Five Unlikely Movie Choices

You misunderstand.

I wasn't referring to merely the existence of time travel stories in Star Trek or the simple things like going back to meet one's parents, which happened in the first BTTF.

I was referring to the more complex mechanics seen in the first sequel like:

1. Meeting oneself at roughly the same age (rather than adults meeting themselves as children).

2. Keeping track of parallel timelines at different periods in history and hoping the audience can keep up with you (something done much easier in a book that a movie).

3. Showing effects of changes to the timeline without bothering to explain them at all (such as the erasure of the elderly Biff Tannen character) because only the audience is aware of it happening and there is no character to explain it.

4. Making paradoxes a specific plot point rather than trying to merely paper over them in the writing process.

I also never said BTTF2 was the first to do all of this, but they were the first movie to do it at well as they did, all at once in one story.

In addition, while Star Trek was doing time travel in the 60's, they were not doing the complicated stuff you see in BTTF2. They were doing more simple butterfly effect stuff.

It was only later where the more complicated stuff I described above became "old hat" in the Star Trek (and other) series.

There's a reason that Carl Sagan told Robert Zemeckis that BTTF2 was "the best movie ever made based on the science of time travel." LINK

I happen to share his opinion and it was this quote that I had in mind when I picked BTTF2.

Of those, I've seen 12 Monkeys and Moulin Rouge. I keep thinking of checking out TFE, but I've never pulled the trigger.

Ohhh! The Fifth Element is the most entertaining stupid movie I will watch over and over.

About Time is a high recommend. Don't read any reviews or write-ups. It looks like a simple rom-com but it will surprise you at least a couple of times. It might blow your mind. You will likely cry. I rewatched it yesterday.

Out of the Past...from 1947?

Speaking of that. There are some glaring inconsistencies. Like why is the old Biff able to come back to his own time after he changed it but our heroes can't? No matter how you try to explain it, something is not right.

For what it’s worth, there’s actually a bigger problem with BTTF2. In spite of my earlier praise, I will readily admit that in a system in which the timeline is mutable, rather than fixed, jumping to the future should not allow you to see yourself as an older person. You should vanish from the timeline and history should go on without you.

When Doc, Marty and Jennifer got to 2015, it should have been a future in which the three of them had vanished 30 years ago to the great shock and dismay of their family and friends.

The creators admit this, but they had painted themselves in a corner with the end of BTTF1 (they had not originally planned on a sequel) and thought the audience would feel cheated if presented with the above scenario.

One of the great things about it is that, to too many people, "dark comedy" means either cruel or outrageously vulgar.

"Look, I've got a handicapped guy falling down a hill and landing in a pile of dog poop! Har! Har! What are you complaining about? It's dark comedy, you uncultured swine!"

"Look, this guy dressed as Santa got caught [doing something incredibly vulgar] with a [insert beloved toy from your childhood here] in a toy store on Christmas Eve! Har! Har! What are you complaining about? It's dark comedy, you uncultured swine!"

Raising Arizona is a dark comedy, but it is dark comedy done right. It is neither cruel, nor extremely vulgar. If anything, it actually manages to come across as sweet. That's not easy to do.

Any idiot can be be cruel or outrageously vulgar. A dark, but sweet comedy takes skill.

I don't think it's a question of lag, which wouldn't make much sense if you stop to think about it, it's a question of probability. That is the more probable was it that Marty's father wouldn't marry (to keep it clean) his mother the more of Marty and his siblings would disappear from the picture. The change though when things were close to certain was instantaneous, as when Marty finally destroys the book, everything goes back to normal in a matter of seconds, same thing when his father works up a nerve and pushes the bully aside. Marty recovers almost immediately.

Your observations are legit. It's better to take the movie as a "not so serious movie."

It's almost impossible to do a really good time travel movie because of the paradoxes. One of my favourites is Looper, which also has its problems.