Welcome Back to the Future!

Yesterday was the day that all fans of the Back to the Future movie trilogy have been waiting for. Those who have seen the second movie in the series may have noticed that the characters, Marty McFly, Dr Emmet Brown and Jennifer, travel to October 21st 2015 (any other date is false or part of a hoax) in Dr. Brown’s car, a time-travelling DeLorean. As you can see, we’re still nowhere near the future the movie displayed.

Let’s start with the hoverboard. I imagine the any fan of the Back to the Future franchise would like it to be like in the video below.

Sorry, everyone, this video is a well-made hoax. The closest anyone’s ever made to a proper hoverboard, can be seen in the two videos below.

This one was made by the famous car company, Lexus.

Then we have this one by the hoverboard company, Hendo.

But these are still far from perfect and don’t work on all surfaces, which makes them pretty useless outside their companies’ own skateboard ramps.

Next we have holograms. Remember the commercial for Saw 19 in the movie? Dream on, people! The closest I’ve read about so far, is some sparkly lights and I’m personally not sure if this is a hoax as well or just not well-developed yet.

And the movie, Saw 19? It doesn’t exist, but someone did make a parody film with the same name…

Let’s continue on with Mr. Fusion. It makes me sad to mention that there’s no little container on people’s vehicles that turns trash into enough electricity to power up their engines. This did not stop Toyota from using the idea to market their hydrogen-driven car, Toyota Mirai.

I’m not an engineer, but the connection between Mr. Fusion and Toyota Mirai still seems a bit far-fetched to me…

“But what about the self-tying shoes?”, I hear someone ask. Um, I don’t know how to answer this one. Nike did make a big fuzz about making the shoes, called Nike Air Mag, work before the deadline (which was yesterday), but only 2 versions of the shoe (a Halloween replica Universal Studios had made and a replica that Nike actually made) were produced and none of them do what they were known to do in the movie – tie the shoelaces by themselves, like in the video below.

Nike only made 1500 pairs of their version of the shoes, which were donated to The Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. The founder of the foundation, Michael J. Fox (who’s also the actor who plays Marty McFly in the movie trilogy) even got to try the shoes on.

But where Nike failed, a fan of the movie trilogy succeeded!

Not only should Nike hire this person, the mechanism needs to be speeded up a bit for the sake of accuracy!

There are more stuff to be mentioned here, like the self-drying jacket Marty and his son are wearing and the refrigerating fruit storage above the kitchen table in their future home, but let’s not waste time on more flaws. Let’s move on to a more important question instead. How come our October 21st 2015 is nothing like the October 21st 2015 in Back to the Future 2? No one answers this question better than Dr. Brown himself.

Those who have met me may have heard me say this once or twice – knowing the future changes the future. Even if it didn’t, you never know what could happen if you tweek something in the past, like saving a woman from crashing into a ravine. Even Dr. Brown knew this and had his doubts, but got used to the idea in the end of the third movie and kept travelling back and forward in time, tweeking it even further in the game. Who’s to say which timeline we’re in now? Not that it matters. Not only is this fiction, but everything in life is not up to destiny alone. We make our own choices in life too. Everything else is coincidental.