Damnit I meant I’m getting mixed up between Universal Soldier and Cyborg. One is the undead super soldier and the other is the part robot super soldier.
After recently re-watching my favorite movies ever, the Back to the Future trilogy, I had some thoughts about Biff Tannen and his family knocking around in my head. I started writing out a Facebook post about it, and it turned into a treatise of sorts. This all happened extemporaneously, so some of this may not be perfectly accurate.
The following is way too many words about the Tannen Family Tree:
Let us consider the bully, Biff Tannen, from the Back to the Future franchise. It seems as though he had family members across the timestream, always there to be a foil for the McFly family. Each of the Tannen family members that we meet seem to be singularly egotistical and self-centered. But the existence of the family tree, and the fact that they have settled in Hill Valley for over a century suggests some interesting nuances to the Tannens. Note: This exploration does not include any content that may have been covered in the Back to the Future cartoon, video game, comics, or Universal Studios Ride, as these are of questionable authenticity at best.
Biff Tannen is a teenager in 1955. We know that he lived with his grandmother at that time, which suggests that his parents are either dead-beat or dead. The one interaction we see involving Biff’s grandmother is when she gruffly yelled at him, asking where he was going on the morning of the Enchantment Under the Sea dance. Clearly Biff very likely picked up the gruff demeanor that is a hallmark of his family from his grandmother. Her attitude suggests that she barely tolerates him at best, and yet continues to provide him with a home while he works to complete high school.
Biff’s grandmother is referred to as an ‘old lady’ in 1955, and she has a grandson who is approximately 18 years old. This suggests that she is significantly older than 40 or 50 years old, likely closer to 70. But even if we are generous and assume that she is 60 years old in 1955, that would mean that she was born in 1895. Ten years after the events of Back to the Future Part 3. Thus, it seems likely that she is either the daughter of (or married the son of) Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen.
The sheer fact that the Tannen name carried through from one generation down means that Mad Dog did not have a child through a one night stand with a tavern barmaid in the Hill Valley Saloon, but that the mother of his child knew him well enough to opt to take on his name and pass it down to their child. The same goes for Biff’s grandmother and parents as well. With a family that is so very self-centered, it seems strange that they would produce stable family units.
This continues forwards to 2015, when Griff refers to Biff as ‘gramps.’ Clearly the family line continued in the same way - the family stayed together and continues to be antagonistic towards each other. What is surprising is that Biff was able to find someone to marry and pass on the family line. But we see that Biff had enough motivation and drive to opt not to drop out of high school and then go on to start his own business, which could be enough to attract a wife, likely someone with a similarly abrasive personality that could put up with him. Given that Biff is roughly George McFly’s age and Griff is roughly Marty Jr’s age, it stands to reason that Biff would have a child that is approximately Marty’s age too. This character is conspicuously absent from the films, as Marty is the only McFly that does not have a Tannen as an arch-rival. Marty’s rival is Douglas J. Needles. Perhaps Biff had a daughter, and she and Needles had a child out of wedlock before he went on to marry his wife Lauren and they had their two children together. Not having his father in the picture could explain why Griff is very familiar with his grandfather on the Tannen side, the same way Biff and his grandmother were close, yet at odds. Following this line of thought, the Tannens are once again the ones with the traditional family values, while Needles is the absentee father.
While the Tannens are unquestionably the villains of the Back to the Future franchise, for 6 generations the family has stayed together and passed on the family line in the same town in which they settled two centuries ago. When the history of Hill Valley is written, of course the McFlys will be noted as some of it’s most famous residents, given a bestselling author and his Grammy-Award winning son, but the Tannen Family is just as much a part of the bedrock of the community. The adversarial nature of the Tannens brings the people of Hill Valley together like nothing else.
And when it comes to his family, a Tannen will never make like a tree and get outta here.
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Thank you, this made by morning!
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I’m surprised no one has talked about it yet, but I saw Wonder Woman over the weekend. As a movie, I’d probably rate it a solid B or B+, and compare it favorably to the second tier Marvel movies. It’s no Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, or Avengers. Wonder Woman as a character, and Gal Gadot’s portrayal of her gets an A+ from me. She was amazing. Charismatic, imposing, regal, competent, and without a hint of cheese-cakery. The Amazons in general were just awesome.
The movie wasn’t perfect, and there were some plot decisions I didn’t agree with, but it was good and will keep the DC Cinematic Universe alive and on life-support until their next round of movies come out.
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I really enjoyed Wonder Woman. I had to go see it as my cousin plays Diana at age 12. I’m really proud of how well she’s done to not only be in a movie but to have it be one of the of best of the genre!
This is big because women leads and directors are under-represented in movies with common excuses being that they don’t make money but this movie counters that point.
Wonder Woman was a good film. I give it like an 8/10. My main complaints revolve around a personal dislike for excessive slow-mo action, and the final ending fight having to be an all-out brawl when the villain was set up as being more nuanced.
Wasn’t a fan of Wonder Woman, its still stuck in Snyder-verse in terms of plotting, colors and editing. I wonder when DC will realize that actors throwing CGI at each other looks awful. You could get away from that 15 years ago but now that video games have basically caught up to movies in terms of fantasy based fight scenes, its very easy to see how ridiculous actors look. Maybe when DC finally has an interesting villain, they won’t have to resort to making the finale one big lightshow with no sense of tension.
Winter Soldier remains the best super hero movie for a variety of reasons but its fight scene choreography and editing is a huge reason. You really understood how Capt, Bucky and Black Widow were super soldiers by the way they moved and fought. Wonder Woman had the Attack of Clones problem where sometimes she’s moving as fast as a jet, other times she’s just a good gymnast. Proper power scaling is important to establishing tension because you understand their limits, and Wonder Woman fails to do that. Too many cuts during action scenes removes the “fuck, that’s cool” moments in this movie.
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Apparently, Wonder Woman 2 takes place in modern times, so Etta Candy would be long dead.
Having seen Batman vs Superman and Suicide Squad, I can guess Wonder Woman could be far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far better than recent DC movie offerings and still be far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far from perfect.
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Spoilers Wonder Woman:
One more thing. One of most hilarious moments, intentional or not, is when Ares shows up as an old British man to gloat at Diana. Diana has this panicked look when she realizes that her sword is still stuck on the roof in the gut of a dead German general. The movie cuts to Chris Pine’s scene and then cuts back to Diana jumping down from the roof after retrieving her sword. That sequence is hilarious and belongs in a sitcom, you can imagine Ares looking at his watch and sighing as he waits for Wonder Woman to retrieve her sword. You could argue that Ares is in character since he knows the sword isn’t Godkiller but its still so tonally wrong.
As cliche as it is, one thing that could have helped the ending would be giving Ares a death monologue. Something like “You know why Zeus couldn’t kill me, Diana? It’s because as long as humans let greed and hatred into their hearts, I will always be there to lead them into war. I will return, Diana because they will me to.” And Diana can respond with some quippy one liner about how she’s be there to stop him with the power of love. Just a little cap end to acknowledge that more wars will happen and that Diana and the rest of Amazonians still have a job to do. Maybe you don’t have to bring Ares back physically but just have him be manifest in human hearts. Anything to make DC villains more interesting.
Robin Hood: Men in Tights. I had this on VHS when I was a teen, and I watched it over and over. Juliane had only seen the German version. Neither of us had seen it for about 15 years or so.
It still has funny moments, but a lot of the comedy is cringeworthy. However I remember a lot of the comedy being cringeworthy when I first watched it. Some of the music is genuinely excellent. Overall less offensive as I expected it to be, especially after watching other 80s and 90s movies and being disgusted I once enjoyed all the rape jokes.
I also got a few jokes that passed me by when younger, including a Rodney King reference when police are beating up a black guy.
Arrival. I saw it a few weeks ago, and again yesterday before discussing it with Juliane on the podcast.
http://www.sfbrp.com/archives/1274
I have issues with the story and some of the movie making decisions, but there is enough in there to enjoy and I cried three times before the credits rolled. Would recommend.
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Arrival was one of my favorites last year! Even though it wasn’t perfect, it was refreshing to see a smart Hollywood sci-fi film where the protagonists all did the smart thing.
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Baby Driver was everything I wanted it to be!
[quote=“RobotMitchell, post:250, topic:73, full:true”]
Baby Driver was everything I wanted it to be!
[/quote]Man, I was driving around fast to Golden earring in Aviators before it was cool. 
Nah, jokes aside, that movie is fucking great. Not without it’s problems, but definitely worth the time to watch.
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Kedi
2017
A documentary on the culture surrounding the street cats of Istanbul, Turkey.
The documentary highlights a few people who are able to open up on their interaction with street cats and how important they are to the general life of an Istanbul resident. The movie is shot in 4k and the down sampled 1080 is also amazing there is wallpaper quality images every few seconds, the photography was amazing.
The soundtrack was neat but a bit repetitive, didn’t really stand out all that much.
If you’ve ever owned or known a cat you’ll find some joy in this movie.
This is the best thing that Youtube Red has funded / paid / bought.
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I really enjoyed the movie, and I agree with you that it was gorgeous, but there were times where I was watching it and I just wished they would stop showing random beautiful images of Istanbul and focus more on the cats, you know, the subject of the documentary.
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[quote=“Kate_Monster, post:254, topic:73, full:true”]
It has an incredible score on Rotten Tomatoes, which boggles me. The trailer made it seem like a teenager wrote the script cobbling together his favorite tropes from action movies made in the past two decades. Did the trailer just make it look moronic or is this film simply not FOR me.
[/quote]While I kinda liked the trailers - I thought they were cut for style, not substance, and they certainly oozed style - they don’t give the best representation of the movie. It’s like a heist and a musical got smashed together, and was then adopted by Hudson Hawk.
I can’t say if it’s for you, per se, I can’t say I know your tastes well enough to judge. I know that you’ll definitely get a little bit annoyed at some aspect of how they handled Deborah(Baby’s romantic interest). But it’s definitely not moronic as you seem to think.
Though wierdly, I did find out one thing - you’re closer in one part than I think you realized. Turns out, Edgar Wright had the initial idea for the film when he was 21, reportedly while listening to Bellbottoms by John Spencer blues explosion in his bedroom one night.
[quote=“Kate_Monster, post:256, topic:73, full:true”]
Oh, it’s a comedy? The trailer I saw took itself so seriously that it looked stupid beyond words. Okay. Now I can see the appeal.
[/quote]Mmmm, I’d say it’s more like a funny action/heist film, than a comedy as such. Not that it’s not funny at times, but more that it’s just not the focus of the film.
If I didn’t know it was Edgar Wright, I also would have dismissed it from the trailer. It is very much taking classic heist movie tropes and putting them through a super stylized musical filter. Instead of everyone breaking out in dance, the action happens in time with the music; hopefully that helps convey the tone.
Like Churba, I also had some issues with how the love interest was handled, but over all it was concentrated fun.