Back to the Future Part II

Great Scott! I just can't stop logging movies. This one's a classic that needs no explanation whatsoever, and if you've never seen it, go do so. Along with its predecessor and sequel, of course. My recap here will be simple and straightforward: this movie is timeless (yet very dated when it gets to the 1980s vision of 2015), enjoyable, and not worth reviewing here. Instead, I'll use this space to complain, postulate, and wonder about time travel. I've just watched Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and I am an avid fan of Lost. Both these shows deal with time travel, but each with their own unique set of rules. Back to the Future is no different (by which of course, I mean, it uses a different set of time travel rules as well). I could go on for pages and pages about the pros and cons of each one, but that's been done before and I just don't feel like this is the time or place to do so. Instead, I'll focus on Back to the Future time travel rules and plotholes. Now, right off the bat in this movie, Marty and Jennifer travel to the future and see their future selves. This is impossible! The moment they set off for the future back in 1985, their 1985 selves cease to be. They vanish, along with the time machine, into thin air. So how are 2015 Marty and Jennifer even extant? In order for there to be an adult version of Marty in 2015, there had to be a version of Marty that existed in 2014. And 2013. And so on and so forth, all the way back to 1985. But, again, this Marty no longer exists! 1980s Marty only resumes existence once he returns from the future to the 1980s. But in this movie, the world he returns to is significantly changed, due to Biff's sports almanac stunt. But now, herein lies another problem with Back to the Future time travel rules; 2015 Biff needs to deliver the almanac to 1955 Biff in order to set up his own success. But once successful, the "alternate universe" Biff has changed history enough such that it's doubtful Doc would ever have invented the time machine in Biff-run 1985. And without the time machine, how does 2015 Biff give himself the almanac back in 1955? The loop needs to be closed, in some way. Right? But altering the past allows for the loop to remain open, as history runs a different course entirely. Many other franchises have time-traveling rules that maintain that what once happened always happened. This is how Lost does things. If a person goes back in time from the present to the past, then that person was always hanging around during that time in the past. You can't change the future because what's already happened in it is bound to happen again. However, this system, too, is flawed. Let's suppose I went back in time with the intent of killing myself as an infant. Clearly, in the fixed timeline, there is no possible way in which I can kill myself as a baby, as this would eliminate me altogether, which would thus eliminate my childhood self's assailant, which would then permit me to live, which would then permit me to go back in time to kill myself, etc. Clearly, it's an infinite loop. The only way to protect my childhood self from my future self would be some sort of vague restriction that does not allow me to kill my younger self. Yet, if time travel is possible, and I can go back in time and meet myself as a baby, and I am a human being who possesses free will, just what exactly will prevent me from doing so? Divine intervention? This "fixed" timeline system thus cannot coexist with human free will. But then, if I kill my younger self under Back to the Future rules, I set up a paradox that destroys the universe. I suppose the short and easy answer to all of these inquiries is that time travel is fictional and not actually realizable in any way. This makes sense. If time travel did exist, and I could go back and visit any moment in history, this would imply that all moments in history must physically be happening concurrently (in different universes, dimensions, or whatever else you want to call them). Likewise, in whatever former time I visited, I would need to be able to conjure myself up out of thin air. The laws of matter conservation explicitly prohibit this. In short, I would posit that there is literally no way in our physically realized universe that one could travel backward through time. After all, the entire universe would need to "rewind" in some way to get back to the stage it was in at any specific certain time ago. Gravity would work as a repellent, entropy would always decrease, and many, many other physical laws would be turned upside down. On the contrary, time travel into the future is theoretically possible; the time traveler would go into some form of deep stasis in which no aging occurred. After however long, upon awakening, the traveler would be some predetermined time into the future. Of course, he or she could never return to their own time; really, there'd be no point to traveling ahead at all, as you would never be able to "report back" or change the future in any way. Time is a one way street, after all. Well, at any rate, those were my three-in-the-morning, mostly-rambling, hardly-sensical thoughts on Back to the Future Part II. Good night all. I will be sure to post again once we all arrive in the future. See you there, whether it's in a few hours or several days.