Lorraine Baines McFly

BttFCharacter


name=Lorraine Baines McFly
role=Marty's Mother
profession=Unknown
time=1955 / 1985 / 2015
timetraveler=No
movies="Part I", "Part II", "Part III"
film=Lea Thompson

Lorraine Baines McFly is a fictional character, a lead character in the "Back to the Future" motion picture trilogy, played by actress Lea Thompson. She did not appear in the , though was mentioned.

Family

Lorraine is the eldest child of Sam and Stella Baines. She has 5 siblings; Milton (born 1942), Sally (born 1947), Toby (born 1949), Joey (born 1954), and one sibling born in 1956 whom we never hear any details of in the finished films. (However, Stella is pregnant in November 1955, and a draft script for the second film shows a 1967 dinner scene with "eleven-year-old Ellen"). [ [http://www.bttf.com/scripts/Number_Two.pdf Number Two ] ]

She married George McFly, and by 1985 they have three children; Dave, Linda and Marty McFly.

Pre-Back to the Future

Lorraine Baines was born in 1938 in Hill Valley, California.

Little is known about Lorraine's life prior to 1955, which is when we first meet her chronologically. What is known is that she has been smoking and drinking for a while, and has "parked" in cars with a few boys before the events of the film. As such, George is probably not her first boyfriend.

Lorraine liked the attention of boys when she was in school, and lots of them were attracted to her, including both George McFly and Biff Tannen. She can stand up for herself, yet despite this she likes her men to be strong and able to protect her. She likes thinking back to the "old days", often telling the story of how she met and fell in love with George. Her best friends at school were Betty and Babs, and she could often be found in Lou's Cafe gossiping with them.

Lorraine originally met George on November 5, 1955 when her father almost ran him over with his car. She felt sorry for him, before falling in love with him. They had their first date a week later at the Enchantment Under The Sea dance at school. In this timeline of 1985, she was depressed at how her husband could not stand up for her or himself, and had turned smoking and drinking to an everyday habit. She told her children not to park in cars with members of the opposite sex, under the false pretense that she never did that when she was their age. She also doesn't think very highly of Marty's girlfriend, Jennifer, feeling that a girl who calls a boy is only looking for trouble (in the alternate 1985 timeline however, Lorraine thinks that Jennifer is a very nice girl).

Back to the Future

Lorraine's life was changed, when Marty McFly, her future son, headed back to 1955 accidentally (while escaping from being killed from the Libyan terrorists from "Back To The Future Part I") in Dr. Emmett Brown's DeLorean time machine. Having followed George McFly from Lou's Café, Marty decided to go ahead and push George out of the way of the car that was supposed to hit him. Lorraine felt sorry for Marty - and thought he was attractive, too - and fell in love with him, not knowing that her new crush was her future son.

Over the next week, Lorraine tried to spend time with 'Calvin Klein', whom she labelled as being 'an absolute dream'. Marty, however, had discovered the damage to future history and was anxiously trying to get George back together with Lorraine. Not knowing any of that, Lorraine came over on Tuesday, November 8, 1955, and asked Marty to ask her to go to the dance with him.

In the next day, Marty then came up with a plan. George had to 'rescue' Lorraine from Marty attacking her at the dance, and they'd fall in love. Only once November 12th had arrived, Marty was in big trouble as the plan went haywire. Lorraine attacked him instead, and just as he thought George was showing up, Biff was, being furious for Marty crashing him into a manure truck that Tuesday. He locked Marty in the truck, then attempted to rape Lorraine.

Only just in time, George showed up. Biff soon over-powered him, but as he saw Biff laughing evilly and Lorraine crying for help, George gained strength and, for the first time in his life, stood up to someone by punching Biff right in the jaw, even knocking him out unconscious. Lorraine suddenly loved him instead, and the future McFlys were back together.

However, as Marty was playing at the dance, Mark Dixon cut in to push George away from Lorraine. George stood up for himself and Lorraine one more time and pushed Dixon away, then kissed Lorraine; the timeline was restored.

After listening to Marty's rendition of 'Johnny B. Goode', Lorraine and George said goodbye to Marty. Over the next thirty years, George became a successful science-fiction writer, and Lorraine happily stayed with him.

Back to the Future Part II

After thirty years had passed, by 2015, Lorraine is still happily married to George. The couple have now retired and appear to be quite well off, possibly due to George's writing career taking off after 1985. Like most mothers, Lorraine still worries about her children even when they are adults and have left home. Marty is stuck in a dead-end job and is having marriage problems with his wife Jennifer, and Lorraine wants to make sure everything is OK. As much as she loves her son, though, she feels his life could have turned out much better, and wonders if Jennifer married Marty because she felt sorry for him (the reason why she originally fell in love with and married George McFly before the first film.)

As Marty and Doc headed back in time, to 1985, they discovered that it had become much worse. Biff Tannen had given himself a sports almanac to bet on horse tracks in 1955, and the consequences were 'disastrous'. Biff had hit it "big", and started a company called 'BiffCo' to invest his money and make an enormous empire. Having control over the Hill Valley Government (and later the USA, as he got Nixon re-elected for at least four terms in a row) but "not" over his girl, Lorraine, he shot George McFly dead on March 15th 1973, leaving Lorraine a widow.

Biff and Lorraine married soon thereafter, and a likely theory assumed is that Lorraine only married him because he could provide for her children. The marriage was not a happy one - Lorraine missed George every day, and was often verbally and physically abused by Biff. Lorraine was usually alone - the kids were sent to boarding schools, and she was living mostly by herself on the 27th floor of their casino hotel, Biff Tannen's Pleasure Paradise (built on top of the Courthouse) with only alcohol for company. As she had in the original timeline, Lorraine became an alcoholic. She also had breast enlargements, which Biff had coerced her into getting. Lorraine has tried on numerous occasions to leave Biff, but stays with him purely so her kids will not suffer (Biff threatens to cut them off, get them sent to jail, etc).

On the evening of October 26th/October 27th, 1985, Marty showed up in Hill Valley. Lorraine was surprised he had come back from Switzerland, and even more surprised when he appeared to have forgotten everything about his family. He was disgusted by the fact Biff was Lorraine's husband, and left after hearing that George was at the Cemetery. Unknown to Lorraine, Marty and Doc left later that night, at 2:42am, to set things right in the year 1955.

Having returned to November 12th, 1955, Lorraine's age is again reduced by thirty years. Now seventeen, Marty watches her as she gets out of Ruth's Frock Shop, having bought a dress, and is harassed by teen Biff, who claims that he'll marry her someday, someday she'll be his wife. Lorraine and Babs hurriedly flee from Tannen.

That evening, Lorraine can be seen at the dance with 1955 Marty, and later, after the punch, with George. We vaguely see her through the window again as Marty '55 says his goodbye, but we do get the expression that everything is all right again, and after the almanac is burned, it is all right, and Lorraine goes back from being an alcoholic to the way she was before Old Biff made his way back to 1955.

Back to the Future Part III

We don't see Lorraine in the climax of Part III. She's around in the 1955 scenes, but obviously avoided by Doc '55 and Marty, who don't want to mess with Marty's future even more. During the 1880s scenes, George's grandmother, Maggie McFly, is around (also played by Thompson) but it's not really established if she's related to Lorraine or not.

On the end of the movie, as Marty returns to 1985, we "do" see Lorraine, at the house. She appears to be back to how she was at the end of the first movie, and things are obviously right for Marty again, as they're going out for brunch all together. She also comments, surprised, that she expected Marty not to be back, yet, since she thought he was at the lake with Jennifer. Which reminds Marty of picking her up, so the movie ignores Lorraine again, but we do know now that the present is back all right.

References