by Lindy West
The future is sort of like the present but more bitchin’. Like, they still mail things by having a literal guy pick them up and carry them from one place to another (LOL), but the mailbox has a COMPUTER ATTACHED, so, impressive. Everyone is wearing wacky pants, the gas station is a robot, and all the cars look like logs of dook. Also, instead of skateboards they have these things that are exactly like skateboards except 400 percent more dangerous. It is just a trip, I tell you.
Marty heads to Café ’80s, which is an ’80s-themed cafe where all the patrons are dressed up in “vintage” ’80s clothes. (Uh, you know people don’t actually wear period costume when they go to novelty restaurants, right? I also don’t dress like a toucan when I go to the Rainforest Café.) Their special today is “mesquite grilled sushi,” which is just crazy, because who has ever heard of such a thing!? Only in 2015!!! Marty runs into Biff, who is old now, but not too old to call Marty a butthead.
Then another Biff comes in! Except it’s not Biff, it’s GRIFF, Biff’s grandson! He looks exactly like Biff, just like Marty looks exactly like his own son, because apparently this universe has that Lady and the Tramp disease where all the boy babies look like the dad and all the girl babies look like the mom. “Genetics.” Hey, I have a question. Who’s the Biff of Marty’s generation? Who’s Griff’s dad? Does he look like Biff too? Or does the Biff skip a generation? Doesn’t anyone in this world ever fucking notice that there are only, like, four guys?
While Griff yells at Biff, Marty takes a sec to get clowned on by Elijah Wood and some other terrible urchin. Just then, Marty Jr.—who is a shambling simpleton, for reasons unexplained—comes in for his afternoon bullying appointment. Griff and his hench-griffs offer the customary 2015 pleasantries, inquiring after Marty’s scrote, etc., and then try to persuade him to do this mysterious crime that’s going to end his days. Old Marty, listening from his hiding place behind the counter, is appalled to discover that his future son is a “complete wimp” who can’t even say no to a large, violent gang of Lost Boys extras with mercury poisoning. For shame.
Luckily, Griff tosses Young Marty over the counter in a murderous rage, so Old Marty is able to do a switcheroo, hop up, and take the place of his wimpy, terrible son. And double luckily, Griff calls Marty “chicken” almost immediately, triggering the ancient warlock’s hex moste foule that causes Marty to morph into ULTRA-MARTY. He now has the strength of both a teenage boy and a chicken.
Marty punches Griff in the tooth and then steals a little child’s hoverboard, which she probably got for her birthday, and zooms away. The hooligans chase him, but Marty is the lithest and craftiest hoverboarder of them all, so he wins. Then, the character of Griff, along with this entire save-Young-Marty-from-making-a-horrible-mistake story line, is abandoned and NEVER SEEN AGAIN.
Instead, Marty goes to the antique store and buys a sports almanac, determined to take it back to 1985 so he can become a billionaire and eradicate chickens. Doc is like, “BRRRRLLRRLBBLBBBLLBLBBLLLBLLBLBL, YOU DILDO, NO SPORTS ALMANACS IS THE NUMBER-TWO RULE OF TIME TRAVEL!” (The number-one rule of time travel, as far as I can discern from time travel movies, is to never, ever use it to correct any of the catastrophic sins of history, such as by killing Hitler or giving a machine gun to every enslaved person in the antebellum South, but instead mainly just try to pass your history report and hornily scam on babes.) Marty, however, does not care about the fabric of space-time; he cares only for diamonds and rubies.
Just then, the cops find Jennifer’s corpse in the garbage, scan her DNA, and get the address where Future Adult Jennifer lives with Marty and their garbage kids. They drop her off there, which is hella dangerous, Doc explains, because if she meets her future self it could “unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum.” It was totally worth it to bring her, though! And thanks, by the way, for having literally two female characters in this entire movie—one of whom spends it either comatose in the garbage or yapping about wedding dresses, and the other who’s trapped in a sham marriage being abused by a sweaty gargoyle for sixty years.
Old Biff overhears Marty and Doc talking about the time machine, so he follows them to Jennifer’s house and then steals the DeLorean, along with the sports almanac, while Marty’s just wandering aimlessly around in the street for no reason. Biff drives back to 1955—he doesn’t understand basic words and phrases, but he can intuit how to use a ramshackle time machine?—and gives the sports almanac to Young Biff so that Young Biff can become Rich Biff. Then Old Biff comes back to 2015, puts the time machine back, and sneaks away like everything’s cool.
Now, here’s my question. If Future Biff gives the sports almanac to Past Biff, and Past Biff uses it to get mega-rich, then doesn’t Future Biff turn into Rich Biff? How does he go back to the same regular Hill Valley where Doc and Marty are searching for Jennifer? Wouldn’t he instantly transform into Rich Biff? And doesn’t that Hill Valley not exist anymore? And, like, at some point in the Rich Biff timeline, shouldn’t Rich Biff have to travel back to 1955 to give the almanac to Young Biff? But where would Rich Biff get a time machine? TIME TRAVEL DOESN’T MAKE SENSE, AND I THINK WE SHOULD MAKE IT ILLEGAL.
Meanwhile, at Jennifer and Marty’s house, Young Jennifer is hiding in the closet and learning tons of boring secrets. For example, “About thirty years ago,” says Lorraine (who’s really supposed to be at Rich Biff’s velveteen sex casino right now, but okeydokey), “[Marty] tried to prove that he wasn’t chicken and he ended up in an automobile accident…that accident caused a chain reaction that sent Marty’s life right down the tubes!” Specifically, he injured his hand, and therefore never had the chance to teach Black people how to play rock and roll! Quelle horreur!
Then Middle-Aged Marty comes home and we see that he is beige and ineffectual, like a puddle, or a dry chicken breast (JUST KIDDING, MARTY, OH MY GOD, PLEASE KEEP IT TOGETHER). At this point, you assume that stopping Old Young Marty from injuring his hand, thereby making his family hella pathetic, is going to become one of the objectives of the movie, but it’s not. In fact, as far as I noticed, it’s never mentioned again. I guess, once Marty and Doc fix the whole Rich Biff situation, the McFly family is just left to wallow in mediocrity forevermore? Which, don’t get me wrong—I AGREE WITH. If time travel ever becomes a reality, I don’t think its primary utility should be for middle-class white families to erase the minor consequences of their own incompetence. But couldn’t we get some resolution here? Anywhere?
Anyway, then Flea’s big face appears on a screen to cyberbully Middle-Aged Marty into doing some illegal money business. Marty’s boss immediately notices the money crime and fires Marty via one hundred faxes (because in the future, they still send things by fax, just less efficiently). Then Old Jennifer comes home and sees Young Jennifer and they both scream and nothing comes of it, even though Doc said it could potentially END THE UNIVERSE, because the internal logic of this movie is nonexistent.
Doc, Marty, and Young Jennifer go back to the past, and Doc vows that he’s going to destroy the time machine “and tackle the other greatest mystery of the universe: WOMEN.” Yes, I can understand why you think of women as a great mystery because if the gender composition of this movie is any indication, you have never talked to one.
Doc and Marty abandon an unconscious-again Jennifer in public for a second time, this time just dumping her limp body on her porch. Marty goes to his house and discovers that a completely different family lives there! And Hill Valley has been transformed into a lawless wasteland full of bikers, tanks, slackers, neon bail bonds, and toxic waste! And everybody worships Rich Biff, “Hill Valley’s number-one citizen and America’s greatest living folk hero!” Marty swings by the Biff Museum and learns that Young Biff used the sports almanac to win every single sports bet in history, and then used the money to buy Marty’s mom, and uses Marty’s mom as a place to keep his penis. Bogus.
All of a sudden, Billy Zane comes out of nowhere, like Billy Zane does, and bonks Marty on the head and puts him to bed
in his mommy’s scarlet boudoir. When Marty comes to, he thinks he’s back at his regular house, but instead, OOPS. SEXUAL MOM. After remarking upon the size of his mom’s cans (attention, men: YOU DO NOT ALWAYS HAVE TO WEIGH IN), Marty comes face-to-face with Rich Biff for the first time. Rich Biff is mad because Marty is a lazy bum who is supposed to be in Switzerland, and Biff has invested many Biff-bucks in Marty being in Switzerland, so WHY IS MARTY HANGING OUT IN BIFF’S SEX-CLAM!?
Here commences a scene that I found so traumatizing as a child that I believe it rerouted the development of my entire worldview. Biff calls Marty a “butthead, just like his old man was,” and Lorraine is like, “Don’t you dare speak that way about George! You’re not even half the man he was!” and says she’s going to leave Biff once and for all, and then Biff throws Lorraine violently to the high-end sex-linoleum and sneers, “Who’s gonna pay for your cosmetic surgery, Lorraine?” And Lorraine, gesturing to her magnum jugs, goes, “You were the one who wanted me to get these things. IF YOU WANT ’EM BACK, YOU CAN HAVE ’EM.”
Okay. Now. When I first saw this movie at age…seven?, I misunderstood Biff’s next line so egregiously that it has traumatized me for life—such that, despite having seen this movie multiple times since 1989, I never noticed until now. What Biff actually says is, “I’ll cut off your kids,” an effective threat because Lorraine is a devoted mother and Marty is a hapless butthead who can’t even be in Switzerland properly. Solid leverage. But what seven-year-old Lindy thought Biff said was, “I’ll cut off your TITS.”
BECAUSE THEY WERE JUST TALKING ABOUT HER TITS IN THE PREVIOUS SENTENCE, YOU KNOW??? CAN I EVEN BE BLAMED?
Anyway, if you want to turn your little girl into a wet-blanket feminazi killjoy, just make sure that, once in a while, a male character in one of her beloved PG movies uses the threat of sexual mutilation to keep a female character trapped in a physically, sexually, and emotionally abusive relationship for life! It works!
Lorraine opts to stay with Biff (which made way more sense when it was her tits she was going to lose, not Marty’s trust fund, TBH), and tells Marty that his dad is dead. Marty barges in on Biff while he’s getting sensual with babes in his hot tub hot water machine to ask him where and when he got the dang sports almanac, and then Biff just reveals his entire sinister scheme for no reason and then tries to murder Marty. Doc rescues Marty in the DeLorean, beefs Biff in the face, and they fly to the middle of Back to the Future I to yoink the sports almanac and stop a shitty person from becoming rich (because woe betide us all if THAT EVER HAPPENS).
Okay, so then there’s a whole bunch of malarkey wherein Young Marty number two runs around trying to slip his little fingers into Young Biff’s warm, almanac-filled butt-pocket, while avoiding Young Marty number one, Young Lorraine, and Young Crispin Glover’s Reanimated Lawsuit Corpse so that he doesn’t accidentally ruin time again (like you give a fuck, you cavalier goofball!). He finally gets the almanac, drops some sandbags upon Biff’s goons, killing them instantly, loses the almanac again, gets the almanac back again, and then drowns Biff in manure again, killing him instantly.
Then Joe Flaherty shows up with a special delivery: it’s an advertisement for the next movie! Then time marches on, killing us all eventually.
RATING: 5/10 DVDs of The Fugitive.
I’d Prefer a Highway Away from the Danger Zone, but Okay
Controversial yet objectively factual opinion: Anthony Edwards is hotter than Tom Cruise in Top Gun. First of all, the mustache? WORKS. Second of all, he’s fun! Third of all, Maverick is such a desperate, narcissistic, posturing, alienating, twerpy little prince that I find myself disorientingly at odds with a former self who long ago considered Tom Cruise to be attractive. Who was she? That woman who could look at a picture of young Tom and not flash immediately to this jittery rat terrier with a barely contained rage problem, a monomaniacal fixation on personal glory at the expense of the safety of everyone around him, and an approach to women that can charitably be described as Biff-esque? I don’t know her.1 Fourth of all, Maverick’s hair is bad! It needs to be EITHER SHORTER OR LONGER.2
Maverick is the villain of Top Gun.
I hadn’t seen Top Gun as an adult, and what I found watching it in my thirties was equal parts bloodcurdling and blood…emulsifying. Like, yes, watching movie stars in their electric youth will never not be life-affirming, as close to the pure beating heart of art as you can get, even if they are just yelling nonsense about planes, and the unapologetic homoeroticism is, frankly, woke as hell (?). Also, Meg Ryan is so good in this! So louche and alive! But, on the other hand, like I said, if he were a real person I would shoot Maverick with a crossbow.
Maverick is a navy pilot who’s out flying around with his friends in their planes when they encounter some…Russians? Who are the enemies in this movie? They never say! Maverick can’t shoot this son of a bitch, so he decides to see if he can have a lil fun with him. He goes upside down and takes a Polaroid giving the son of a bitch the finger. Dude, that jet is really expensive. How about you be a maverick in your own plane that you buy with your own allowance?
Meanwhile, Maverick’s wingman, Cougar, is buggin’. He almost got missiled by one of the enemies, and now he’s too freaked out to land, which, is that a real disease? The navy’s take appears to be, “We’ll just let him fly around until he runs out of fuel and crashes into the sea, oh well,” (???) but Maverick goes against orders and escorts Cougar back down to the aircraft carrier. In the first of about infinity times that Maverick breaks the rules and is rewarded for it, he and his friend Goose get picked to go to TOPGUN, an elite fighter pilot combat weapons academy training fly gun bad boy bang bang school in San Diego.
Maverick is so excited about San Diego that he rides his motorcycle next to the fighter plane runway and he is racing the plane and the plane takes off and Maverick does a big fist pump!! Yeah!!!! Boys rock!
At TOPGUN, Maverick and Goose meet their instructor, Viper (Tom Skerrit), their nemesis, Iceman (Val Kilmer), and all the other guys in the program: Sniffer, Stinky, Stumpy, Candle, Bandit, Bratwurst, Rapunzel, LilHorsie, Dustpan, Corncob, Marge, PeePeeBoy, Flipper, and Bingbong. Maverick is pretty arrogant, but Viper likes that in a pilot (WHY?). Maverick is positive that he will be the number-one top gun (WHY?).
Goose: The list is long but distinguished.
Bingbong: Yeah, so’s my johnson.
I want to hate it, but “Yeah, so’s my johnson” is a real workhorse of a phrase. It goes with anything, like using florals as a neutral. Try it!
They go out to a bar to bother women—“this is what I call a target-rich environment”—and Maverick spots a bangin’ blonde he can’t wait to alienate with his long johnson. He and Goose ambush her and sing, “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” extremely aggressively into her face while the whole bar watches and laughs, and I tell you I would legitimately fucking catch on fire from embarrassment, but she’s just like, “Oh, you GUUUUUUYSSSSS,” as though this is a normal-adjacent thing to do. “I love that song! I’ve never seen that approach.” Truly praise be 2 the cinema for giving me this lifetime of extremely lifelike and believable female human characters!
Maverick’s like, “I’m Maverick” (why would you introduce yourself as your call sign!?!? She’s not a PLANE), and she’s like, “I’m Charlie,” and then she just kind of laughs at him and goes off to the little girls’ weewee room. And he follows her in there to ask her out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He’s so gross!
The next day, at plane Hogwarts, they’re having their first lesson with a civilian contractor who’s there to teach them about how planes stay up, and—OH SHIT. BATHROOM CHARLIE IS THE CIVILIAN CONTRACTOR. Maverick, did you sexually harass the civilian contractor AGAIN!?!? This happens every time we go to a new fighter boy pew pew school!
They discuss Maverick’s upside-down Polaroid maneuver, and Iceman asks, VALIDLY, “Who was covering Cougar while you were showboating?” Maverick is like, “Cougar was doing just fine,” but we know he wasn’t! He
almost crashed and died and then literally quit the navy! Why is nobody but Iceman fact-checking Maverick here!?
We’re clearly supposed to resent Iceman for trying to stifle Maverick’s unbelievably bitching bad-boy flying skills in the name of “SAFETY” and “REGARD FOR OTHERS” (boooooo!), but, you know what? I actually think being exceptional is bad. It’s dangerous and unfriendly and it prevents us from building robust systems of aid and care. It precludes forethought and planning (oh, a hero will save us!), and it undercuts accountability when talented people do bad things (oh, but he’s so special). My Norwegian mom always told me, “You’re not special—never think you’re better than anybody else,” and I’m glad she did! Now I listen to other people and treat them with respect and wear a mask at the grocery store! Exceptionalism is a grift!
Maverick defeats one of his other instructors, Jester, in a sortie exercise, but breaks the rules of engagement, which kind of seems like it should not count as winning? In celebration, he buzzes the tower and makes the tower man spill his coffee. Maverick loves to buzz the tower. (That’s what he calls it when he shaves his pubes.)
Iceman confronts Maverick afterward for breaking the rules, being reckless, and abandoning other pilots to do whatever he thinks will get him the most attention.
Iceman: You’re everyone’s problem. That’s because every time you go up in the air you’re unsafe. I don’t like you because you’re dangerous.
Wow, some very clear and constructive communication there from Iceman!
Maverick: That’s right. Ice…man. I am dangerous.
MAVERICK. IT IS BAD TO BE DANGEROUS. YOU ARE FLYING A MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR WARPLANE PRESUMABLY CHUNKY-STUFFED WITH WEAPONS THAT COULD KILL LOTS OF PEOPLE AND POTENTIALLY CAUSE A GLOBAL WAR IF USED IMPROPERLY.
HOW IS ICEMAN THE VILLAIN OF THIS MOVIE???????
BECAUSE HE LIKES SAFETY???????????????????????