctor Emmett Brown declares when he and Marty McFly drove his time-traveling DeLorean into the bright future of October 21st, 2015. Back to the Future: Part II, the middle section of perhaps the greatest trilogy in Hollywood history, brought audiences into a new age 30 years ahead of its starting point of 1985. In the grand tradition of cinema trying to predict the future, director Robert Zemeckis didn’t get everything right, but Marty’s 2015 wasn’t entirely unlike the one we eventually actually got, either.
In the 2015 of Back to the Future 2, Marty is forced to fix his kids’ mistakes so their lives won’t be ruined before any of that can happen (just go with it). The Hill Valley of this time is a blend of cyberpunk, retrofuturism, and knowing silliness. Yes, there are flying cars and hoverboards, but there are also projected advertisements and power-laced sneakers. Jaws 19 is playing at the cinema (directed by nepo baby Max Spielberg). Billboards herald the beauty of a surfing vacation in Vietnam. It’s the kind of place you’d love to hang out — if only to check out the self-drying jackets.
