It’s funny how life imitates art. A couple weeks ago, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told her country’s residents something that sounded oddly familiar. In reference to new COVID-19 lockdowns, she said:

“Stay local, and do not congregate. Don’t talk to your neighbors. Please keep to your bubbles. It comes down again to those very simple principles. We know from overseas cases of the Delta variant that it can be spread by people simply walking past one another. So, keep those movements outside to the bare minimum, wear a mask, and make sure you keep up that physical distancing.”

Doc and Marty in 2015

After mulling her words over for a few days, it finally hit me why they were giving me déjà vu. I’d heard something similar in an exchange between Doc Brown and Marty McFly at the start of Back to the Future Part II. The key part of that interaction comes when Doc tries to warn Marty not to do anything that could negatively affect the present or future:

“Don’t talk to anyone, don’t touch anything, don’t do anything, don’t interact with anyone, and try not to look at anything.”

Uncanny, isn’t it? With this simple interaction, Back to the Future Part II joins the ranks of Pinocchio, The Silence of the Lambs, and Young Frankenstein in having an unintentional but insightful connection to the COVID-19 pandemic.

That’s No Way to Live

I felt a lot like Marty after hearing all of the restrictions Doc places on him before letting him loose on the streets of 2015 Hill Valley. “I don’t get it!” he declares. Luckily, I did think of a useful way we can relate the Back to the Future Trilogy to our lives.

This film might have been a little early in its prediction of a socially distanced future, but it’s still an interesting take on the world we’re currently living in. I’d like to note that Marty’s interactions with people and things does temporarily create an alternate 1985. But if he hadn’t purchased the Sports Almanac and plunged himself and Doc into a nightmare scenario, his future wouldn’t have been as bright as it turned out to be. He would have continued to give in to peer pressure, crashed his new truck into a Rolls Royce, given up on rock n’ roll, and been fired from his job.

That’s no way to live. Sometimes you just have to make a few mistakes on the way to heaven. Just ask Adam and Eve. They, too, were told not to touch or interact with a certain tree in the Garden of Eden. But if they hadn’t, none of us would have been born. Then again, maybe they were just birdwatching.

This is the Deja Reviewer bidding you farewell until we meet again.

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