A little girl sits in front of a TV screen, staring in wide-eyed fascination at a frizzy-haired scientist, his teenage lab assistant and their time-traveling DeLorean sports car.
It has been 26 years since “Back to the Future Part II” characters Marty McFly and Doc Brown traveled forward in time to Oct. 21, 2015, and the little girl, Jess DePrest, has grown up waiting.
In the “Back to the Future” film trilogy, which began in 1985, Doc turns his DeLorean into a time machine and accidentally sends young Marty back to 1955, when his parents fell in love. In the second movie, Marty races from 1989 into the future, to 2015, and watches his adult life unravel.
The first film was the highest grossing of its year, winning the People’s Choice Award for Favorite Motion Picture and the Academy Award for Best Effects, Sound Effects Editing. “Back to the Future” racked in three other Oscar nominations and four Golden Globe nominations.
Today, “Back to the Future” fans celebrate Marty’s journey to 2015 and the trilogy’s legacy in pop culture.
For DePrest, a UCLA graduate student and self-confessed “Back to the Future” super fan, the day will consist of dressing up as Marty with her roommate as Doc Brown, and running around campus, pretending to be from 1989. She said she already hosted a party last week in honor of the occasion, decorating her TV with a cutout of the Courthouse Mall and creating a photo booth with the Lone Pine Mall in the background.
“I baked the Jailbird Joey cake from the movie,” DePrest said. “Once the (cake) scene came on, I came out with the cake and said the lines (from the scene) at the same time and slammed it down on the table in between everybody.”
DePrest said she has a number of costumes from the movies, including a DeLorean dress complete with twisting wires and the obligatory flux capacitor, and her favorite, her Marty costume, which she has been assembling for two years from pieces of clothing similar to those in the movie.
However, DePrest won’t be the only Marty McFly on campus. Leah Steuer, also a graduate student, said she has her costume ready and is looking forward to meeting other fans.
For Steuer, “Back to the Future” stands out among other movies that explore the time-traveling trope.
“In so many adventure movies, the past and the future are these distant, existential concepts, but in ‘Back to the Future,’ they feel so accessible,” Steuer said.
Even though she first saw the movies when she was seven or eight years old, DePrest said her obsession with the duo’s madcap adventures only reached its fruition in high school when she decided she wanted to become an archaeologist. DePrest believes the strong connection the audience feels with the film’s two central characters makes the series unique.
“I think for me a large part of it was the idea of time-travel, I really wanted to explore other time periods and discover what they were like,” DePrest said.
Jim Fleury, a UCLA graduate student who is also a fan of the series, said the writing is what makes the films great for him. Fleury first saw the movies when he was five or six years old, and he remembers being blown away by the idea of a sequel. He said he was delighted when he realized there were two more movies.
“Despite the movies ending with a ‘to be continued’ screen, I was too young to read and it didn’t give it away for me,” Fleury said.
For Fleury, the films’ minute attention to detail warrants a second and third viewing. Each film sets up an idea at the beginning which comes full circle, Fleury said. For instance, when Marty destroys a pine tree in the past, the legendary Twin Pines Mall becomes Lone Pine Mall when he returns to the present.
Fans become attached to the movies through these details, Fleury said. He believes they’re the reason why the trilogy has had a long-lasting legacy in pop culture.
Today, DePrest’s long wait is over. The little girl who watched the trilogy countless times can finally celebrate.
“I’ve been looking forward to this day for 20 years,” DePrest said. “When you’re seven or eight, you think ‘Woah, 2015 is far away.’ But now it’s come and I cannot believe it’s here, I’m so excited.”