Marty McFly is an aspiring musician, but he is not sure of what the future holds for him; first his band was rejected as the performing band for the school dance, and historically, no McFly has succeeded in anything. The only bright spots in his existence are his girlfriend and Emmett Brown, the town crackpot scientist, who is Marty's good friend. Marty was helping brown with his latest invention a time machine, which is fitted into a Delorean. The time machine needs a tremendous amount of power to work, which he gets from plutonium. Now Brown got the plutonium from some Libyans who want him to build a bomb; they find Brown and shoot him, Marty gets into the Delorean and drives off and when he reaches the speed of 88 mph that activates the time machine, he finds himself in 1955, cause that was the date that Brown entered, which was when he first conceived the time machine. Now having already used up all the power of the plutonium, Marty must find a way to get it working, so he can go back to his own time. Marty looks for Brown but before he does, he runs into his father as a teenager, and accidentally interferes with his father's first meeting of Lorraine, his future mother. Marty then goes to see Brown and convinces him that he is from the future and to help him. But when he learns of the amount of power that is needed to power the machine, he tells Marty that it's hopeless cause the only other thing that can generate that much power is a bolt of lightning and it's impossible to determine when and where they will strike, but Marty has with him an old newspaper cliping that states that the town clock tower will be struck by lightning, so they plan to draw the energy from the lightning so they can power the machine. But before they do, Marty must act as cupid for his parents cause it seems that because they never met they won't fall in love and get married and Marty will not exist.