What is “Nuking The Fridge”, you ask? Well, according to Urban Dictionary it’s…
A colloquialism used to delineate the precise moment at which a cinematic franchise has crossed over from remote plausibility to self parodying absurdity, usually indicating a low point in the series from which it is unlikely to recover.
Guy 1: “Wow. Did you see the new Indy movie? What the hell was that? It was like I was having some kind of flu induced absurdist nightmare.”
Guy 2: “Yep… did or did not that series permanently Nuke the Fridge?”
“Nuke The Fridge” has official replaced “Jump The Shark” as the term du jour on many Blogs and websites as well as IN the vernaculars of many VFX professionals. Does it trouble anyone else out there that a phrase previously used to conjure nostalgic memories of 70′s era schmaltz and lameness (c’mon Fonz, who wears a leather jacket while they are water skiing?) is now linked to an overwrought effects sequence? I’ve been bemoaning the fact that the modern VFX world is a lot more coulda’ and not enough shoulda’ on this blog for almost a year now and there are signs that things are coming to a head. Are Indy’s CG gophers and the technicolor dragon vomit that made up Speed Racer eliciting a collective cry of “Enough with the CGI already!” from the general public?
A case that a shift in popular opinion might be made based on the recent spat of blog posts and movie reviews based on the subject of a public grown desensitized and weary of movie magic. Scott Nye postED this tidbit on chud.com not to long ago.
But much as I support CGI, I do acknowledge it’s also an overused, lazy way to create what could have been an amazing sequence if done practically
And it’s not just the Matrix Generation thats bent out of shape about the state of visual effects. Johanna Schneller, movie critic at globeandmail.com observes…
I realize that CGI is a thrilling toy, a technology that seems to advance by the minute, that gets more fun the more you play with it. And I realize that in Hollywood, it’s become a tautology: Blockbusters have CGI, so if you want your film to be a bigger blockbuster, it must have ever-more-massive chunks of CGI. But I’m not sure that filmmakers realize what a yawn it is to sit through
This simmering animosity towards VFX has also jumped from film critics and nerds to the video game community. In a post on PTD magazine, William Stapleton asks these tough questions after taking his son to see the new Hulk flick.
what happens when the ‘gee-whiz’ wears off? My grandchildren will take CGI technology for granted, because they’ll grow up in a time when it’s the norm, instead of something that’s new and exciting. I’ll admit, I’ve gone to a few films where the only redeeming quality was the power of its special effects. But what will happen when special effects aren’t ’special’ anymore?
I realize that three fairly obscure blog posts do mot a backlash make, but I have to ask. Is this the begging of the end?. Visual Effects films, like any other cinematic style, have always been subject to cycles of popularity. The cold war fueled sci-fi boom of the 50′s eventually trailed off and didn’t pick back up again until the 70′s. It could be argued that we are on the downside of peak in interest in science fiction (the key driver of the VFX film) that was spurred on by the rise of the Internet. On top of that, we are quickly coming to a point where we are simply going to run out of comic books and sci-fi classics to “re-invent”. What’s next Power Pack:The Movie? Last Starfighter 2: Electric Boogaloo??
We all need to face up to the fact that the current trend of CGI blockbusters may come to an end some day. Heck even the sun will run out of fuel and burn itself out at some point. To survive VFX has to move past the gimmick phase and become a truly integral tool in production. Some films already do a great job of this (Children of Men comes to mind) while most use the technology as a crutch to prop up aging action heros or a way to create asinine comic relief for bad screenplays. Don’t get me wrong the computer artistry that goes into a lot of these films is astounding. Too bad it’s often wasted on a disappointing, or worse yet forgettable, piece of entertainment. Let’s hope that the entire VFX industry hasn’t collectively jumped the shark, I mean, nuked the fridge.
Thanks to VFXPlanet for the links to the stories used in this post
Seems that the Golden State has finally wised up and started offering some of the same tax credits other states and countries have given up to movies and tv shows for years. The deal is that Cali will give back 20% of below the line costs capped at a $500 million dollar payout over the next five years. The tax credit also does not extend to films with a budget over $75 million (you heard me Stretch Armstrong:The Movie).
