The following article details Act 2 Sequence 3 of the movie “Back to the Future.” This structure makes us of eight sequences and 3 acts. Sequence 3 is the first sequence in act 2. Act 2 is the act that most screenwriters find the most challenging, which is why it is crucial to understand its function.
While Marty searches for the address to Dr. Brown’s home, he meets his father as a teenager. As in the future, a young Biff and his posse bully the George of the past. When Marty follows George, he learns that George is a peeping tom up in a tree looking into women’s windows. Then George falls from the limb and Marty has to save him from being hit by a car. In the process, the car hits Marty and knocks him out. Marty wakes up in Lorraine’s bedroom. It seems the driver who hit him is his grandfather and now his mother has a teenage crush on him.
After experiencing his mother’s family, Marty rushes out before she makes a pass at him. His next stop is Doc Brown’s house, or the Dr. Emmett Brown of the past. Doc is a frustrated inventor who has yet to invent anything useful. At first, he does not believe that Marty is from the future until Marty tells him the story the future Doc recounted about how he fell, hit his head, and came up with the idea for the flux capacitor, which is what makes time travel possible.
Marty and Doc bring the DeLorean back to Doc’s garage and play back the video of the time machine in action. Doc is horrified at what he hears his future self say. There is no way that he can generate the power necessary to make the flux capacitor function. But when he mentions that a bolt of lightning could accomplish the job, Marty has the answer with the leaflet Jennifer gave him giving the exact time of just such a strike. Through a photograph, which Marty has of him and his brother and sister, Doc determines that Marty has done something to endanger his future when he notices that the images are disappearing. Unless that problem is repaired, Marty is dead. The THIRD CRITICAL DECISION for Marty is that he will have to make sure his parents go with each other to the big dance where they will kiss for the first time and fall in love.