Updated: Back to the Future, Today

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Oct. 21, 2015, may seem like just another other fall day. But for cinephiles the world over, it means something and then something more. For this date was what Doc Brown and Marty McFly punched into the flux capacitor to send themselves in that futuristic Delorean into the future in Back to the Future Part II, the 1989 sequel to the original blockbuster hit released in 1985.

When the first film was released, there was some head shaking about how a Canadian TV star could carry a film – particularly one from Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment and directed by Bob Zemeckis (who had helmed the blockbuster rom-com Romancing the Stone the previous year).

Fox had a lot riding on his slight shoulders. But he and rest of the cast – from Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover, Thomas F. Wilson and the incomparable Christopher Lloyd – knocked it out of the park – or rather out of Hill Valley’s town square and into cultural phenomenon (it was also the highest grossing film of 1985 with more than $300,000,000).

The script – by Bob Gale and Zemeckis – arose from a conversation where Gale pondered if he would have been friends with is own dad if they’d gone to high school together. The terms “gigawatt” and “flux capacitator” and “hoverboard” became part of our lexicon. The sharp script included hints to rock ‘n’ roll, modern terrorism while giving audiences a thoughtful take on love, family and how our past decisions can forever alter our future.

The film somehow made it all plausible and yet wistful at the same time. The rest, as they say, is cinematic history and spawned two sequels and a heck of a lot of fan boy affection.

Now, on this sacred day, #BackToTheFuture is trending worldwide.

NEXT: What Hollywood predictions in the film actually came true?

Yesterday, Toyota released an advertisement in honour of the film. Featuring Christopher Lloyd and our April 2010 cover star Michael J. Fox, the ad for the new Toyota Mirai, explains the concept of the Mirai by taking us back to some iconic landmarks like Marty McFly’s house and Hill Valley High School to collect garbage to use as fuel.

Here’s the video, which better explains the concept of the Mirai.

The 1989 movie made some big promises about what we should expect to see by today: hoverboards, smart glasses (which very closely resemble Google Glass), fingerprint recognition technology, video calls, 3-D movies and even online banking. For the most part, science and technology has delivered on most of these Hollywood predictions, as seen in the video below:

They’re rumoured to be in the works, but the question that’s on everyone’s mind (or the one trending on social media) seems to be: where are those self-tying shoes, Nike?