‘Back to the Future’s Original Ending Could’ve Completely Changed the Franchise

Robert Zemeckis‘ Back to the Future is one of the most beloved movies ever made. It was by far the highest grossing movie of 1985, and two more films and four decades later, is just as popular as ever thanks to it being passed down from one generation to the next. We love the relationship between Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), and wish we had a cool DeLorean, but as perfect of a movie as Back to the Future is, it still has its flaws. Topping them is, just how in the heck do Marty’s parents not recognize that their son looks exactly like the guy who got them together in the first place? Although no sequel explored this, the first film almost did in its original script. At the end of Back to the Future‘s first draft, George McFly (Crispin Glover) sees a picture of his son in 1955. Right as he’s realizing who Marty is, the script ends, but if that scene had stayed in, the franchise could have gone in a wildly different direction.

Back to the Future

Marty McFly, a 17-year-old high school student, is accidentally sent 30 years into the past in a time-traveling DeLorean invented by his close friend, the maverick scientist Doc Brown.

Release Date

July 3, 1985

Runtime

116

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‘Back to the Future’ Ends With Marty’s Parents Not Recognizing Him From 1955

Back to the Future‘s ending is just as great as everything that came before it. When Marty McFly accidentally takes Doc Brown’s DeLorean time machine thirty years into the past, he’s stuck in a world where his parents are teenagers, and much worse, his mother, Lorraine (Lea Thompson), falls in love with him. After playing matchmaker and getting his parents back together again, this time with a better story that makes George a hero, Marty must get back to his time, doing so by harnessing the power of a lightning strike on the Hill Valley clock tower.

When Marty gets back to his 1985, he’s relieved to see his family together, but everything has changed, seemingly for the better. Instead of being a group of losers, they’re all now well accomplished, successful people, including his father. George went from being a bullied coward still doing the bidding of Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson) to a confident man in love with his wife, and now with a newly published science fiction novel. That’s great and all, but it raises two issues. One, in this ending, Marty doesn’t know who his parents and siblings are now. The family he used to know, for all their flaws, was his true family. Just as important is the fact that somehow George and Lorraine, and even Biff, don’t recognize that their son looks exactly like the guy who got them together thirty years earlier. They even named their child after that Marty after all. Shouldn’t they have at some point looked at their growing son and freaked out? At the very least, George should have had some serious questions about who Marty’s true father is. Of course, it’s just a fun flaw to think about in an otherwise fabulous movie, but the original script went there in a moment that could have changed everything.

The Original ‘Back to the Future’ Script Had George McFly Seeing a Photo of His Son in 1955

Back to the Future underwent many changes on its path from page to screen. That badass-looking DeLorean actually started off as an immobile time machine that looked like a refrigerator. Doc Brown was going to be called Professor Brown, who had a pet orangutan instead of a dog. And that clock tower ending was instead going to be Marty driving the car at 88 miles per hour into a nuclear bomb test field.

The very last minute was going to be different as well. The first draft of Back to the Future, written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, was completed on February 24, 1981, over four years before the finished movie came out. Zemeckis and Gale had trouble getting a studio involved, with even Disney saying no because they were uncomfortable with the storyline of a mother falling in love with her son. Before any of those headaches, the duo still had a completed script with a quite interesting final shot. George McFly is still a better person than he was before, but instead of becoming a writer, standing up to his bully made him a fighter. George actually became a boxer who fought at Madison Square Garden and became the middleweight champion of the world! That’s not the biggest shock, however.

Marty’s making a mess of the past has resulted in no one even knowing what rock ‘n’ roll music is. (Who wants to live in that world? You gotta go back and fix it, Marty!) When George hears this phrase “rock ‘n’ roll,” it sparks something in him. He sits down at his office desk and pulls out a scrapbook:

At a particular page, it stops. George stares at the newspaper clipping on the page.

INSERT – CLIPPING

A story with the headline, “Police Quell Near Riot At School Dance,” along with a photo of the dance that shows Marty on stage!

GEORGE

stares at the photo, then shakes his head.

GEORGE

Nah. Couldn’t be.

INSERT – PHOTO

But it is….

ROLL END TITLES OVER NEWS PHOTO

FADE OUT

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Marty McFly’s Parents Could Have Been a Bigger Part of the ‘Back to the Future’ Trilogy

Just imagine how different the sequels to Back to the Future could have been if they had gone in with the idea that George McFly, or even Lorraine and Biff as well, knew who Marty was and what he did. While Back to the Future Part II is a great movie, it does get some criticism for being too similar to the first film, and its inciting incident of Marty going to 2015 to stop his son from going to prison is not strong enough. A more interesting plot would have seen Marty’s parents joining him on one of his time travel adventures.

The chemistry of Michael J. Fox with Crispin Glover and Lea Thompson is one of the best parts of Back to the Future. Although we might focus on Marty and Doc Brown together, it’s George and Lorraine who Marty spends most of his time with. He had to believably come off as the son of people who are the same age as him, and most challenging, have his mother fall in love with him in a way that didn’t come off as gross and uncomfortable. This chemistry is missed out on in the sequels. Lorraine is in Back to the Future Part II, but as a different version of Marty’s mom in a 1985 where George is dead, and she is now the abused wife of Biff. Where’s the fun in that?!

In Back to the Future Part III, Lea Thompson appears in a few scenes as Marty’s great-great-grandmother in 1885, the Irish Maggie McFly, and barely as Lorraine as all until the very end in a moment that doesn’t really matter much. Crispin Glover wasn’t in either film, as problems with the original film and the script for the sequel caused him to walk away, leading to George’s character mostly being done away with. He is played by Jeffrey Weissman in the sequel, as he hangs upside down in heavy makeup for the 2015 scenes, and at the end of the trilogy is seen standing in the background as if his character doesn’t matter at all. It’s quite a contrast from who George McFly was in the beginning.

Going with the original ending certainly would have created entirely different sequels. With George’s role expanded, Crispin Glover probably could have been convinced to return. Then imagine George and Lorraine, still the same age as their son, going on a time-travel journey with Marty, and even getting to know Doc Brown, who they barely interacted with in the first film. If it was fun to watch Marty together with his parents as teenagers, then a whole host of issues and paradoxes could have been explored with them putting all the pieces together. That would have been a heavy, but potentially exciting sequel.

Back to the Future is available to rent on Prime Video in the U.S.

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