Superfans assemble! To mark the 30th anniversary of “Back to the Future,” we’ve compiled the hardest quiz about the famous film trilogy you’ve probably ever read.
That’s because we enlisted the help of Dr. Sorcha Ní Fhlainn, lecturer in Film Studies and American Literature at Manchester Metropolitan University and author of one of the first academic books written on the cult movies — “The Worlds of Back to the Future: Critical Essays on the Films.”
Like many Back to the Future fans, Ni Fhlainn’s devotion runs deep.
“I first saw it on VHS in 1986 — it was a film my family watched repeatedly as I grew up and gave me a lifelong love of 1980s American culture and that irresistible dream of time travel that we consistently revisit in science fiction cinema,” she said.
“My book is dedicated to my late dad, who would quote huge portions of the script with me for fun, and who equally loved the films.”
Three decades later, the films have lost none of their appeal, with tens of thousands of fans kitting out in their best Marty McFly vests and Doc radiation suits for Secret Cinema’s Back to the Future screening at London’s Olympic Park last year.
“Back to the Future remains popular today because it is a perfectly constructed film born out of a fresh and creative idea,” says Caseen Gaines, author of ‘We Don’t Need Roads: The Making of the Back to the Future Trilogy.’
“The filmmakers were at the top of their game and that shows in every frame of the film.”
Indeed, it feels fitting that a film about time travel has managed to stand the test of, well, time.
“It visually presents the theoretical complexities of time travel — and its consequences — through comedy and warmth, with excellent examples of set-ups and pay-offs,” says Ní Fhlainn.
“It is also important because it articulates so much about 1980s culture — Reaganism, upward mobility, the seemingly limitless potential and perils of science and discovery. It updates and modifies the brilliance of H.G Wells’ 1895 novella ‘The Time Machine,’ in exciting and culturally specific ways.”
And in true “Back to the Future” spirit, if you don’t nail all the questions in the quiz the first time, you could always go back and do it again.