Spielberg says nuking the fridge was his idea, not George Lucas

Among people who cover movies for a living, kissing Steven Spielberg’s ass and bashing George Lucas are almost equally popular. So it’s not that surprising that when people talk about Indiana Jones 4, they tend to blame all the worst stuff on George Lucas, even though Spielberg has sole directing credit. (Personally, I blame everyone from the grips down to craft services for not jumping in to stop that piece of sh*t. That whole crew are like Anne Frank’s neighbors, if you ask me.). But according to Spielberg, who recently sat down with Empire, the moment people frequently point to as the worst of the film — the nuke the fridge scene — was actually his idea.

“I’m very happy with the movie. I always have been… I sympathise with people who didn’t like the MacGuffin because I never liked the MacGuffin. George and I had big arguments about the MacGuffin. I didn’t want these things to be either aliens or inter-dimensional beings. But I am loyal to my best friend. When he writes a story he believes in – even if I don’t believe in it – I’m going to shoot the movie the way George envisaged it. I’ll add my own touches, I’ll bring my own cast in, I’ll shoot the way I want to shoot it, but I will always defer to George as the storyteller of the Indy series. I will never fight him on that.”

“The gopher was good. I have the stand-in one at home. What people really jumped at was Indy climbing into a refrigerator and getting blown into the sky by an atom-bomb blast. Blame me. Don’t blame George. That was my silly idea. People stopped saying “jump the shark”. They now say, “nuked the fridge”. I’m proud of that. I’m glad I was able to bring that into popular culture.”

“I sympathise with the MacGuffin people, but y’all gopher haters kin kiss mah ass, nah mean?”

People picked up on the nuke the fridge thing because it was a catchy phrase, but I wouldn’t even consider that worthy of being in the top five dumbest moments of Indy 4. There was the scene where Shia LaBeouf flies into a tree and ends up swinging through the treetops with his monkey army, there was the moment when Indy got stuck in quick sand and they threw him a snake for a rope, there were the fire ants, the raft that went over the waterfall like six times with an 80-year-old man in it with no consequences other than wet hair, etc. etc. Trying to assign blame to Lucas over Spielberg is like arguing about whether Himmler was worse than Goering. I’m still pissed that everyone accepts that it was a terrible movie now with no acknowledgement of the fact that it’s still tracking 77% recommended on RottenTomatoes. SEVENTY-SEVEN F*CKING PERCENT! Among people who review films for a living! All this means is that you won’t be able to trust the reviews for War Horse in the next few months, because a person who couldn’t recognize that Indy 4 was a terrible film when it came out has lost all credibility in regard to Spielberg. TO THE QUICKSAND WITH ALL OF YOU! REMOVE THEIR SNAKE ROPES!

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