10 Exact Moments That Made Fans Hate Movie Franchises

6. Nuking The Fridge - Indiana Jones 4

Lex Luthor
Paramount

The first three Indiana Jones movies are a perfect, universally-beloved trilogy. Indy and friends literally ride off into the sunset at the end, making a fourth movie seem highly unnecessary. But we got one anyway! And while Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull's opening scenes showed promise, it all fell apart with the arrival of a now-infamous moment.

Seconds away from death by nuclear explosion, Indy throws himself into a fridge, shuts the door and is blasted into the air, crashing back down to Earth a fair distance away. He then emerges, miraculously unscathed, and just... walks away.

For obvious reasons, this was dumb. Part of Indy’s charm is that he comes across as a normal everyday guy caught up in crazy situations, not some indestructible superhero who can survive almost anything. The fridge scene turned him into the latter, and it suddenly became a lot harder to view the character as the Indy we knew and loved.

This scene is one that fans mock and meme-ify to this day, and it marks the moment when the franchise pushed its lead character’s plucky determination to unbelievably bizarre levels. It’s no surprise “nuking the fridge” became the new shorthand for movies that include ridiculous leaps in logic.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.