Back to the Future is a movie with the luxury of time travel, but it doesn’t waste a single second of its 116-minute runtime, and that very much applies to its opening scene. Over 40 years later, Robert Zemeckis’ journey through time remains a timeless masterpiece, and a genuinely perfect blockbuster from beginning to end. Much of that is thanks to the adventures Marty McFly and Doc Brown go on throughout the movie, but its opening sequence provides a strong foundation to build on.

From 2001: A Space Odyssey‘s apes, soundtracked by “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” to Jurassic Park having dinosaur handles attacked by a Velociraptor, through to The Matrix kicking things off in style with Trinity, great opening scenes have shaped many classic Sci-Fi movies. Back to the Future‘s beginning is much more humble than those, and while it might not be quite as grand, and isn’t necessarily the best opening overall in isolation, the way it sets up everything that comes next remains peerless.

Back To The Future Sets Up The Entire Movie In Under 5 Minutes

Back to the Future begins in a room full of clocks, ticking so loudly and incessantly that it’s like something straight out of Captain Hook’s nightmares. This is, of course, establishing the movie’s central conceit, but as we move through what it turns out is Doc Brown’s workshop, there is so much more to behold.

Sticking with the clocks, pay close attention and one of them provides a clue to the movie’s ending: a figure can be seen hanging from the hands of one, which is both a wonderful homage to Harold Lloyd’s movie Safety Last!, and foreshadows Doc doing the same thing later on. It’s perhaps the best-known piece of setup in this opening scene, but it doesn’t stop there, as the rest of the sequence includes:

• A newspaper clipping reveals the Brown estate was sold to developers, highlighting Doc’s wealth. Later in the movie he explains he has spent almost his entire family fortune on his experiments, and this is how he was able to fund them.
• A TV news report on plutonium being stolen, with it being connected to Libyan terrorists, thus setting up them going after Doc later in the film.
• The plutonium itself also appears under a desk, revealing Doc was the one to take it, which he used in order to power the DeLorean to travel through time.
• Marty’s own introduction includes several key aspects of his character, all of which will come into play throughout Back To The Future: that they have an existing friendship, his skateboarding skills, and his love of playing guitar.

It’s a masterclass in exposition, because the movie never makes it feel like exposition. In just under five minutes, we get all of the key plot devices in place and a clear sense of Marty and Doc as characters, which makes it a flawless bit of setup.

Back To The Future’s Opening Scene Highlights Why The Movie Is So Rewatchable

There are a lot of reasons Back to the Future remains so beloved, but a big one is its rewatchability. It’s a movie that is as much of a joy and a total blast on the 88th viewing as it is on the first, and things like the opening scene are a good example as to why that is.

It’s so packed with things that are easy to miss on the first, second, or even third viewing. That’s why it feels like every six months someone goes viral with a video “discovering” the Twin Pines Mall/Lone Pine Mall change-up. It goes for things like the clock after Doc’s first time travel experiment with Einstein showing a minute passed, with the time at 1:21, foreshadowing the DeLorean needing 1.21 gigawatts of electricity to work, or his line about who wins the next 25 World Series factoring into the sequel.

Back to the Future is absolutely full of genius details, references, and Easter eggs, that you could only possibly notice by rewatching (or someone online pointing them out), showing the amount of care that went into the script and every frame of the movie. You might not be able to time travel back and see the film for the first time again, but it’s so good on rewatches that you don’t need to.

Release Date

July 3, 1985

Runtime

116 minutes

Director

Robert Zemeckis

Writers

Robert Zemeckis, Bob Gale

Producers

Bob Gale, Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy, Neil Canton