Well I saw the movie, and Marty did make it back to 1985. The problem is that the analysis assumes that every second in the film corresponds to a second in real life. That's not true, the shots overlap in real life but are shown after one another in a sequence to make showing what happened (possibly at the same time) more practical. This overlapping is often used in dramatic representations of real events in movies.
One hint is when the author notes that acceleration happens much more quickly during the few short shots when the speedometer is visible, i.e. the acceleration is much quicker compared to the assumed linear acceleration in-between those shots.
It would be an interesting project to analyse the sequence of shots and figure out which ones overlapped by how much, to make the time/distances/accelerations work out.
[Edit: copyediting]
You're probably right it's not all real time. I figured it wasn't completely unreasonable to treat it as such because when you watch it, most of it does feel RT and we pretty much see everything that happens in an uninterrupted way.
But for the sake of argument, even if the analysis is skewed a bit, it does suggests they were missing a lot of tracks. So if some of the sequence can be considered RT and some of it not, for them to reach the 88 mph in under 3 miles, probably a lot of it would need to be non-RT, which didn't feel right to me based on the way it's presented in the movie.
Totally agree it would be awesome to be able to figure out what overlaps. Thanks for the comment!
It's more than just non-overlapping scenes. Most movies play very loose with time, drawing it out to make it seem more dramatic. See also: any movie with a bomb counting down to zero.
While I've grown with people who spend their after-cinema time analyzing how realistic the film was, and do acknowledge it can be fun to some extent, it's just refitting the art into a whole another game and that's by definition completely unfair. It's like writing a car review of the new Toyota Yaris and complaining it doesn't handle well on a race track.
The art of cinema is to pull people inside in a story that is generally mostly fiction. It's like deception by definition: you only offer the viewer enough pieces of an alternate reality to help his imagination get started and do the rest. The point of that exercise is to tell a story, and pulling the viewer into the reality of the film is just a tool in presenting that story. There is no point making the film's reality more realistic other than to be able to suggest it to the majority of viewers as a plausible setting for the story.
The train scene is a typical timed action scene. It's enough to repeatedly show an increasing velocity reading, similarly to how you might show a countdown timer in a bomb-defusing scene. The point of flashing those gauges or numbers every now and then during the scene is to increase excitement and tension, which I'm sure the original author well understands. Assuming the movie is in wallclock time could turn out to be a fun exercise but in this case it did not because the timing analysis just ended up pointing out an irrelevant detail in the movie that was never even designed to be coherent. So, the discovery is not fun in itself, it doesn't add anything to the movie experience, and thus wouldn't really be worth much attention.
"So, the discovery is not fun in itself, it doesn't add anything to the movie experience, and thus wouldn't really be worth much attention."
Sorry Fun Police, but you don't get to decide what's fun for everyone. This wasn't a movie review, and if you're not interested in people enjoying trying to decide if a completely impossible concept (a car from 1985 traveling through time) would have worked within the reality constructed by the movie, then feel free to skip down to the next HN story.
Reading, then commenting on, a story which is self described to be on a topic you have no interest in, can be considered nothing more than trolling.
Actually, there is no way Sierra No. 3 could take a curve at 88 mph as shown. It's not a power problem. 19th century 4-6-0 designs are unbalanced and prone to derailment. There's a solution to that involving a complex suspension, but that came later.
More than you ever wanted to know about locomotive suspensions.[1]
...but considering that they only need to fall from an height of 258.88 feet to reach 88 miles per hours Marty most likely did made it to the future! Unfortunately he then died instantly by hitting the the bottom of the ravine once he arrived to 1985. :(
But because of the rotation of the Earth and in fact the whole Galaxy in the meantime, the vertical component of the ravine became the horizontal component of the road :)
1. Write yourself a note to keep a jerry can in the Delorean, put it on your person.
2. Set destination time back by a week.
3. Marty gets in Delorean and Doc pushes it off of cliff.
4. Next of kin and Marty read note given to them at the morgue.
5. Plot of BttF 3 evaporates.
Edit: This is too complicated. Just visit Western Union again and send a second letter about the jerry can.
Edit 2: Wait, there should be a 2nd Delorean in 1885 after Marty arrives. So Doc's Delorean should have some fuel unless Doc was joy-riding. I'm really not thinking 4th dimensionally.
Hadn't thought of that! And considering that based on what I calculated in the post he goes off the edge at about 70mph, he probably needs way less that 258 feet right?
> it’s a shame Doc didn’t equip the Delorean with Tesla electric motors when he visited 2015. That would have made things easier considering the Delorean was equipped with a working Mr. Fusion generator in 1885
He put flying car parts into it. Why the hell would he want some lousy electric motors?
> He put flying car parts into it. Why the hell would he want some lousy electric motors?
I think the author is referring to the fact that then the Mr. Fusion could also have powered the vehicle while driving around on land. Perhaps flying would still be impossible without magical alternative-2015 fuel/parts, but at least you'd be mobile on land in almost any situation.
Enough all ready with this 88 mph requirement before the flux capacitor is activated. All they have to do is point the DeLorean east and the rotation of the earth will do the rest. Not to mention the earths orbital speed round the sun, the suns trajectory round the milky way and the milky ways trajectory in relation to the inertial reference frame, that's about 1.3 million miles per hour in the direction of Virgo.
Besides why didn't old-doc just post a letter to future-doc and get him to bury some plutonium in the desert in the past. Then old doc goes and collects the plutonium and goes-back-to-the-future and collects the letter and goes back to 1785 and burys some plutonium in the desert, then goes-back-to-the future .. my brain hurts ...
ant6n|10 years ago
One hint is when the author notes that acceleration happens much more quickly during the few short shots when the speedometer is visible, i.e. the acceleration is much quicker compared to the assumed linear acceleration in-between those shots.
It would be an interesting project to analyse the sequence of shots and figure out which ones overlapped by how much, to make the time/distances/accelerations work out. [Edit: copyediting]
ddcarnage|10 years ago
You're probably right it's not all real time. I figured it wasn't completely unreasonable to treat it as such because when you watch it, most of it does feel RT and we pretty much see everything that happens in an uninterrupted way.
But for the sake of argument, even if the analysis is skewed a bit, it does suggests they were missing a lot of tracks. So if some of the sequence can be considered RT and some of it not, for them to reach the 88 mph in under 3 miles, probably a lot of it would need to be non-RT, which didn't feel right to me based on the way it's presented in the movie.
Totally agree it would be awesome to be able to figure out what overlaps. Thanks for the comment!
aidenn0|10 years ago
yason|10 years ago
The art of cinema is to pull people inside in a story that is generally mostly fiction. It's like deception by definition: you only offer the viewer enough pieces of an alternate reality to help his imagination get started and do the rest. The point of that exercise is to tell a story, and pulling the viewer into the reality of the film is just a tool in presenting that story. There is no point making the film's reality more realistic other than to be able to suggest it to the majority of viewers as a plausible setting for the story.
The train scene is a typical timed action scene. It's enough to repeatedly show an increasing velocity reading, similarly to how you might show a countdown timer in a bomb-defusing scene. The point of flashing those gauges or numbers every now and then during the scene is to increase excitement and tension, which I'm sure the original author well understands. Assuming the movie is in wallclock time could turn out to be a fun exercise but in this case it did not because the timing analysis just ended up pointing out an irrelevant detail in the movie that was never even designed to be coherent. So, the discovery is not fun in itself, it doesn't add anything to the movie experience, and thus wouldn't really be worth much attention.
Houshalter|10 years ago
I don't think anyone is upset over this. It's just a fun exercise.
x5n1|10 years ago
brwnll|10 years ago
Sorry Fun Police, but you don't get to decide what's fun for everyone. This wasn't a movie review, and if you're not interested in people enjoying trying to decide if a completely impossible concept (a car from 1985 traveling through time) would have worked within the reality constructed by the movie, then feel free to skip down to the next HN story.
Reading, then commenting on, a story which is self described to be on a topic you have no interest in, can be considered nothing more than trolling.
Animats|10 years ago
More than you ever wanted to know about locomotive suspensions.[1]
[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=1A4iiGAz628C&pg=PA62#v=one...
monochromatic|10 years ago
> we assume events occur in real-time
this is completely unwarranted and invalidates the rest of the analysis.
ddcarnage|10 years ago
ArcticCelt|10 years ago
amelius|10 years ago
raisedbyninjas|10 years ago
1. Write yourself a note to keep a jerry can in the Delorean, put it on your person.
2. Set destination time back by a week.
3. Marty gets in Delorean and Doc pushes it off of cliff.
4. Next of kin and Marty read note given to them at the morgue.
5. Plot of BttF 3 evaporates.
Edit: This is too complicated. Just visit Western Union again and send a second letter about the jerry can.
Edit 2: Wait, there should be a 2nd Delorean in 1885 after Marty arrives. So Doc's Delorean should have some fuel unless Doc was joy-riding. I'm really not thinking 4th dimensionally.
ddcarnage|10 years ago
amelius|10 years ago
adam12|10 years ago
Edit: Unless the time machine was capable of visiting parallel universes.
serge2k|10 years ago
1. Marty leaves timeline to go to 2015 2. Marty meets Marty-F in the 2015 3. Marty returns to 1985 and grows up to be Marty-F.
Of course this means that he knew, but that's okay.
serge2k|10 years ago
He put flying car parts into it. Why the hell would he want some lousy electric motors?
FrankenPC|10 years ago
toothbrush|10 years ago
I think the author is referring to the fact that then the Mr. Fusion could also have powered the vehicle while driving around on land. Perhaps flying would still be impossible without magical alternative-2015 fuel/parts, but at least you'd be mobile on land in almost any situation.
icameron|10 years ago
NickHaflinger|10 years ago
Besides why didn't old-doc just post a letter to future-doc and get him to bury some plutonium in the desert in the past. Then old doc goes and collects the plutonium and goes-back-to-the-future and collects the letter and goes back to 1785 and burys some plutonium in the desert, then goes-back-to-the future .. my brain hurts ...
ant6n|10 years ago