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How Come The Replacement Marty Had EXACTLY The Same Date Planned On The Same Night? Possible Plot Hole?

posted 16 days ago by FootOfDavros (7057)
8 replies | jump to latest

The replacement Marty - who I think just gets wiped out when Marty returns from 1955 - has not only the same girlfriend but has planned exactly the same date on the same night and location as the original Marty had before going back in time.

Now the result of Marty's time meddling is an entire lifetime's worth of growing up in a much more confident, successful family environment for the replacement Marty. Yet he has, inexplicably, arranged exactly the same date with the same girl! What would be the odds of this possibly happening?

Surely this falls into the realm of a possible plot hole. Although I confess I am not an expert on such events, so perhaps someone else could confirm one way or the other...

[–] 123Guy (6359) 16 days ago

There are no experts on time travel because it is not real. Like this movie.

I get what you are saying.... what are the odds? Far too high, of course... but... that is how it worked in this story/ movie.

[–] FootOfDavros (7057) 16 days ago

There are no experts on time travel...

Thanks but it wasn't an expert on time travel I was seeking.

It was more an expert on whether this would constitute a plot hole, given the unexplained, nigh on impossibility, that the alternative Marty would have arranged exactly the same date on the same night. Having lived a complete different live from Marty Prime.

[–] 123Guy (6359) 16 days ago

Life is like a box of time travel: ya never know what ya gonna git.

Not a plot hole because that is how the time travel worked in this movie. If you have to question how/why that worked out, you can also ask a million other questions:
why did Biff change?
why do they live at the exact same address?
how does garbage make that car fly?
etc etc ad nauseam

Not a plot hole, that's how time travel played out in this movie.
Anything could be a plot hole if you want it to.

[–] Melton (2596) 13 days ago

It’s not that kind of film, kid

[–] strntz (11055) 13 days ago

I am reminded of an old Star Trek script (City on the Edge of Forever), where Kirk wondered if he and Spock, when traveling back in time, would end up at the same place in the past on old Earth as McCoy who would be arriving from the future from a different time point. Spock said there were theories that time might be fluid, with eddies, currents, and backwash that might put them together again.

This doesn't explain your question specifically, but only to say that rules of time travel (impossible in the real world) depend on the screenwriter, and maybe in this script there is a portion of life's travels that are pre-ordained, and maybe only a percentage of life's goings on can be changed.

[–] hurricane (1932) 12 days ago

Most Time Travel films fall down somewhere, if you think about it too much.

For me, the worse one is Back To The Future 2. On returning to 1985, Doc finds out that he's been instiutionalised and Marty finds out that he's in school in Switzerland. So does this mean that there's a second Marty and Doc in that time period? Why don't this Marty and Doc slowly start to vanish? Shouldn't Biff's meddling have caused a paradox, if it leads to Doc Brown never having invented the time machine in the fist place?

These are fictional movies, using the fictional concept of time travel. Best not over think it.

[–] strntz (11055) 12 days ago

Best not over think it.

I guess that means no thinking fourth dimensionally either. Spoil sport.

[–] pjl69 (2475) 12 days ago

Some things are set on stone in BTTF universe, like Marty's family living in the same house and address in the new "improved" 1985. It's only a scifi-comedy, after all. Altough masterfully crafted.