1.21 Gigawatts (88 Miles per Hour)

They don't make movies like they used to. No, they sure don't. Used to be a time when a movie's script could conjure glamor all on its own, without all the razzle dazzle, newfangled stuff we see today. Now, they need three actors to play one person, and that guy's probably an asshole!

I was seven years old when I first saw Back to the Future*, and I'm not asking for a pat on the back or anything, but even then I knew that the film would define our generation as a bunch of selfish assholes.

Marty McFly is undeniably cool, but also is he a parent-hating jerk, a teenager more infatuated with his girlfriend and his father's car than caring for his wuss of a dad and his alcoholic mother. He couldn't care less about his brother or his sister, either.

Jesus, what a jerk.

He makes up for it in the end, though, by bringing his parents together. Because without the coolness of the son, the father would always remain a retarded square, I guess. Dig?

Sorry; Back to the Future is possibly my favorite film of all time, but it's a film that encourages assholes. Marty McFly makes his parents cool? How about he goes back in time and sees how nifty his parents already are/were? Instead, his father is an ineffectual loser, his mother a nymphomaniac, and he has to alter history to bring them together. Back to the Future is perennially touted as the film that made kids understand what their parents were like when they were growing up, but instead it's an 80's ode to youth: a hall pass to act like a jerk at any age.

Marty McFly is one of the biggest assholes in cinematic history, and it's only because of Doctor Emmett Brown that he redeems himself as a...

A what, exactly? A foil? A pairing?

God, I wish I weren't drunk at 2:58 AM and pondering over the What Ifs of the Back to the Future series.



* Thirty-seven years old when I came back and watched it again on the same day; and trust me, the polar ice caps are melting. Good news, though: the Soylent Green Chemical and Research Company has discovered a new way to synthesize food. I can't wait to taste mushrooms again! This constant diet of sand and gravel makes my teeth hurt.