BACK TO THE FUTURE Writer Bob Gale Reveals the Two Changes He'd Make to the First Film If He Had a DeLorean

The Back to the Future trilogy is a fan favorite set of films that has held up well over the decades. The first movie was so original and fun, many would call it a perfect film, and its writer would tend to agree, but he has a couple of notes. In a recent interview with io9, screenwriter Bob Gale said that knowing the film would have two sequels would have changed his perspective a bit.

Gale said of one note he and co-writer/director of the film Robert Zemeckis always thought they’d change, “Zemeckis has always said, ‘If I knew we were going to do a second movie, I wouldn’t have put Jennifer in the car.'”

This probably just tied their hands a bit having to figure out what to do with her, and it made it tricky that the original actress was no longer available to return for the second film, but they figured it out!

Gale went on to reveal the next story note he wished he could have made in the first film, explaining: “People say to me, ‘Okay, if you were going to redo Back to the Future 1 knowing what’s in Back to the Future 2 and 3, what would you do differently?’

“And the only thing that I could ever answer is, in 1955, for Biff to call Marty a chicken, [Marty] say, ‘ Nobody calls me chicken’ and set that up in the first movie. Because when we went to do Part Two, we said Marty needs to have some kind of a character flaw.

“We see in the first movie that he’s a little bit of a hothead. He’s ready to kind of go at Biff even though he’s too small to be doing that. So we said let’s use that aspect of his personality and make more of a meal out of that and have him respond when anybody calls him a chicken.”

This is a very small detail, and while I can see how it would bother a writer, it doesn’t take anything away from the lasting legacy of the Back to the Future franchise.