Back to the Future

Back to the Future is a 1985 science-fiction adventure comedy directed by Robert Zemeckis and produced by Steven Spielberg. Michael J. Fox stars as Marty McFly, a teenager who is accidentally sent from 1985 back to 1955 in a time-travelling DeLorean built by the eccentric Doc Brown. After accidentally disrupting his parents’ first meeting, Marty has to repair the past before he can return to his own time. The film became one of the defining popular films of the 1980s, combining high-concept science fiction with teen comedy, family drama, romance and a remarkably tight time-travel structure.

The film was shot mainly in California, using a mix of real Los Angeles-area locations and Universal Studios backlot sets to create the fictional town of Hill Valley. The town square and clock tower were filmed on the Universal Studios Courthouse Square backlot, which became one of the most recognisable settings in the trilogy. Whittier High School was used as Hill Valley High School, while Marty’s family home was filmed in Arleta and several of the 1955 residential locations were shot in Pasadena, including the Gamble House as Doc Brown’s mansion exterior. The Twin Pines Mall, later changed to Lone Pine Mall after Marty alters the past, was filmed at Puente Hills Mall in the City of Industry, while the school dance was filmed in the basement of Hollywood United Methodist Church. By combining suburban streets, real schools, historic houses, shopping-mall car parks and studio-built town-square Americana, the film creates a version of Hill Valley that feels both familiar and slightly idealised, perfectly suited to a story about nostalgia, memory and the fragile mechanics of the past.