Marty McFly – Back To Future
The epitome of who every teen wants to be, Marty McFly is the like the older brother that you idolize and want to be like in every way possible.
Kids born in the 70s, 80s and 90s seem to have more of a connection towards Marty than the kids of today. Being able to grow up with him on the big and small screen preceded in wanting to wear his retro Nike trainers and his ‘life preserver’, and skateboarding around Hill Valley whilst Huey Lewis and The News blasts through your cassette player. Hell, Marty was one of two reasons (the other being an idolization of Tony Hawk) why I wanted to be a professional skateboarder when I was six years old.
The thing with Marty is that he was and still is relatable; to me as a six year old and me as a nineteen year old, he has a demeanour about him that you can instantly connect to. Whether it’s from his odd stutter, the fact the only people he seems to hang around with are an eccentric scientist and his girlfriend or that he doesn’t think that he’s good enough to achieve his dream of being a musician.
There haven’t been many characters since Marty that have an instant pull about them. We meet Marty in medias res at the beginning of Back to the Future. We’re never really told his backstory, only slightly through him going back to 1955 and seeing his parent’s first meet. You get a sense of Marty’s character through his interests (skateboarding and music), the people he hangs around with (Doc Brown and Jennifer), and how he needs something in his life to change not just for him, but for those he loves around him i.e. his parents.
Marty McFly is who I’ve strived to be ever since I sat in front of our television screen in 2002, engrossed in a teen and his bizarre best friend time travelling in a DeLorean. The film itself may have been the catalyst for me wanting to study film, but Marty was the character that I not only related to, but who I wanted to be.
He even gave me my mantra that I’ve stuck to every day for 13 years – “If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything”.
Words by Sophie McEvoy