Then Middle-Aged Marty comes home and we see that he is beige and ineffectual, like a puddle, or a dry chicken breast (JUST KIDDING, MARTY, OH MY GOD, PLEASE KEEP IT TOGETHER). At this point, you assume that stopping Old Young Marty from injuring his hand, thereby making his family hella pathetic, is going to become one of the objectives of the movie, but it’s not. In fact, as far as I noticed, it’s never mentioned again. I guess, once Marty and Doc fix the whole Rich Biff situation, the McFly family is just left to wallow in mediocrity forevermore? Which, don’t get me wrong—I AGREE WITH. If time travel ever becomes a reality, I don’t think its primary utility should be for middle-class white families to erase the minor consequences of their own incompetence. But couldn’t we get some resolution here? Anywhere?
Anyway, then Flea’s big face appears on a screen to cyberbully Middle-Aged Marty into doing some illegal money business. Marty’s boss immediately notices the money crime and fires Marty via one hundred faxes (because in the future, they still send things by fax, just less efficiently). Then Old Jennifer comes home and sees Young Jennifer and they both scream and nothing comes of it, even though Doc said it could potentially END THE UNIVERSE, because the internal logic of this movie is nonexistent.
Doc, Marty, and Young Jennifer go back to the past, and Doc vows that he’s going to destroy the time machine “and tackle the other greatest mystery of the universe: WOMEN.” Yes, I can understand why you think of women as a great mystery because if the gender composition of this movie is any indication, you have never talked to one.
Doc and Marty abandon an unconscious-again Jennifer in public for a second time, this time just dumping her limp body on her porch. Marty goes to his house and discovers that a completely different family lives there! And Hill Valley has been transformed into a lawless wasteland full of bikers, tanks, slackers, neon bail bonds, and toxic waste! And everybody worships Rich Biff, “Hill Valley’s number-one citizen and America’s greatest living folk hero!” Marty swings by the Biff Museum and learns that Young Biff used the sports almanac to win every single sports bet in history, and then used the money to buy Marty’s mom, and uses Marty’s mom as a place to keep his penis. Bogus.
All of a sudden, Billy Zane comes out of nowhere, like Billy Zane does, and bonks Marty on the head and puts him to bed in his mommy’s scarlet boudoir. When Marty comes to, he thinks he’s back at his regular house, but instead, OOPS. SEXUAL MOM. After remarking upon the size of his mom’s cans (attention, men: YOU DO NOT ALWAYS HAVE TO WEIGH IN), Marty comes face-to-face with Rich Biff for the first time. Rich Biff is mad because Marty is a lazy bum who is supposed to be in Switzerland, and Biff has invested many Biff-bucks in Marty being in Switzerland, so WHY IS MARTY HANGING OUT IN BIFF’S SEX-CLAM!?
Here commences a scene that I found so traumatizing as a child that I believe it rerouted the development of my entire worldview. Biff calls Marty a “butthead, just like his old man was,” and Lorraine is like, “Don’t you dare speak that way about George! You’re not even half the man he was!” and says she’s going to leave Biff once and for all, and then Biff throws Lorraine violently to the high-end sex-linoleum and sneers, “Who’s gonna pay for your cosmetic surgery, Lorraine?” And Lorraine, gesturing to her magnum jugs, goes, “You were the one who wanted me to get these things. IF YOU WANT ’EM BACK, YOU CAN HAVE ’EM.”
Okay. Now. When I first saw this movie at age…seven?, I misunderstood Biff’s next line so egregiously that it has traumatized me for life—such that, despite having seen this movie multiple times since 1989, I never noticed until now. What Biff actually says is, “I’ll cut off your kids,” an effective threat because Lorraine is a devoted mother and Marty is a hapless butthead who can’t even be in Switzerland properly. Solid leverage. But what seven-year-old Lindy thought Biff said was, “I’ll cut off your TITS.”
BECAUSE THEY WERE JUST TALKING ABOUT HER TITS IN THE PREVIOUS SENTENCE, YOU KNOW??? CAN I EVEN BE BLAMED?
Anyway, if you want to turn your little girl into a wet-blanket feminazi killjoy, just make sure that, once in a while, a male character in one of her beloved PG movies uses the threat of sexual mutilation to keep a female character trapped in a physically, sexually, and emotionally abusive relationship for life! It works!
Lorraine opts to stay with Biff (which made way more sense when it was her tits she was going to lose, not Marty’s trust fund, TBH), and tells Marty that his dad is dead. Marty barges in on Biff while he’s getting sensual with babes in his hot tub hot water machine to ask him where and when he got the dang sports almanac, and then Biff just reveals his entire sinister scheme for no reason and then tries to murder Marty. Doc rescues Marty in the DeLorean, beefs Biff in the face, and they fly to the middle of Back to the Future I to yoink the sports almanac and stop a shitty person from becoming rich (because woe betide us all if THAT EVER HAPPENS).
Okay, so then there’s a whole
