Nuking the fridge

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Nuking the fridge or The nuked fridge (roughly translated: the nuclear busted fridge ) is a neologism from the movie area. The term refers to the moment in a series or a film in which the plot becomes so obviously unrealistic that the course of events can only be considered meaningful if the disbelief is deliberately exposed and the original claim of the film becomes ridiculous due to the absurdity of the scene . Nuking the fridge is roughly synonymous with “ ruining a film franchise ”.

Emergence

The term goes back to a scene from the film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull , in which the protagonist tries to save himself from an atomic bomb in a lead-clad refrigerator and is actually thrown out of the nuclear test area while everyone else is in it Structures are completely destroyed. Indiana Jones climbs out of the refrigerator without any notable injuries, while a mushroom cloud can be seen in the background several kilometers away . The scene is arguably a reference by director Steven Spielberg to an early concept for the film Back to the Future , which he produced in 1985. In the finale of this early draft, the main character Marty attaches the much more compact time machine to a refrigerator that is being shipped to an atomic bomb test site in Nevada. In this refrigerator, Marty eventually survived a bomb test. Later versions, in which the time machine was rewritten to a DeLorean as in the later film , also contain a scene on the test site, which was ultimately completely deleted for reasons of cost. This scene is said to have been the original reason for the involvement of the special effects company Industrial Light & Magic in the film, which otherwise contains few special effects scenes and, in contrast to its sequels, is generally not regarded as an effects film.

It is not fully known where and when the term nuking the fridge was actually used for the first time. On May 24, 2008, two days after the world premiere of the aforementioned fourth installment in the Indiana Jones series, the term popped up on online movie forums and quickly spread across the Internet. A number of film critics adopted the expression as an analogy to the common jumping the shark , describing this scene as the moment when the Indiana Jones film series left the road to success and resorted to overly silly effects.

Film critics also began to identify nuked fridges in other films / film series in order to mark the beginning of the decline of the story or the franchise.

criticism

According to some critics, the term is merely a new description of the well-known jumping-the-shark phenomenon and not an independent term. From various sides it was also pointed out that events occurred in the previous parts of the Indiana Jones series that are physically impossible, and the criticized scene therefore does not represent a real break in the narrative style. Actor Shia LaBeouf pointed out that it was not the logic of the films but rather the behavior of the audience that had changed since the 1980s. Screenwriter George Lucas stated that he had the scene checked after objections from director Spielberg, and that according to "a lot of scientists" the chance of actually surviving the depicted scene was "50:50".

reception

The use of the term can be documented for numerous web forums on the Internet, but it has not yet been investigated to what extent the term has already passed into common usage. The phrase gained widespread use in Anglo-Saxon media in particular and was also adopted by linguistic societies.

The American Dialect Society mentioned the term in their 2008 Word of the Year vote . In the Global Language Monitor's 6th Annual Report , Nuke the fridge was ranked 3rd in the “ HollyWords, ” the words from Hollywood that the most influenced the English language. In the 2008 “Buzz Words” poll in TIME Magazine, the expression reached number 5.

The Christian ska band Sounds of Salvation released an album in 2011 under the title Nuking the Fridge .

The north German punk rock band Nuking the Fridge is also named after the term.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ New words odd to political . Grant Barret, New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society
  2. ↑ http://www.slashfilm.com/how-back-to-the-future-almost-nuked-the-fridge/
  3. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088763/trivia?tr=tr0798742
  4. ↑ http://www.fxguide.com/player/?media_url=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.blubrry.com%2Ffxpodcast%2Fmedia.fxguide.com%2Fvfxshow%2FThe_VFX_Show_105__Back_To_The_Future.mp3&ightwidth=450 . &he
  5. ↑ 'Jump the Shark,' Meet 'Nuke the Fridge' . Newsweek, July 7, 2008
  6. ^ Indiana Jones and the Temple of Absurdly Implausible Excess . New York Times, July 28, 2008
  7. ↑ 24 Movies to Watch With Dad . Entertainment Weekly
  8. ↑ a b Don't nuke the fridge yet . Daily Dispatch, June 5, 2008
  9. ↑ a b Phrase has changed but the meaning's the same . Worchester Telegram, July 13, 2008
  10. ↑ The most Ridiculous Movie Moments 2008 , Jonathan Crow, Yahoo Movies
  11. ↑ Steven Dutch: Indiana Jones and Nuking the Fridge ( Memento of the original from October 9, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.uwgb.edu archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . University of Wisconsin website , accessed July 23, 2012. (English)
  12. ↑ Shia LaBeouf Defends 'Nuking The Fridge' And Other Fantastical 'Indy 4' Moments . MTV Interview, September 16, 2008
  13. ↑ George Lucas Is Ready to Roll the Credits . New York Times, Jan. 17, 2012
  14. ^ Word of the Year 2008 , American Dialect Society
  15. ↑ Jai Ho !, Slumdog top 'HollyWORDs' of 2008 . Hindustan Times, February 28, 2009
  16. ↑ Top 10 Buzzwords . TIME Magazine, The Top 10 Everything of 2008