Welcome to the future: A look at 'Back to the Future Part II' today

For those unfamiliar with Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future Part II, today — October 21, 2015 — is the day that 1985’s young Marty McFly was zapped to in order to prevent his son from participating in a robbery with the grandson of bully Biff Tannen. Of course, no time-travel adventure comedy would be complete without a considerable amount of butterfly effect blunders. And in this celebrated 1989 sequel, the diabolical Biff ensures that Marty and Doc don’t get a smooth transition back to their present day from 2015.

Aside from this conflict, the film is most known for its colorful depiction of “the future,” or what we know now as the present. Arguably, the term “futuristic” itself has assumed a connotation of sci-fi hyperbole — ask anyone to play word association and you may get results like “flying cars” and “working robots.”

This movie has those and many other speculations. But considering the remarkably innovative technological landscape of today, the question is: Were they really that far off?

“Back to the Future Day” is a day for us to evaluate how far we’ve come. Since this year’s start, and at an exponential rate up until October, several major news outlets (NBC News, CNN, BBC News, NowThis) started drawing comparisons between the 2015 as dramatized in Back to the Future Part II and the 2015 we know today.

Virtual Reality

Marty Jr.’s goggles suggest virtual reality technology, which is reaching new heights today with displays like Oculus Rift.

Video Calling

Video calling is now commonplace, on platforms such as Skype and Apple’s FaceTime application.

3-D Movies

While we don’t yet have full-blown “Holomax” technology at the movies, 3-D optimization is huge. A new laser-projection system said to provide crisper 3-D images made a real event of Zemeckis’ latest film, The Walk, at its premiere in London last month.

Self-Tying Shoes

Nike, who designed the “MAG” shoe for Michael J. Fox, was apparently working on a self-tying mechanism back in January of this year.

Hoverboards

And of course, everybody’s wondering if we’ll have functional hoverboards before 2015 is over. Lexus unveiled a prototype this summer and a California company known as Arx Pax is currently crowdfunding. While they won’t be replacing bicycles anytime soon, hoverboards could start appearing everywhere in the near future.

Back to the Future Part II is screening at 8 pm tonight at The Palace Theater in Syracuse.