Hill Valley High
It warms my heart to see that the most popular, breakout offering at Universal Fan Fest Nights was a piece of micro-immersive theater, Destination: Hill Valley, but sadly the experiential framework of this first-year production could not support the level of interest and uncapped capacity flow it received toward the end of its run.
While the sense of physical immersion in the historical backlot location and recreated scenes from the first Back to the Future film might theoretically satisfy a need for social media shareables, the narrative immersion of this approach left the audience without a defined role, and the performers in an unenviable position of having to compensate for an audience-superior dramaturgical conundrum. Everyone in attendance knew every story beat — plus those for two movies to yet come — and by the end of the event run, there were Universal team members doing line management for scenes that had not yet occurred. Actors were not mic’d, performing scripted scenes in clusters of 100+ guests, the majority of which could not hear a word.
No number of story branches or simultaneous character threads can accommodate infinite capacity. If Universal is committed to fixed loops of scripted scenes for this format, attendance needs to be capped based on the available interactive opportunities, and the area needs to be cleared between loops. If they’re open to an alternate structure more befitting of the needs of the event (and the franchise) a less linear system of emergent story moments should be adopted. Time travel is chaotic. Lean into the inevitable chaos of hundreds of guests dressed like Marty, and build a narrative scaffolding that centers the audience’s presence as part of the core experience. You can still maintain the same level of spectacle at the same cadence, I promise.
Allow Doc Brown’s Institute of Future Technology to host a Hill Valley Fair in modern day, where the series’ characters from across history can appear by various time-travels means, and empower the audience to be their “guides” to today. George McFly can do a reading from his latest book. Clara can give a presentation on Jules Verne. Institute research assistants can run around scribbling furiously on clipboards. Save The Clock Tower Lady can get into a turf war with rival locals committed to Destroy the Clock Tower. Temporal chaos can break out every single loop, and the cursed building can be struck by lightning. It might not be the lightning strike from the film, but it would be all the more special as a story moment unique to the adventure unfolding in a living, breathing town square.
An extended version of this suggested approach is mounted seasonally at Knott’s Berry Farm in a similarly sized space: Ghost Town Alive! can absorb crowds with a variety of participatory shenanigans and improvisational character moments within the structure of an established story world, which all lead to a shared finale at the end of the day. It boasts roughly three times the number of characters which populated Hill Valley, and it is easy to imagine how its shape might be a complementary fit even within a truncated runtime punctuated by a lightning strike.
The decision to adapt the film into a condensed half-hour, reverse-branching loop constrained the virtually infinite potential of this nascent experiential artform. Within that limited structure, however, the team found a surprising number of opportunities to include the staples of immersive shenanigans that involved the guests: passing notes between romantic hopefuls, pep talks, brainstorming solutions, etc. Even this small taste of that ephemeral magic, so familiar to fans of the medium of embodied story play, was enough to command the most audience interest in an event lineup stacked with fun things to do.
Beyond the immersive design, as a massive fan of the series I missed a certain historical ambition: For decades Back to the Future boldly avoided adaptation — in an animated series, a ride, a video game, several runs of comic books — allowing each new medium it entered an original story that could play to its unique storytelling advantages. I wish that vision had applied here. This space and these characters deserve an original story that leverages the unique participation of the audience.
I attended the final night of Fan Fest, and decided to close it out in Hill Valley. The show ended on a charming half-loop with no band and no pyro/projections, but the cast was on fire. (I personally have no interest in pyro nor projections, so this was ideal for me. Peak loop.)
Mr. Strickland cancelled the school dance before it began, and then gave a sweet thank-you speech to end the show for the last time. Marty usually runs off after the dance, but since it was “cancelled”, he was able to have the scene with George and Lorraine where he asks them to go easy on their kid if he ever sets fire to the living room rug.
Earlier in the loop, Lorraine calls Marty “Calvin” as she usually does (claiming to have seen his underwear when he bent over) and I attempted to play hype man by telling her that not knowing George’s underwear color gave him an air of mystery.
After George punches Biff, I can hear Lorraine ask George what color his underwear are. The perfect payoff. Thank you, Lorraine.
