10 Terrible Ideas That Became Great Movies
2. A Time Travel Comedy About A Man Attempting To Prevent Incest - Back To The Future
Back to the Future may be one of the most beloved movies of all time, but just think about how insane and even problematic this must've sounded to Universal executives when it was first pitched.
A time travel comedy where a high-schooler heads back to 1955, accidentally gets his teenage mother hot for him, and spends the rest of the movie trying to negate her unknowingly incestual feelings in order to ensure he isn't wiped out of existence.
Yup, that's the highest-grossing movie of 1985 alright.
There's obviously far more to the movie than that, but at its core that's what it's about, and so it's little surprise that the script was rejected more than 40 times before finally getting the green-light.
But thanks to the witty, creative script, excellent performances, and fantastic direction, Back to the Future triumphed, serving up a cheeky "what if?" for audiences without excessively luxuriating in the ickier elements of its narrative.
Plus, it also inspired this terrific John Mulaney bit about just how freakin' weird the movie truly is.