Back to the Future: what age is it for? 10 alone, 9 with a parent

The codes, for parents

A teenager from 1985 is thrown thirty years into the past by a scientist's car, runs into his parents at his own age, and must make them meet before he fades away.

The references

• The film invented a rule all cinema has used since: the photograph that fades as the past changes. Your children have seen it ten times elsewhere without knowing where it came from.
• The DeLorean was a real car, a commercial failure from 1981, chosen because its gull-wing doors could pass for a spacecraft in a farmer's eyes.
• Marty plays Johnny B. Goode, a 1958 track, to high-schoolers in 1955: the joke is that he is playing them music that does not exist yet. Rock is the real marker of the gap between the two eras.
• The film has a sequel set in 2015, and much of what it imagined became an internet joke: self-lacing shoes exist, the hoverboard does not.
• 21 October 2015, the date the sequel travels to, was celebrated worldwide as an event, with articles comparing what the film predicted and what actually existed. The DeLorean and "Great Scott!" are recognised by children who have never seen the film.

What you can tell them

• 1985 is your parents' time or your own: the video cassette, the walkman, the corded telephone in the hall, and television watched when it happens to be on. Tell your child what you had at home.
• To find someone in 1955, Marty opens a paper directory and walks from house to house. Explain what a phone book was, and how you found a friend without a phone.
• The shopping mall at the start, the cafés with jukeboxes, the drive-in, the filling stations where an attendant serves you: point out what has disappeared, and what still exists near you.
• The dance scene, where the shy father finally punches the man attacking his future wife, is worth discussing today: what was presented as courage in 1985 is told differently in 2026, and that is a good conversation.

Why they love it

• The idea that your own parents were once seventeen, and were shy, clumsy or ridiculous, is dizzying at that age and makes everyone laugh.
• The mechanism is perfect: every detail from the opening returns at the end, and children love spotting the cogs once they have understood.
• The film moves fast, never explains itself twice, and treats its young viewers as people who can keep up.

Three questions to ask

• If you met your parents at your own age, what would you want to ask them?
• Marty changes one thing in 1955 and his whole family is different in 1985: what small decision changed everything in our family, do you think?
• What looks strangest to you in the film's 1950s, and in its 1980s?