Back to the Future Star Says the Movie Matters Even More in Today’s Bully Culture

For 40 years, Back to the Future and its two sequels have thrilled viewers with their playful time travel mechanics, great lead performances, and incredible Alan Silvestri scores. But according to Michael J. Fox, there’s a more political reason that the trilogy resonates with modern viewers.

“We live in a bully culture right now,” Fox told Empire Magazine. “We have bullies everywhere — you don’t need me to point the finger at who, but there are all these bullies.” Fox doesn’t need to point his finger at the specific bullies he has in mind, in part because Back to the Future‘s overarching villain Biff Tannen (portrayed by Tom Wilson) so resembles Donald Trump that many thought that director Robert Zemeckis and co-writer Bob Gale based him on the real estate magnate. Gale has since pointed out that the influence only came in the second film, when Marty goes to the future to find that Biff runs a casino named after him.

However, for Fox, the bullies go beyond just Marty’s tormentor or the current president. “In this movie, Biff is a bully. Time is a bully. For me personally, Parkinson’s is a bully,” he says, pointing to his own declining health.

The comparison makes sense, especially as the film trilogy ages. Back to the Future began life when a teenage Gale found his father’s yearbook, and wondered if he would have liked his dad at that age. At first glance, the movie that he and Zemeckis made together feels like the ultimate Boomer fantasy, in which an ’80s teen goes back to the 1950s where everything was better and a white person invents rock and roll.

But the actual film plays out differently, as Marty discovers that his father (Crispin Glover) was a creep, his mother (Lea Thompson) was more wild than she let on, and Buff’s bullying ranged from giving swirlies to committing sexual assault. Marty’s visit to the past reveals a darkness that’s ever-present in his community, which counters his parents’ talk about how the world is worse than when they were kids.

Or, to put it another way, Back to the Future shows how saying Make America Great Again misunderstands how bad America always was. That’s just one of the lessons that the trilogy teaches modern viewers, living in a bully culture, said Fox. “It’s all about how you stand up to them and the resolve that you take into the fight with them. It’s about your resilience and your courage,” he told Empire. “I think there’s a lot to that right now…I think a lot of people are responding to the movie because it strikes chords they wouldn’t otherwise recognize.”

It will probably take a lot more than watching a movie to get America to channel its inner George McFly and punch out the bullies, but if Fox is right, rewatching Back the Future is a step in the right direction.