LIFE LESSONS FROM CLASSIC MOVIE CHARACTERS

In the movie Back to the Future(1985). A 1980's teenager, finds him self transported back to 1965, in a time machine created my his mad scientist friend .He interrupts his teenage parents from meeting and  falling in love and now has to fix it, or face being erased from his own future. 

Back to the Future is one of my favorite movies. Written &Directed by Robert Zemekis, the man behind movies like Romancing the Stone, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and more recently Beouwulf.  Apart from it being a phenomenally well made  movie , 25 years on, the movie has stood up well, you rarely get a dated vibe from it. It matches and even surpasses many movies made with superior technology and larger budgets. With a stellar cast, and a phenomenal script, it's a family classic to be enjoyed for generations to come.

There are many lessons to be learned from the movie. The story presents the protagonist ,Marty McFly(Michael J Fox, Spin City) with a lot of choices from the beginning to the end. A wavelength of peaks and dips character arc is formed from the first installment, till the last third and final in the franchise, in which he grows,regresses and learns lesson that profoundly have a deep impact on him.  

Marty had a notorious temper, which everyone knew him for, and he did not like to back down from a challenge or insult.We see him in many situations, and this pattern begins to appear in his life, due to the choices he makes. With each installment, he faces antagonist Biff Tannen and the various incarnation of  him draws Marty into a situation and his short fuse causes him to react, and with each reaction there is a consequence, which increases the difficulty of his mission. 

His choice to react(-ve) instead of responding, enacted the law of cause and effect in his life unfailingly every single time. Not until the third installment, do we see him respond to a situation, and when he does this he literally saves his life and his future. 

Think about it, when you are given a prescription by a doctor, you either respond to the healing of the medicine, or your body disagrees with the chemicals and it reacts causing anything from rashes ,nausea, vomiting and an assortment of unpleasant experiences.

Life is very similar, the difference is we are in control of which way we go.In situation that arise, the choice we make, can either light a fuse ,or quench a fire. We can either strike up a friendship, or completely burn our bridges.  King Solomon, the richest and wisest man to ever live said  If you cannot control your anger, you are as helpless as a city without walls, open to attack.- Proverbs 15:18. 

If you've ever seen The God Father,SPOLIER ALERT and the character of Sonny played by James Caan, you would understand how profound a passage this is from over 2000 years ago.  Sonny was notorious for his temper, Mt Saint Sonny erupted like clockwork, you knew the trigger to get a rise out of him. He never failed to react like the Hulk whenever something displeased him.His enemies knew this and used this against him, and he died in a hail of bullets as a result.

Marty took pride in his anger, and how he used it to handle his challenges, and it always escalated a situation. His choice of anger always caused a ripple effect to his immediate or long term future, which had him running from pillar to post trying to rectify.  

Unlike Marty, none of us is going to have access to a time machine to go back and fix the mistakes we make. The choices we make now, in our relationships, careers, finances will have an effect somewhere down the line. The Christians and Jews call it, the law of sowing and reaping, the Buddhists call is Karma, Psychologists call it the law of Cause and Effect. Whatever label one chooses to remember it by, from now on we should take away that famous battle ready line from Maximus in the Oscar Winning movie Gladiator

What we do in this life, echoes in eternity