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Actually, Marty Didn’t Go Back to the Future: Graphing the Train Scene of BTTF3

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41–46 of 46 posts

Re: Actually, Marty Didn’t Go Back to the Future: Graphing the Train Scene of BTTF3

#41
post #5

Well I saw the movie, and Marty did make it back to 1985. The problem is that the analysis assumes that every second in the film corresponds to a second in real life. That's not true, the shots overlap in real life but are shown after one another in a sequence to make showing what happened (possibly at the same time) more practical. This overlapping is often used in dramatic representations of real events in movies.…

It's more than just non-overlapping scenes. Most movies play very loose with time, drawing it out to make it seem more dramatic. See also: any movie with a bomb counting down to zero.

Re: Actually, Marty Didn’t Go Back to the Future: Graphing the Train Scene of BTTF3

#42
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that once he leaves 1985 to go to 2015, from everyone else's perspective he would have effectively disappeared. He (and Jennifer) wouldn't be around anymore to grow up and have a family, so there'd be no future Marty or Jennifer to visit. At most, Marty could visit his parents, who would have continued to exist the whole time and would be pretty shocked to see him after he went missing for 30 years. In…

> He (and Jennifer) wouldn't be around anymore to grow up and have a family, so there'd be no future Marty or Jennifer to visit. Why? They could travel to the future, meet their future selves, then travel back to the past, live their lives and in the future meet their time-travelling selves.

That's true. BTTF isn't normally predeterministic [1] though, but maybe the desired result could be achieved through a couple of history rewrites. For example, young Marty visits a weird future where old Marty doesn't exist, then he goes back to the original present to live normally. We can then envision a replay of young Marty's experience in the future, wherein things fade in/out around him to create a world where old Marty exists too.

[1] By predeterministic I'm thinking of something like Crichton's Timeline, where the characters visit the past not to change it but to fulfil it (i.e. there is no rewriting or branching, their existence in the past is a constant).

Re: Actually, Marty Didn’t Go Back to the Future: Graphing the Train Scene of BTTF3

#43

...but considering that they only need to fall from an height of 258.88 feet to reach 88 miles per hours Marty most likely did made it to the future! Unfortunately he then died instantly by hitting the the bottom of the ravine once he arrived to 1985. :(

You only need to die instantly in that timeline.

1. Write yourself a note to keep a jerry can in the Delorean, put it on your person.

2. Set destination time back by a week.

3. Marty gets in Delorean and Doc pushes it off of cliff.

4. Next of kin and Marty read note given to them at the morgue.

5. Plot of BttF 3 evaporates.

Edit: This is too complicated. Just visit Western Union again and send a second letter about the jerry can.

Edit 2: Wait, there should be a 2nd Delorean in 1885 after Marty arrives. So Doc's Delorean should have some fuel unless Doc was joy-riding. I'm really not thinking 4th dimensionally.

Re: Actually, Marty Didn’t Go Back to the Future: Graphing the Train Scene of BTTF3

#44
post #6
post #3

> it’s a shame Doc didn’t equip the Delorean with Tesla electric motors when he visited 2015. That would have made things easier considering the Delorean was equipped with a working Mr. Fusion generator in 1885 He put flying car parts into it. Why the hell would he want some lousy electric motors?

Was it working? I always thought Mr Fusion was damaged along with the time circuits when the Delorean was struck by lightning.

No, Mr Fusion is fine (hence no need to go trying to find ONE POINT TWENTY ONE JIGGAWATTS). The flying circuits were fried.

Re: Actually, Marty Didn’t Go Back to the Future: Graphing the Train Scene of BTTF3

#45
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? 1. Marty leaves timeline to go to 2015 2. Marty meets Marty-F in the 2015 3. Marty returns to 1985 and grows up to be Marty-F. Of course this means that he knew, but that's okay.

The problem is that once he leaves 1985 to go to 2015, from everyone else's perspective he would have effectively disappeared. He (and Jennifer) wouldn't be around anymore to grow up and have a family, so there'd be no future Marty or Jennifer to visit. At most, Marty could visit his parents, who would have continued to exist the whole time and would be pretty shocked to see him after he went missing for 30 years. In…

>He (and Jennifer) wouldn't be around anymore to grow up and have a family, so there'd be no future Marty or Jennifer to visit. At most, Marty could visit his parents, who would have continued to exist the whole time and would be pretty shocked to see him after he went missing for 30 years.

They did that all after he got back. He left and returned at the same point, so from the perspective of an observer outside his timeline he was never actually gone.

Re: Actually, Marty Didn’t Go Back to the Future: Graphing the Train Scene of BTTF3

#46
post #39

Enough all ready with this 88 mph requirement before the flux capacitor is activated. All they have to do is point the DeLorean east and the rotation of the earth will do the rest. Not to mention the earths orbital speed round the sun, the suns trajectory round the milky way and the milky ways trajectory in relation to the inertial reference frame, that's about 1.3 million miles per hour in the direction of Virgo. Be…

Well, relativity tells us there are no preferred reference frames. But I believe relativity also tells us that time travel is not possible.

There are more plausible depictions of travelling through time out there than using a DeLorean travelling at 88 mph. Take Primer for instance:

"Primer (2004)" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/

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