This is heavy

Movie buffs on the East Coast awoke to some bad news on Sunday morning when word of the Universal Studios fire broke out. The efforts to stop the fire, at first hampered by low water pressure, were eventually successful but not before a large swarth of movie history burned to the ground.

According to the L.A. Times, among the big-ticket items lost to the blaze were the King Kong exhibit, some street scapes used in countless films and movies and a 40,000-reel video vault. While the vault is recoverable, the rest of the damage is tragic, and one item stands out to me above all else: The iconic Courthouse Square from Back to the Future went up in flames.

While I know that the original set was lost to a 1990 fire, this latest blaze still strikes a deep chord with me. Like millions of other kids growing up in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I loved the Back to the Future trilogy, and I still watch those movies today on DVD. They’re timeless classics and hilarious sci-fi, time travel films. Christopher Lloyd is over the top as Doctor Emmett Brown and Michael J. Fox plays Marty McFly to a tee. From “Great Scott” to the Grey’s Sports Almanac, those movies are a wild ride.

When news of the burning courthouse struck, I feared for the clock tower itself. I’ve seen the clock tower once on a Universal Studios visit, and it seemed like I was looking at Hill Valley, California. The only thing missing was Dr. Brown swinging off the the top of that clock while a DeLorean hurtled down the street approaching 88 miles per hour. While little eight-year-old Ben was a bit disillusioned by the fact that the clock wasn’t stuck at 10:04 p.m. as it was in the movie following a 1.21-Jigawatt lightening bolt, it was still a pretty awesome site for a little kid.

Luckily, the fire didn’t knock out the Clock Tower, and all is well in Hill Valley. But had we lost that piece of pop culture and movie history, it would have been I sad day indeed.