I have come to accept that there are a number of questions that simply will remain unanswered during my lifetime: What exists beyond the bubble of our expanding universe? Did that venerable chicken in fact predate the original egg? And, most vexing of all, why would skateboarding, girl-chasing teenager Marty McFly become best pals with wild-eyed, crackpot inventor Doctor Emmett Brown? A new mash-up trailer, marrying the audio track from 2012’s lengthy Cloud Atlas trailer to visuals from the Back to the Future trilogy, seems to offer an explanation for the latter, suggesting that the meeting of these two souls was not merely happenstance; It was written in the stars… er, clouds.
Last fall, the Wachowski siblings (The Matrix) and co-director Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) brought to the screen a bold adaptation of David Mitchell’s genre-merging, time-spanning novel, Cloud Atlas. The film, polarizing critics and audiences alike, made its first splash on the scene in the form of a nearly six-minute-long trailer. Emphasizing themes of love, loss, and villainy, the trailer showcased lead actors Tom Hanks and Halle Berry as multiple characters across generations in a variety of settings and was all but incomprehensible to anyone who hadn’t read the book.
Enter Back to the Future super-fan Justin Fields. Perhaps inspired by the actors-in-many-roles scenarios common to both Cloud Atlas and Robert Zemeckis’ time travel trilogy, Fields has combined the audio from the Atlas trailer with visuals from the BTTF series. And, Great Scott, it works!
As called out on Cinema Blend, Fields posted the mash-up as something of a love letter to his favorite trilogy. But those familiar with the original Atlas trailer will appreciate how the mash-up seems to hit all of the beats, from Doc and Marty’s inexplicable connection (could Marty really be Clara reincarnated?!) to the shots of the “nightmarish cafe” and the plummeting carriage, all culminating in a collage of some of the more memorable BTTF moments, perceptibly weightier against the backdrop of M83’s hauntingly triumphant “Outro.”
If it’s been a while since you pulled a Back to the Future trilogy marathon, this mash-up may just inspire you to dust off your Blu-ray set (yes, Blu-rays are old enough to have collected dust). And whether you loved, despised, or passed on Cloud Atlas, this mash-up is definitely worth your time (see what I did there?).
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