Michael J. Fox recreates the Back to the Future teaser trailer shot-for-shot


YouTube Doubler

Michael J. Fox reenacts a 25-year-old scene from the trailer for Back to the Future. Start both clips at the same time to see the old and new versions side-by-side. (Via Blame it on the Voices.)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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lyd

Toggle switches.
Talia

What a neat little clip. :) That musta been kind of fun to do.
Xenu

You know, for someone with Parkinson’s, he looks like he’s doing really well.
- madsci
  
  I was thinking that for an experienced, professional actor, the Parkinson’s must be pretty bad for him to have to struggle visibly to do a 5-second bit.
  - Xenu
    
    Having known others with Parkinson’s though, Fox is doing really well. Unbelievably well.
Anonymous

Superb. Michael J Fox- class actor. Best of luck with the Parkinsons (beating it that is).
Anonymous

I remember reading, at the time of the movie’s release, that Eric Stoltz had been originally cast. But apparently, his performance was too serious for the producers, and he was replaced by Michael J. Fox.

I wonder if footage still exists of Eric’s scenes.

I’ve always admired Michael J. Fox for his courage, dignity and activism. Maybe in his lifetime we’ll find a cure.

I hope.
- aguane
  
  I saw footage of the scenes just the other day but it looks like the site they were on took down the article. Maybe they’ll be in the bonus features on the anniversary dvd
Anonymous

Why didn’t they wait 30 years instead of 25? The movie is based on going 30 years into the past, then 30 into the future.
- airshowfan
  
  I’m sure they’ll have some kind of event in 2015, especially since so much of the second movie is set then.
bassplayinben

Makes me want to go back and watch it again. What a great movie! The whole sequence near the end where he finally goes back to 1985 with the help of a lightning bolt is so intense!

Last night, Darth Vader came down from planet Vulcan and told me that if I didn’t take Lorraine out that he’d melt my brain.
alittler

The proper(est) starting times are 11s and 12.5s
TinSoldier

Epic trailer remake is epic.
RikF

Hats off to that man. Takes a lot of guts to put yourself in the public eye suffering as he is.
Anonymous

Anon #27 writes:

I wonder if footage still exists of Eric’s scenes.

Here ya go:

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/the-back-to-the-future-that-might-have-been/
hdon

lol, “on Spike.”

real cool.
Brainspore

I’m having a hard time accepting how long it’s been since the first movie came out. Namely: when they do the inevitable ill-advised remake later this decade, Marty will travel back 30 years to 1985. Also I guess they’ll have to swap in a Tesla Roadster for the DeLorean.
- sVybDy
  
  Why the Tesla Roadster? I say it should be the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG, which has gull-wing doors. How can whatever vehicle ends up being the time machine NOT have gull-wing doors?
  - Anonymous
    
    Its not a tesla roadster, It a Delorean.
pentomino

So this was the movie trailer for BTTF? I’m surprised.

It made it look like Michael J Fox was playing some kind of douche, when in the movie he was an average teenager. Marty McFly was not the guy who puts on sunglasses dramatically and struts into a DeLorean like he owns it. He’s a guy whose (original timeline) family is held together by duct tape, who gets in trouble at school, but is in a rock band, has a girlfriend, and somehow knows an elderly engineer with a gigantic amp. His life is a mixed bag, and even though he’s competent at everything we see him try (except handling that video camera), he’s wrought with self-confidence issues.

I guess characters like Marty McFly make for a great movie, but a poor trailer, so they went with Generic Cocky 80′s Guy for the trailer.
isaacd

Makes me even more impatient for Oct. 23rd!

BttF is having a re-release in AMC theaters for that one day:
http://www.amctheatres.com/bttf/

The inner nerd made me get tickets. For the whole family. :)
Anonymous

Back To The Future is a great trilogy and I’m planning to purchase the DVDs. Specially if they’re a 25th anniversary. Michael J. Fox is a great actor, and still is today as this video clearly shows.

Doc, Marty, don’t mind the critics and their postings. They can’t type 88 words a minute, never mind appreciate a good movie when they see one :-)
sVybDy

Personally, I hope they’re already pre-planning to do a full reboot of BTTF in 2015. Everything gets rebooted eventually, and this is a film every generation deserves to have a version of. Even if it ends up being terrible, I’d rather they try and fail than not try at all. If they don’t even try, Hollywood will forever be known as being nothing more than a bunch of slackers.

Over the last 30 years, our world has seen a lot of change. A 2015 teenaged Marty McFly sent back to 1985 for a week would have to cope with the lack of cell phones and the Internet. If the sequel sees him traveling forward 30 years (as it probably should) the wonders of 2045 will probably be a lot the same as the 2015 of the original flick, but it would still be interesting to see another vision of the not-so-distant future.

Traveling back 100 years in the third film would land Marty and Doc squarely in 1915, which would make it the most different entry of the rebooted trilogy. 1915 would be kind of a downer year to land in as they’d find themselves in the middle of World War I. Then again, there’s no reason they’d have to specifically go back 100 years. Perhaps 1935 would be a better year; it was roughly the “eye of the storm” of the Great Depression. It would be a hell of a time to go back to and start investing in stocks, though.
- Anonymous
  
  Actually, in the US, 1915 wasn’t in the middle of World War I. We stayed out, and we could have kept staying out if that racist bastard Wilson hadn’t deliberately dragged us in.
- airshowfan
  
  I like the reboot idea.
  
  “A 2015 teenaged Marty McFly sent back to 1985…”
  
  Hmmm… but I was alive in 1985, I can even remember some of it. Wait, am I as old now as some people who can actually remember 1955 were in 1985? Wow, I’m old! I see 1955 as, like, almost a different geological era. (And it doesn’t help how BttF uses cars and things from the 1940s). But 1985 was, like, yesterday! That can’t be right!
  
  “The wonders of 2045 will probably be a lot the same as the 2015 of the original flick…”
  
  [Cory] Only more so! [/Cory]
  
  “Traveling back 100 years in the third film would land Marty and Doc squarely in 1915 [...] in the middle of World War I”
  
  The West as portrayed in BttF3 was no walk in the park either! And hey, even better than 1935 would be the 1920s, prohibition… If BttF3 was a western, the reboot could be a gangster movie! Doc Brown owes money to the Mob, and if he doesn’t pay up by Saturday…
Kimmo

I saw BttF at the cinema when I was 11 or 12… it burnt a massive impression on my mind.

I wanted to be as cool as Marty McFly so bad.

Absolutely brilliant stuff. #2 was pretty damn good for a sequel, and had one of the most twisted plots you could point a stick at… such a pity #3 sucked so hard.
- airshowfan
  
  I, too, saw BttF as a little kid, and it burnt a massive impression on my mind. I wanted to be as cool as Doc Brown so bad!
- Agies
  
  2 sucked hard. 3 was great. Seriously 2 was a mess of a movie.
  - Michael Smith
    
    Agies,
    
    We are never going to agree on this but I think the scene at the end of two where the Delorean gets hit by lightening while caught landing in a storm, disappears, and a mailman battles the storm to tell Marty what happened is one of the great movie time travel scenes.
  - Kimmo
    
    2 sucked hard. 3 was great. Seriously 2 was a mess of a movie.
    
    O_O
    
    I’m staggered. How many times have you seen #2? It has way more going on than #3…
    - airshowfan
      
      “It has way more going on than #3”
      
      I think that’s why most people don’t like it. First movie: One trip backwards in time, try to return. Third movie: One trip backwards in time, try to return. Second movie: several trips forwards and backwards, some overlapping, a branching storyline… kinda complicated. Of course, most sci-fi time-travel stories are like that, so I don’t mind. In fact the second movie is more “sci-fi” than the first or third. I think that’s what some people don’t like. (But I could be wrong). I think it’s just different. It does help me appreciate the simplicity of #1 and #3.