GB and AJ rewind to July 1985 to take on one of cinema’s most beloved films but does it hold up?
The episode starts in July 1985. Live Aid is making history. Madonna and Duran Duran are conquering the charts in neon and shoulder pads. The CD is arriving, the Sinclair C5 is flopping, and somewhere among 45 films jostling for summer box office attention – including Rambo 2 and A View to a Kill – a time-travelling teenager and his questionable scientist friend are about to become cinema royalty.
Back to the Future, directed by Robert Zemeckis (who’d go on to helm Forrest Gump and Cast Away), cost $19 million and released into a declining marketplace where ticket sales were down 14%. Its release date shifted numerous times. UK audiences had to wait until December to see it. None of that mattered.
It opened at number one, nearly recouped its budget in the first weekend, and went on to gross $388 million worldwide making it the highest-grossing film of 1985. It earned four Golden Globe nominations and one Academy Award – for Best Sound Effects Editing, which feels like a complete screwjob for a film this good.
The slow opener that teaches you everything
The episode spends time on what the lads call a “slow opener” – the long pre-Marty sequence of Doc’s gadget-filled house, the dog feeder, the news reports, the newspaper clippings about missing money. It’s one of cinema’s great examples of world-building that never feels like a lesson. By the time Michael J. Fox walks through the door you already know Doc Brown is brilliant, eccentric, dangerous, absent-minded, and probably another plug socket away from death.
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Tightly wound and endlessly rewatchable
The hosts cover the screenplay’s legendary efficiency – scenes that plant and pay off, a villain whose motivations are crystal clear, and the structural trick of having Marty accidentally interfere with his own parents’ meet-cute. AJ notes his kids wanted to rewatch it during the Easter holidays, and his son had screened it with mates just weeks before recording. That cross-generational pull, a 40-year-old film playing just as well to children in 2026 as it did to a 1985 audience, is the clearest evidence the film is operating at a different level entirely.
But the movie wasn’t without critique – one of the Patreon’s take was a fair reminder that “the perfect movie” and “a film that will define your childhood” are different things. Without the emotional wiring laid down at age eight, even Back to the Future is just a very well-made time travel comedy.
Up next
Next week’s Fast Forward episode is inspired by the BTTF DeLorean and tackles the greatest cars in movie history. You can check it out here.
Now make like a tree and get out of here.
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