Thursday, May 29, 2008

Nuke the Fridge roundup

Once it was feared that the radiation from a nuclear blast would mutate DNA and create world destroying monsters. With the power of the internet, it now creates catch phrases. The nuke seen in the latest Indiana Jones movie has created a new netism: Nuke the Fridge.

The phrase refers to a scene in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" where Indy survives a nuclear blast by climbing into a refrigerator. The blast vaporizes everything and flings the fridge several miles across the desert until it crashes back to earth where Indy climbs out relatively unharmed.

The phrase works for a movie the way "Jump the Shark" does for TV, namely, the moment when a movie or movie franchise starts going to crap. It's the moment when you realize this film is not as good as previous films, or other films of its genre. It's the moment when your disbelief overtakes your the requisite cognitive dissonance. It's the moment when the rest of the movie is spent emotionally detached because the main character is now seen as invulnerable, or the plot too implausible and therefore not worthy of any rational human attachment. It's the moment when you wish you had saved your money.

Being an internet creation, the rise of Nuke the Fridge has been covered in articles and on blogs and forums:

AlterNet

When did Indiana Jones officially nuke the fridge?

The official Fridge thread on IMDB

Nuke the Fridge Facebook Group!

Nuking the Fridge merchandise!


Nuke the Fridge video parodies are also now on YouTube.

Somewhere, someone is working hard on Nuke the Fridge page right now.... where we can talk about when movies or franchises Nuked the Fridge and never recovered. But it all stared with a shitty movie by two Hollywood legends: Spielburg and Lucas. The net giveth and the net taketh away. Long live the Fridge! I for one welcome our new Nuke the Fridge overlords...

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