@McTosh - I think most of us were yearning for escape back then - hence the light-hearted and funny.
Reagan and Soviet Minister Andrei Gromyko were in the midst of nuclear arms negotiations back then...and everyone was still afraid of Soviet missiles landing in their backyard. Cold War was still on...and everyone was pretty much living day to day trying not to think about it. Yeah...lived through that - back during all that and when Back to the Future came out; I'd just finished Gr. 9 and was on summer holiday going into Gr. 10 year. Most of us in high-school back then went to school trying not to think about what was going on. We were old enough to know what was going on...and old enough to be scared about it. ;) We just hoped that nothing kicked off while we were in school and hopefully we'd see our parents at the end of the day. We just tried to tune it out of our heads. :)
There were directors back then that still liked to release "dark and moody" films... but I think a lot of us wanted to just not think about "what could happen..." or see the angst in life.
After all, two years prior, Nicholas Meyer released this movie: The Day After exposing our deepest fears about the whole situation at the time.
https://compote.slate.com/images/1811b5ee-27cd-4e69-8c81-f62037a95178.png
Most of us had our fill of "dark and moody" at least back then. If we were going to go up in a mushroom cloud, at least we'd go out laughing...if we watched something funny.
