Summer Splash : Hold On Tight : Universal Studios’ ‘Back to the Future--The Ride’ is a high-tech thriller that may be a glimpse of tomorrow’s movies

Call June 11 and 12 the $120-Million Weekend for Universal Pictures and Tours.

“Jurassic Park,” Steven Spielberg’s $60-million production, opens Friday, June 11.

The next day, Universal Studios Hollywood opens its $60-million “Back to the Future--The Ride,” which is based on the 1985 blockbuster movie and its two sequels, produced by Spielberg.

The ride is a combination of the most advanced motion picture wizardry, movement and sound technology. And the attraction may be a preview of movies and theaters of the future as they try to stay ahead of developments in home entertainment.

In this new attraction, visitors are seated in replicas of the DeLorean sports cars that were featured in the movies. These are suspended on top of hydraulic motion bases in front of a monstrous motion picture screen.

Suddenly, you feel a rumble, then a sense of taking off. There’s a shroud of fog hitting you in the face. Wind. Sound. And before you realize it, you have a full aerial view of a suburban town as if you were flying through the streets. Then you are racing through time.

And although you know this is only a movie--projected on a screen that is as wide as your peripheral vision can wander--you are made to feel every tilting, breaking and racing sensation roaring at you.

The film for “Back to the Future--The Ride” lasts 4 1/2 minutes and was produced for $16 million. At that rate, a feature-length movie would calculate to be the most expensive ever produced--around $500 million.

The film is projected inside two side-by-side 13-story tall Omnimax movie domes--arguably the largest movie theaters ever built--which are the latest addition to the Universal Studios Hollywood complex, located off the Hollywood Freeway at Lankershim Boulevard.

Both domes contain what Universal says are the biggest movie screens in the world. They are four times the size of the large-scale IMAX screen--or 80 feet in diameter. They are curved to the point of surrounding the viewer by 270 degrees, side to side and top to bottom.

Each dome houses 12 DeLorean models that are aimed at the huge screens, and each “auto” seats eight.

Even before you enter the theaters, visitors receive a preview of what is to come. You enter a high-tech equipped waiting area and are greeted by guides who warn against the health effects of high-speed time travel. And as you wait, you can feel the buildings rumble from the movement and sound effects that the ride generates. It’s the equivalent of a 5.1 earthquake, say the ride’s designers. But the structure you’re standing in, they insist, is built to take it.

As visitors wait, TV monitors show a program that reminds us of the original movies on which the attraction is based. The “Back to the Future” feature film trilogy began as a contemporary tale with Michael J. Fox cast as suburban teen-ager Marty McFly, who travels back through time to the 1950s. His mode of travel is via a sports car that has been equipped for a time travel experiment by the eccentric Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd). Much to Doc’s surprise, the experiment works. But the catch in the movie plot is that McFly has to travel back to the future in order to resume his life.

There were two sequels to the original hit film--all of which were written by Bob Gale and directed by Robert Zemeckis--and this new thrill ride takes off where the others left off. Gale, who has served as an adviser on both this new ride and an earlier, but less technically advanced one at Universal’s Florida theme park, says the ride elaborates on the movies. It puts visitors inside the DeLorean and lets them experience the sensations that McFly must have felt as he blasted through time.

While watching the monitors in the ride’s waiting area, visitors are reacquainted with Doc Brown and another character from the movie named Biff Tannen, who was a high school bully from the ‘50s (a role repeated by Thomas F. Wilson). The waiting area is known as Doc Brown’s Institute of Future Technology--another reference from the movies.

Suddenly, the TV transmission is interrupted and we witness Biff stealing a DeLorean and threatening to race into history--to the early years of the planet. Aghast, Doc rounds up his visitors (us) and we board another DeLorean to chase Biff through time.

It’s at this point that you enter the mock DeLoreans, each one housed in its own garage.

The story line takes us on a tour from the 1950s small town to the Ice Age, through volcanoes, to prehistoric times, into the mouth of a dinosaur (and then out again), and finally back to the future--all the while chasing Biff, who is driving the stolen DeLorean. (The ride’s engineers say there is no connection to the dinosaur seen in the attraction and the ones in “Jurassic Park.”)

The film itself was created with miniatures, and director Douglas Trumbull shot it so that every angle is synchronized with the movement of the DeLoreans--which is considerable. Each car tilts forward and backward and side to side, to accentuate the speed and motions depicted on screen.

Says Terry A. Winnick, the vice president of special projects for Universal’s parent MCA Inc.: “We’re taking the state of the art to the limit with this one. . . . The entire range of your vision and all your senses will be in our control.”

Winnick said the intensity is so great that children under 40 inches tall, pregnant women and persons with respiratory problems are not permitted on the ride.

It was more than enough to make this viewer spin, laugh, gulp and wince more than once.

Viewed strictly as a film, and taking into account the vastness of the screen, I felt a sensation of movement unlike any other motion picture format--so much so that it dwarfs some current “circle” films that are shot in 360 degrees. And when the movie’s movement is integrated with the actual motion the visitor feels sitting in the DeLorean, the effect is unbelievably intense. Radical was the word from one teen who previewed the attraction.

How does the “Back to the Future” experience compare to “Star Tours,” the popular marriage of film and simulated movement at Disney’s theme parks? (The rides are based on George Lucas’ “Star Wars” film trilogy.)

The first time I rode “Star Tours,” I walked away dizzy and very much thrilled. I remember thinking, this sets a new standard. This pushes what movies can do to new limits.

With “Back to the Future--The Ride” the sensory bombardment is at least 10 times greater.

For screenwriter Gale, the notion of seeing his movies brought to three-dimensional life is “euphoric.” It never occurred to him when he was writing them. And in fact, even after the ride idea was first proposed, it took years before technology could catch up with the vision that Universal’s planners had in mind.

But Gale sees such high-tech attractions as a natural evolution for entertainment: “The rules of drama are the same whether you’re watching the black-and-white ‘Casablanca’ or riding ‘Back to the Future.’ It’s an old concept called showmanship.”