SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
This month marks 40 years since Michael J. Fox, as Marty McFly, jumped into a souped-up DeLorean and went back in time, putting his very future existence at risk.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BACK TO THE FUTURE")
MICHAEL J FOX: (As Marty McFly) Whoa, wait. Wait a minute. Doc, are you trying to tell me that my mother has got the hots for me?
CHRISTOPHER LLOYD: (As Dr. Emmett Brown) Precisely.
FOX: (As Marty McFly) Whoa, this is heavy.
DETROW: Spoiler alert - to get back, wait for it, to the future, Marty McFly had to get his parents to fall in love with each other, which is tricky after his mom fell for him. In addition to the Oedipal dynamics of this all, "Back To The Future" is centered around the classic time travel movie plot point - the consequences and ripple effects of messing around with the spacetime continuum. So as we mark the film's 40th anniversary, we wanted to look at what it takes to get time travel right on the big screen. I am joined by ALL THINGS CONSIDERED producer and film fanatic Mallory Yu, as well as NPR's Regina Barber, who is actually a physicist and the host of Short Wave. Welcome to you both.
MALLORY YU, BYLINE: Hello.
REGINA BARBER, BYLINE: Thank you. I'm excited.
DETROW: So Regina, you're the one here with a Ph.D.
BARBER: True.
DETROW: Well, so we'll start with you. You, I think, might grasp the spacetime continuum more than me.
BARBER: Maybe.
DETROW: Maybe.
BARBER: We're all living it the same.
DETROW: It's all relative.
BARBER: I love "Back To The Future." I love how it does take into account, like, consequences.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BACK TO THE FUTURE")
LLOYD: (As Dr. Emmett Brown, yelling) It's information from the future.
FOX: (As Marty McFly) Wait a minute.
LLOYD: (As Dr. Emmett Brown, yelling) I warned you about this, kid. The consequences could be disastrous.
BARBER: I love "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE")
ALEX WINTER: (As Bill S. Preston) Can we go anywhere we want at any time?
GEORGE CARLIN: (As Rufus) You can do anything you want.
BARBER: I love "Lake House." And, you know, I don't love "Interstellar," but because I'm an astrophysicist, people are like, did you watch "Interstellar"? And I was like, yeah.
DETROW: I will say, of the movies you ticked off - and Mallory, I can turn to you 'cause I think you're also a "Lake House" fan - I'm going to actually admit I have not seen this movie, actually. I'm coming in cold to this.
BARBER: OK.
DETROW: So what's the gist of that and what other movies jump out to you, Mallory?
YU: OK, the gist of "The Lake House" is basically Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves are at this lake house, and they're communicating with each other through a mailbox and letters. And you find out that they are separated by about two years.
BARBER: Yeah.
YU: But they're separated by time, and they have to figure out how to get around that, basically.
BARBER: Yeah, like, the mailbox is a portal through time.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE LAKE HOUSE")
SANDRA BULLOCK: (As Kate Forster) What day is it there?
KEANU REEVES: (As Alex Wyler) April 14, 2004.
BULLOCK: (As Kate Forster) No. It's April 14, 2006.
REEVES: (As Alex Wyler) It's the same day, two years apart. This is insane.
DETROW: A lot of Keanu Reeves.
YU: I was going to say, like Regina mentioned, "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure," which is, for me, a quintessential time travel movie featuring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, two goofy high school students who are about to fail, who travel back in time through history, picking up historical figures to pass a book report.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE")
WINTER: (As Bill S. Preston) Socrates - hey, we know that name.
REEVES: (As Ted 'Theodore' Logan) Yeah. Hey, look him up. Oh, it's under So-crates (ph).
WINTER: (As Bill S. Preston) Oh, yeah.
YU: It's exceedingly silly, but I think it does a really good job of, like, wrapping up the narrative where you see everything sort of come back in full circle.
BARBER: And they also go into the future. And I think it's important when we're like, thinking about time travel, like, we're all traveling through time at, like, one second per second. Like, you can go into the future.
DETROW: Whoa.
BARBER: And we will talk about that time dilation. Like, time travel sort of - I mean, it is real. We're doing it.
DETROW: Mallory, I'll start with you. Why do you think that the idea of time travel is such an appealing storyline for so many movies and also so many books, and so many forms of sci-fi? Like, we all seem to deeply gravitate toward the idea of a time travel story. Why do you think that is?
YU: Because we are all going through time - time is uncontrollable. It slips through our fingers, and it's a very human response, I think, to imagine, well, what if I could control time? What would we do with that? Would we go back in time to correct historical wrongs and prevent tragedies from happening? Would we use it to ensure world peace, or would we be a little more selfish and use it to find love, money? And because the concept of time is so universal...
DETROW: Yeah.
YU: ...It can be a really good device to explore any number of themes, and it can be used in pretty much any genre, so there's something for anyone.
DETROW: Obviously, as we all know, you have to suspend some sort of disbelief...
BARBER: Yeah.
YU: Yes.
DETROW: ...Somewhere for these to work.
BARBER: Yeah.
DETROW: Regina, what to you matters the most of, like, at least pretend to have thought through the logic of X?
BARBER: So, I just watched "Primer" last night, which is a really low-budget independent film that came out in 2004. The last 20 minutes blew my mind. In that movie, they take into account inconsistencies, and they rent a hotel room for the whole day so that they are not going to run into themselves when they go back in time.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "PRIMER")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Half an hour ago, I was asleep. This car alarm woke me up. These kids were down skating, about hitting every car on the block (ph). So we go right now, do our business in Platts, get back in the box and come back to right before those kids are setting off the alarms. And that way, my double sleeps through the night. They don't have the conversation we're having now, and they get in the box tomorrow as usual.
BARBER: And it's, like, they're very, very consistent until they're not. And then bad stuff starts to happen.
YU: Yeah, I think, like, there needs to be some logic. There needs to be some rules and restrictions. It has to make sense in universe.
BARBER: Yeah.
YU: But also, at the same time, I personally prefer when, like, the science and specifics of time travel is a little more vague and hand wavy because, like, how did an English duke end up in 2001, New York City in "Kate & Leopold"?
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "KATE & LEOPOLD")
LIEV SCHREIBER: (As Stuart Besser) I've found it, something that validates my entire life's work, a portal into 1876.
YU: OK, fine. That's science-y enough.
BARBER: Yeah.
YU: I can accept that. I don't know, on the whole, I'm more interested in how characters and the narrative interact with the logic and rules of the time travel in that universe.
DETROW: Lastly, clearly the three of us love time travel movies.
YU: Yes (laughter).
BARBER: Apparently.
DETROW: Somebody out there listening doesn't like time travel movies. How do we fix that for them? What is a time travel movie you would recommend to somebody who's time travel skeptic?
YU: OK, but one, how could you hate time travel themes? - because there really is something for everyone. But, OK, fine. If we must, I think I would say "Arrival," which is based on a Ted Chiang short story. I don't think it fits perfectly in the box of time travel, but I like the way that it explores the concept of time and our perspective of time and how we experience it.
DETROW: Yeah.
YU: Again, hate time travel themes? You don't want to watch a '90s kid travel back to King Arthur's court?
BARBER: I do.
DETROW: I'm glad we got "A Kid In King Arthur's Court" into the conversation.
YU: Always.
(LAUGHTER)
BARBER: I would say, if you like science, you can think about time travel movies as, like, there are real elements to it. So this is when I am going to go into time dilation. Are we ready?
YU: Please.
DETROW: It has to be done.
BARBER: In the movie "Interstellar," they're on this planet that's right next to a black hole.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "INTERSTELLAR")
ANNE HATHAWAY: (As Brand) The gravity on that planet will slow our clock compared to Earth's drastically.
MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: (As Cooper) Well, how bad?
DAVID GYASI: (As Romilly) Well, every hour we spend on that planet will be seven years back on Earth.
BARBER: So you have this planet, and it's in this well. Think about it like a trampoline and when you, like, sit in it and you make, like, that dip. Well, space is getting warped, and time is also getting warped. So if you're down in that funnel, your time and space is stretched, so time is slower down there. We have seen this on Earth. Earth time is slightly slower than time outside of Earth, and we have actually measured this. So if you're down in this gravitational well, time is slower. So, like, I think when we're thinking about these movies and we're like, this is ridiculous, there are things in real life that we live in every day that there is time travel. There is funky stuff that happens. Physics is awesome.
DETROW: I understand spacetime a little more than I did at the beginning of the segment, and that feels like a win.
YU: Yeah.
DETROW: That is Regina Barber, host of Short Wave, as well as ALL THINGS CONSIDERED producer Mallory Yu. Thanks to you both.
BARBER: Thank you.
YU: Thanks, Scott.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "BACK IN TIME")
HUEY LEWIS AND THE NEWS: (Singing) Tell me, Doctor, where are we going to? Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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