"Nuked The Fridge"

[Ragingblues]

"Nuked the fridge" Crashes Into Pop Culture

www.theraider.net/news/fullstory_indy4.php?id=891


While it conjures up a moment that may make Indy fans wince, the new catch phrase; "nuked the fridge", is hot! Referring to Indy's latest escape from certain doom in the latest film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, climbing into a refrigerator to escape an atomic bomb blast, the saying also refers to something more. The something more is when a series of films to television shows has gone beyond the point of no return with its audience due to retentiveness bad storylines, or has just gotten long in the tooth and overstayed its welcome. The term "jump the shark" came when TV's coolest hero (and Mutt Williams lookalike), Arthur "The Fonz" Fonzerelli, did a water-skiing jump over a tank of sharks on the classic show, Happy Days. Now, fans of pop culture are adding to it with a cinematic version thanks to Indy's latest escapade.
From CNBC to Newsweek magazine folks have been reporting about this latest, Indy-related phrase, the most recent comes from The New York Times. Here are some highlights of their article on Indy's high-flying catch phrase.

In recent weeks, a line from the movie "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" -- "nuked the fridge" -- has gained traction online. A Google search comes up with 64,000 hits.

In "Indiana Jones," the hero's improbable achievement was to survive a nuclear blast by hiding in a refrigerator. Hence, "to nuke the fridge" means to introduce a wildly implausible element to a once-respected franchise, or more generally, to signal the abandonment of past standards of quality.

Newsweek chronicled the phrase, calling it a synonym for "movie-franchise meltdowns." The Web site Urban Dictionary has taken note of it, and Web sites such as nukedthefridge.com and nukingthefridge.com hope to take advantage of the burst of notoriety.

Well, there you have it Indy fans, but I must say, wasn't "rafting from the plane" in Temple of Doom a little more whacky? I guess it doesn't look as cool on a T-shirt. Speaking of which if you want to tell the world that you survived "nuking the fridge" or more, be sure to check out the official website for some merchandise.

Hopefully, Indy 5 will come along and make the nuked fridge seem like a "Bobby Ewing in the shower", in which case writers on the TV show Dallas erased a season of strange plotlines by making it all a dream.


Sources:

www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080802/BIZ04/808020386

www.nytimes.com/2008/07/28/business/media/28fridge.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin

www.nukingthefridge.com/

www.nukedthefridge.com/



Ken

[GCR]

Nuking the fridge, huh? I haven't actually read or heard this saying anywhere, but it's pretty sad that THIS is one of the by-products of Indy 4. I wonder if this phrase will have the kind of staying power "jumped the shark" has. If, 20 years from now, my kids are saying something or other "nuked the fridge", I will not be a happy man.

It figures...just when I was getting to the point of not wincing every time I Indy 4 came up, this happens. ;D

[Kt. Templar]

During the LFCC panel, Karen Allen commented that she'd been given a "Nuked the 'Fridge" baseball cap and was going to pass it on to Spielberg when she saw him. .

[Havana]

The phrase "the abandonment of past standards of quality" is powerful, meaningful and dead accurate.

This whole fridge episode brings to mind something said by Ian Fleming the creator of James Bond. In referring to the books, he said that some events in his stories are implausible but not techinically impossible. All fictional adventure stories have to provide thrills and daring escapes. The most important thing is not lose perspective and take things too far. Alienating (no pun intended) your audience is deadly to any story. And a note to the writer of that article, Mythbusters proved that surviving the airplane raft escape was entirely plausible.
For future reference, I would like to offer up some alternate phrases. How about "This movie's been Spalkoed." to refer to the use of an undeveloped, uninteresting, and stereotypical villian.
"He's the Mac of this movie." which refers to an undeveloped and uninteresting character role filled by a respected and talented actor who's given absolutely nothing meaningful to do. You could also refer to this as "a John Hurt role." When all hope of redemption is lost, you can say, "this movie's swinging with the monkeys now."