I learned a new phrase today. Well, a couple actually, but the one I'll share with you is "Nuke the Fridge".
According to the Urban Dictionary, "nuke the fridge" is the film equivalent to "jump the shark", which is the situation when a tv show begins to decline in quality, or has changed to such a degree that it isn't nearly as much fun any more. "Jump the shark" refers to that classic scene in a 1977 episode of "Happy Days" when Fonzie, well, jumps a shark. It has its own website.
"Nuke the Fridge" refers to a pivotal moment in a film series when it begins to decline sharply in quality, or when something so silly, so farcical, so inappropriate happens, that it can be pointed to as a sign of the beginning of the end. The phrase began this Spring when, in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Indy saves himself from a certain death in a nuclear explosion by jumping into a lead-lined refrigerator. The explosion destroys everything around him and sends the fridge (with Indy in it) flying across hundreds of metres of desert. Indy escapes without a scratch. Just like it would happen in real life.
Yeah, we waited 19 years for this movie. George Lucas rejected every script up to that pointed (Bill Shakespeare himself could have written a script, and Lucas would have rejected it for whatever reason).
Anyway.
Anyway, this film has spawned the phrase "nuke the fridge". This horrible film will at least be known for that, at least.
Which film series has nuked the fridge, in your opinion? And what scene in it makes you think that?
Bevboy
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