Film Opening Analysis: Back to the Future

The film begins with a sliding camera showing a collection of clocks and a ticking in the background. This sliding also shows some photos of Thomas Edison and Benjamin Franklin, lots of rubbish and some machines they do not work well. The audience can understand from these that who lives in this house would be an inventor, most likely unsuccessful and definitely untidy. Then the TV lights and the news tell us that a plutonium box is stolen.

The sliding goes on and the door is opened by a guy with skateboard and a guitar. We can assume that he knows the inventor who lives there, because he knows where the key is. We can also understand from the skateboard, the guitar and the jacket Michael J. Fox is cool and young. He leaves the skateboard on the ground and he hits it. The skateboard runs up beating into a yellow box, the plutonium box. This sets up a mystery of why he has it.

There is no music in the sequence but there is the ticking of the clocks to reinforce the time motif of the whole film – form this and from the title we can assume that the plot is about a time travel.

The opening scene is almost entirely one shot, so we can better understand that anarchy reigns in the house of this inventor.

I like how Zemeckis shows a lot of objects that are critical for the plot only in the first two minutes. Doing this would increase the viewer’s curiosity and make them want to watch the whole movie.