Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis have named George Pal's 1960 film of The Time Machine among their influences, and the DeLorean's time-circuit display copies the colours of the machine's dashboard in it: Wells's time machine, by way of Pal.
FilmSeries· 1985· Science Fiction
Back to the Future
Back to the Future: it draws on 2 recorded sources.
What influenced Back to the Future
The works this one is recorded as drawing on.
A general debt. Gale and Zemeckis cited the small-town America of Frank Capra's films, and Roger Ebert wrote that the film resembles It's a Wonderful Life more than any time-travel movie: a hero shown how his town would be without the right choice, down to the alternate, ruined Hill Valley of the sequel.