This week’s Book Cover Throwback: Back to the Future!

I realize that this comes a day after Back to the Future day (October 21, 2015), but yesterday was not a Thursday. I also realize that this is a movie and not a book, but in honor of yesterday, it’s worth the change.

What I Love about This Cover:  As a child, I wondered why he was standing so close to the car fire, whether or not the car would explode and kill him, and what was bothering him about his watch. Were the batteries dead? Needless to say, it made me question and caught my attention.

What I Don’t Love about This Cover: The car looks…weird. Warped. That’s not how it should look.

Something else of note:

So yesterday, many TV channels were playing all three movies on loops. I watched through them while I worked and something plot-holey caught my eye.

In movie 2, Jennifer (Marty’s girlfriend) is left at her future home by the future police. While there, she sees the future Marty be fired and takes the print out that says “You’re Fired.” She sticks this paper in her pocket.

Later, the Doc and Marty leave Jennifer and Einstein (Doc’s dog) in the future. When Marty brings this up, Doc Brown tells him that it doesn’t matter. If they undo all the damage, that future won’t have existed so Jennifer and Einstein won’t be stuck there. The movie goes on and finishes, but remember this detail.

In movie 3, Marty goes way back in the past to rescue the Doc. At the end of the movie, the train they use to send Marty back to the present goes over a cliff. Marty assumes Doc Brown is dead. He goes and finds Jennifer and tells her what’s happened. On the way to the train tracks, Marty avoids racing some idiot and thus, avoids a crucial point in his future that would have been bad. Jennifer pulls out the print out memo from her pocket at the message (You’re Fired!) disappears.

As they arrive at debris of the time machine, a train comes along. It’s Doc Brown (+ family) on a steam powered, train time-machine. He’s alive. In confusion, Jennifer asks Doc Brown about the disappearance of the memo, and Doc Brown makes a comment about how the future is unwritten.

So here’s my plot hole–

If Jennifer and Einstein were never in the future because that future never existed (because it was undone by the actions of Marty and Doc Brown), then why does she still have the piece of paper? If that future never happened, she never went to there and thus, never got the memo.

That entire set of scenes makes no sense.

Oops.

Happy Belated Back to the Plot-Hole Future Day!

Click here to view other Book Cover Throwbacks.