Screenwriter Bob Gale has hit back at Avengers: Endgame's Back to the Future snub, saying the Marvel Cinematic Universe movie does copy the time travel rules established by his 1985 blockbuster script. The Michael J. Fox smash hit very clearly establishes it's time travel rules from the get-go and has become the way movie audiences understand time travel now.

That's why in Avengers: Endgame, when the time heist plot is established, the movie has to mention Back to the Future, first when Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) attempts to convince Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) to help them plan the heist, and second when Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) explains the movie's own rules of time travel to the rest of the characters. Lang famously expresses his disappointment after realizing that Back to the Future made up its time travel rules, calling the movie "bulls**t."

Gale joined Anthony and Joe Russo, the Avengers: Endgame directors, and the movie's co-writers Stephen McFeely and Cristopher Markus for the Russo Bros. Pizza Film School episode on Back to the Future, and told them what he felt about about time travel comments in Endgame. Gale pokes fun at the filmmakers, saying that despite trying to establish that their time travel rules are different from the ones he established in Back to the Future, they end up doing almost the same thing with their characters by sending them back to their previous movies.


McFeely and Markus try and defend themselves in response, saying that they were really taking aim at Back to the Future Part II and its sub-plot involving the villainous Biff using a sports almanac to get rich. The Russos add that they had to reference the classic adventure franchise, as that is the accepted reference for time travel in the minds of movie audiences. Besides being hilarious, the interaction is also surprising given Gale's intimate knowledge of the MCU. The screenwriter worked in a different age of Hollywood, and given that he's 69 years old, he's not exactly the target market for the series. But, he shows off that not only has he seen the movie, but knows the other films in the MCU well too.

This shows that Gale has an appreciation for blockbuster filmmaking that clearly still keeps him going to the movies to this day. It's also fun to watch the filmmakers behind the biggest box office hit of all time talk about their love for, and appreciation of, a classic film like Back to the Future, which was clearly a big influence on all of them, whether they chose to subvert its time travel rules or not.

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