In Back to the Future, Marty McFly is a normal kid growing up in 1985. His dialogue that he uses is that of a teenager in 1985. Marty uses the word heavy which was slang for deep, hard to deal with, or hard to understand. Furthermore, heavy was also slang for cool, awesome, and good. Just as technology was evolving in 1985 so was the American language evolving, things that meant one thing in 1955 had evolved into separate meanings in 1985 in the American language. In 1955 Marty used “heavy” several times when the Doc Brown of 1955 explained scientific principles of both time travel and the space time continuum. Doc Brown of 1955 was unsure why in 1985 everything was so “heavy”; however he did assume that the gravitational pull on objects in 1985 made things heavier in the future. The use of heavy is not the only word that was misunderstood in 1955; Marty wrongly assumes that in 1955 that the Pepsi Company produces a sugar-free Pepsi-Cola and asks for a Pepsi free. The soda shop employee tells Marty that he must pay for a Pepsi and will not be getting it for free; Marty in turn asked for a Tab. Marty’s response invokes anger in the employee saying “hey listen pal you are not getting a free Pepsi or starting a tab”. With taking dialogue of 1985 showed that Marty McFly was actually from 1985 and not the time of 1955 that he was transported to when he reached 88 mph after activating the flux capacitor in the DeLorean.
Just like the dialogue the music chosen fit the timeframe of either 1985 or 1955 and because music also has evolved over the three decades that is spanned in this movie the audience could tell which timeframe Marty was in. During the time that Marty was in 1955 music from different time periods was used twice the first time was in the scene to scare his then teenage father George. Marty McFly places headphones on George and plays Van Halen shocking George awake. This starts a sound effect that will be discussed later in this blog. The second time that music is pulled from a different timeframe during this movie is Johnny B. Goode; a Chuck Berry rock ‘n roll song from 1958; towards the end of the song Marty goes into the electric guitar riff that can only be defined as in 1985 era music rendition of Johnny B. Goode.
Not very many sound effects are use during this movie, but there are a lot of sound enhancements that are made like the time that George hits Biff, or when Marty hits Biff. There were some sound effects that were not just sound enhancements in the movie. The sound effect of the Time Machine traveling through time gives it a science-fiction sound just like when the Enterprise from the Star Trek series travels to warp speed. In the Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan scene you can hear the mechanical breathing just as in any episode of Star Wars were the antagonist Darth Vader appears. This mechanical breathing ties to a familiar 1980’s character that the audience can relate to which is not distracting from the movie.
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