A Tesla Cybertruck replaces the Back to the Future DeLorean because it’s the future, get it?

I expected to hate this video — it recreates a key Back to the Future scene, replacing the iconic DeLorean with a Tesla Cybertruck. Then I watched it. It’s actually sort of cute and really well done.

A team from Toronto-based Fort York VFX created the 52-second video, which reimagines the scene where Doc Brown first tests the time machine he has built. In the original, of course, Doc uses a DeLorean — but instead, we see Elon Musk’s blocky truck as the vehicle that will whisk Marty back to 1955 at 88 miles per hour while being chased by Libyan terrorists in a mall parking lot. Yes, I saw this movie in a theater.

What’s appealing about this mashup is that it doesn’t make fun of the original. Rather, it feels like an homage, with a few winks at the audience: it lives on a YouTube channel whose username is Elon McFly, and the spinning license plate at the end reads “LOL GAS” (the Cybertruck is electric). And the new time machine looks like what a Cybertruck would look like if Doc Brown got his hands on one.

The replacement video is pretty seamless, even in a shot that has Marty and Doc in the foreground with the car speeding toward them. While my allegiance remains with the original, I can appreciate the narrative symmetry of having a vehicle built with “the future” in mind — one without an internal combustion engine — represented in this classic film about finding your way home.