nickdawgy

Yeah because all the Indiana Jones movies were so real, it's a slap in the face that they'd go and throw this fake stuff at us.

nickdawgy

tell us how you really feel.

Ron G

What about "surfed the avalanche"?

Nick Martin

Hacking the Mothership is good, but then again I LOVE ID4. Yes I do.

Jackskeleton

Was "flipped the lid", "ride the sub" or "dodge the boulder" taken?

Either way, "Nuke the fridge" is stupid. Seriously stupid.

riotinmyskull

has 'nuked the fridge' jumped the shark yet?

Charlie Goose

True. No one knows what would really happen if we opened the Ark of the Covenant, so that interpretation is up for grabs. However, we all know what happens during an a-bomb test, so it should stick closer to reality.

Draven

Look, like it or not, Indiana Jones exists in the "real world" with a fantasy element.

What if Indy could suddenly fly? Would you all say "oh, it's a fantasy. The Ark killed the Nazis so anything goes." No, you wouldn't. And a 60+ year old man surviving a near ground-zero nuclear blast and flying miles through the air in a metal fridge and rolling out, STANDING UP and watching the rest of the explosion is as ridiculous as Indy gaining the ability to fly.

They set the rules in this world, and the only thing that can "break" them are the fantasy elements. The nuke was straight out of our world and we all know how devastating they are.

This was a completely unneccesary part of the film that began the downhill slide the movie took from there.

jdpatri

Nah. We'd be here too long.

theflicker

There's a line when he's getting debriefed by the government agents where Indy says something like, "Maybe you want to talk about how I survived that nuclear explosion?"

One interpretation could be that the they're acknowledging the absurdity of the situation, but my personal interpretatation is that this is the result of him drinking from the Grail. By doing so, Indy came in direct contact with the supernatural/fantasy world and now has some of those attributes.

At the same time, I guess his father's death sort of 'nukes the fridge' of my argument. (I can use the term that way because it means nothing.)

All the same, it's a fantasy adventure film that I found pretty entertaining. Except for the monkey tree swinging tutorial. If Lucas/Spielberg intend for Mutt Williams to be the next Indy, he needs to fall on his face a bit more.

jdpatri

This is my logic and I'm sticking to it.

Indiana Jones is an archaeologist and the movies have all been about the power of religious relics and the mythology of the past...
The fridge scene was an attempt to bridge the old Indy with the new (and consequently the New World of Indiana Jones) where we're supposed to buy into George Lucas' hackneyed ideas of how just because we've entered the 50's in this cinematic world, the Indiana Jones supposed serial adventures would also have to be subject to the pop-fiction elements of the era.
But it's not just the concept; it was the whole entire scene. You had unnecessary larger-than-life whirling CGI and an ending that placed the entire dramatic tension outside the realm of the characters. When CGI takes over a scene, it draws us out of the movie and reduces our investment in the characters on screen. There was no drama, just special effects. Huge special effects. Cheap melting heads, hands ripping through obviously false chest cavities... none of these things take me out of the movie like CGI... because even though they are cheeze, there's a greater element of a reality. There's something palpable on screen. It's all probably just me. All this complaining and I did enjoy the movie, and didn't mind the fridge scene... but was really disappointed in the direction Spielberg/Lucas took.

RichC2

I didn't mind there being aliens, I minded the way they were handled. If they changed the CG orgy finale with something more settle, I would have been much happier.

That said, I also agree with the CG detractors, it just doesn't fit the series too well.

I'm going to go microwave some pasta.

Damfino

Well, Duh! he took a shower afterwards

I think "nuke the fridge" is a perfect assessment of the movie. For me at least it made it a lot easier to accept the fake looking ants, the three water falls and the "ow, my balls" gag that they stole from Idiocracy.

Yep, "nuke the fridge" is now in my vocabulary if only to annoy people.

Rogue588

And that one dude did scrub his twig and berries..

Daytripper

Indeed! I said it first two pages ago. Thankfully, most agree.

Draven

Again, why is it stupid? That was the moment where Indiana Jones stopped being a cool movie series. And it pretty much went downhill from there.

JimRochester

To get real anal about it...

refrigerators in the 50's didn't close by a pressure seal the way todays fridges do. They had a mechanical lock like you'd still find on a big restaurant cooler today. Once inside you couldn't get out. It could only be opened from the outside by the handle.

Back in the day, they had to start a campaign to get people to take the doors off refrigerators when they threw them away. Kids would climb in to play, get stuck and suffocate. So in my book he survived the nuclear blast but suffocated afterward when he got stuck in the fridge.

Jump the shark has always referred to a point in a series when they've run out of things for the characters to do and start relying on gimmicks. Like in Happy Days when Fonzie jumped the shark.

NIMH Rat

^^^ "Back in the day..."

JimR just nailed why some people look down on the fridge scene. They don't have the knowledge to laugh at a 50s joke.

JimR is also correct, unlike the Urban Dictionary, in his definition of jumping the shark.

Draven

Wait, so now I am too stupid to get the "joke"? I didn't realize that Indiana Jones was a parody, where all laws of the universe are thrown out the window for a cheap laugh. I guess I'll chalk it up to the same amazing durability that OJ Simpson's character possessed in the high drama "The Naked Gun".

NIMH Rat

Indiana Jones always walked the line between straight adventure and parody adventure.

Like Gunga Din. You've seen Gunga Din, yes?

And the fridge scene wasn't a cheap laugh. It was a pretty smart, well-earned laugh.

Draven

No I haven't. Are there CGI aliens in it?

Smart? Well-earned? Under what criteria? That he wasn't spitting out a mouth-full of lettuce when the door opened?

Dr Mabuse

NIMH Rat

^^^ That would have made it even funnier!

Jackskeleton

You know, Indy's in real world and blah blah blah religion... and we all know how a fall from a plane without a parachute would be like...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,364361,00.html

So F that, Indiana jones didn't "Nuke the fridge", He "Rafted the Plane!" cause he's based on real world physics and yet survives a fall from a plane with an inflatable raft? Yeah... Mr. lucas, screw you!

Jay G.

It actually is possible to survive a fall from a plan using an inflatable raft; not the way it's shown in the movie, but it is possible.

It comes down to suspension of disbelief, and what is successfully presented as plausible. With an inflatable raft, it gives them more surface area with little weight, thus a lower terminal velocity. Additionally, they landed in water, typically thought to provide a softer landing than ground. And even then there have been people bitching about that scene for the past 20 years.

Whereas with the fridge, even if you ignore the contents inside it surviving a nuclear blast (after all, they did show a label saying it was "lead lined"), it still doesn't survive most people's rudimentary knowledge of physics. Here's an experiment: Take an raw egg and put it in a safe. Now drop that safe 5 feet. What condition will that egg be in?

At least the inflatable raft was integrated into the plot; the story needed some way for Indy to get from a pilotless plane to the ground. With the fridge, a half-decent editor could successfully edit that scene out of the film with no detrimental affect to the plot.