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4. Whoa, this is heavy.

Marty, a consummate teenager from his time, likes his teenage speak. Like my generation liked “cool,” or the current generation’s “LOL” or endless use of smileys, “heavy,” I suppose, was big among teenagers in the 1980s. The brilliance of this quote, and why it deserves to be on this list, is that it singlehandedly captures the hysterical exchange between Marty and the Doc Brown of 1955, and the intelligent commentary on evolving times that Robert Zemeckis and co-screenwriter Bob Gale inserted in the movie.

In other parts of the movie, like when Marty asks for a “Pepsi Free” at the Hill Valley diner, or when he casually mentions owning two TV sets, the movie reminds us of how much times changed in 30 years. But it is in the exchanges between Doc and Marty as they plot to find a way to get Marty back to the future that the writers use the most fast-paced back and forth lines to convey amazement at how our world has changed.

Doc is incredulous that Ronald Reagan is President in 1985, panicked that plutonium may be available in “every corner drug store” in 1985, and resigned to the fact that his 1985 self is wearing a radiation suit “because of all the fallout from the atomic wars.”

Yet it is when Doc finally reacts to Marty assessing as “heavy” the various problems their plans face that the brilliance of the entire concept of the movie is revealed. As any fan of the movie worth his weight in plutonium knows, the movie is, at bottom, an allegory for the disconnect between teenagers and his parents. What teenager, the movie posits, hasn’t been unfairly treated by a parent for engaging in the same behavior that the parent may have engaged in when he or she was a teenager? And, more interestingly, what would happen if that teenager could meet the teenage version of his or her parents?

In Doc’s eventual reactions to Marty’s heavy, “heavy, there’s that word again, what is there some problem with the Earth’s gravitational pull in the future?” several of the movie’s key concepts are nicely found. First and foremost, Doc and Marty do not always understand each other, much in the same way that Marty and his parents are hopelessly speaking past each other. But Doc’s “sciency” outlook, his searching and inquisitive mind, and his tender bond with Marty (the centerpiece of the movie’s character arcs), are also revealed.

Pretty cool, no?

3. Roads? Where we are going, we don’t need roads.

The reason I like this quote so much is because of the behind-the-scenes story about it. The line is delivered by Doc to Marty and Jennifer at the end of the film, after Marty returns to 1985 and Doc departs on a sight-seeing adventure from as-of-then unspecified point in the future. All of a sudden, Doc returns, in a tizzy, and explains to Marty and Jennifer that they must go back to the future with him, because something has to be done about their kids. As they prepare to get to the DeLorean’s needed 88 miles per hour, Marty asks Doc if he has enough space on the road to accelerate to that amount. Doc then responds with the classic line, and the first movie ends on that hilarious note of Doc wit, with the DeLorean taking off from the street and into the sky, and flying away in a burst of electricity.

Little did Zemeckis and Gale know when they wrote this line, however, that it would affect the course of the entire rest of the trilogy. When they penned the first BTTF, they did not know that it would become such a classic, the highest-grossing movie of 1985. As they explain it (and, from seeing Doc’s delivery, it is undoubtedly true), they threw that line in as a joke, an off-hand remark about an extremely futuristic society (Doc does not at this point say how many years into the future he’s travelled).

But as the film’s popularity overwhelmed even its creators, the desire for a sequel became overpowering. The writers were then forced to pick up from that line as they ventured into the additional adventures of Doc Brown and Marty, and the use of a flying DeLorean proved to be a pivotal plot point that even provided the narrative transition from the second to the third film.

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