The mid-1990s blockbuster Forrest Gump […] attempted to counteract the emerging discontinuity of the Internet age by retelling the story of the twentieth century from the perspective of a simpleton. Filmmaker Robert Zemeckis was already most famous for the Back to the Future series in which characters went back in time to rewrite history. Forrest Gump attempts this same revisionist magic through a series of flashbacks, in which the audience relives disjointed moments of the past century of televised history, all with Gump magically pasted into the frame. […] He becomes a war hero and multimillionaire by blindly stumbling through life with nothing more than the good morals his mom taught him, while the people around him who seem more aware of their circumstances drop like flies from war wounds, AIDS, and other disasters.
— Douglas Rushkoff: Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now (2013)
A man with a low IQ has accomplished great things in his life and been present during significant historic events—in each case, far exceeding what anyone imagined he could do. But despite all he has achieved, his one true love eludes him.