Ever since its release in the 1980s, Back to the Future has been widely considered to be one of the best movies of all time, and the film’s star Michael J. Fox feels that it still holds up. Fox, who played Marty McFly in the original film and its two sequels, recently detailed to CBS Mornings how he just so happened to catch the film airing on television while doing his holiday decorating last month. The next thing he knew, Fox had gotten sucked into the film, despite being one of its lead stars, as he was captivated by the movie’s quality along with his own performance.
“Putting the lights on the tree, decorations on the tree, and my son was down and two of my daughters. I went to get something in the other room and it was on, [the] TV was on. It was Back to the Future, it was right at the beginning, I think the car in the parking lot,” Fox said. “Then, after about 20 minutes [my family] realized I was gone. It took them like 20 minutes or a half an hour to realize me and the dog had left. They said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘Watching Back to the Future.’ They said, ‘Why are you watching Back to the Future?’ I said, ‘It’s really good! I’m really good in this.’ I hadn’t realized that. All that crazy stuff was good. It was just what I was doing to survive the moment.”
He added, “My performance in that movie was just trying to be alive… I was doing Family Ties in the daytime and Back to the Future at night. It was just this real experience. So I had this moment, now, wham, with all this stuff I had in my life, where I could sit and look at this kid and say, ‘Wow, he did alright. He had a lot to deal with and he was dancing as fast as he could, but he fulfilled the role and did a good job.’”
Back to the Future went on to bring back Fox and Christopher Lloyd for two sequels before the story came to an end. There have been video games and an animated series, but no new films in the Back to the Future series since. Hollywood ha been churning out reboots left and right in recent years, but the reason this hasn’t happened to this particular movie is that original director Robert Zemeckis has always been adamant that no new sequel or reboot can ever happen.
“That can’t happen until both Bob and I are dead,” Zemeckis told The Telegraph in 2015, referring to producer Bob Gale, as both would need to OK a new movie for it to be greenlit. “And then I’m sure they’ll do it, unless there’s a way our estates can stop it. I mean, to me, that’s outrageous. Especially since it’s a good movie. It’s like saying ‘Let’s remake Citizen Kane. Who are we going to get to play Kane?’ What folly, what insanity is that? Why would anyone do that?”
Fortunately, Back to the Future is a timeless classic that still holds up to this day. The original, along with the sequels, will always be there for fan to go back and enjoy, much like Michael J. Fox did himself over the holidays.