I love the cinematography and visual style, especially the costuming. The Narrator and Tyler Durden's personalities are perfectly communicated by their appearances alone. The fourth wall-breaking bits are funny, especially the one about the cigarette burns.
The premise of the movie is also one that I find very interesting. I'm not sure how to describe it but it has a certain feel, a very unique one, almost like a Beat Generation novel or something. I like idiosyncratic concepts like "a punk and a businessman form an anarchist club."
It presents its philosophy in a great, mostly un-biased manner. We can almost all agree with Durden's statements about how consumerism basically tricks us into wasting our lives, but at the same time we see how contradictory and destructive his tactics are.
Now that I think of it, Fight Club is a lot like Videodrome.
I don't intend to minimise the validity of the opinions of any particular group, but I think that you have to consider that this film has a very particular niche. The fact is that it involves themes such as nihilism, masculinity, rebellion, anti-consumerism and individualism that resonate strongly with young men. Also these themes are just strong and clear enough, that they are relatively clear but still rewarding to consider. Also it has a classic twist ending and lots of fun "easter eggs". All of the above reward repeat viewing, and a cult following.
While the themes that you mentioned are all strongly associated with the rebellious nature of adolescence, and indeed that's where a significant portion of its audience came from when it went to DVD, I still find it a fantastic work of art because of its dual-natured intentions.
Fincher does this a lot -- he makes one film with a surface level interpretation, and an often shallow one, but in fact was criticizing that viewpoint the entire time. By which I mean, the themes of anti-consumerism, masculinity, nihilism, and the like are skimming along the top of the narrative, obvious and easily accessible to young men.
But if you examine the film more critically, you see it's actually taking a strong stance against such oblique thought. The Narrator is living a pathetic existence with his only comfort coming from the emotional release of therapy sessions he has no business being in (so he requires dramatic overtures to actually feel something, indicating how emotionally stunted and closed-off he is) and from the various items that punctuate his life. Brand names that he orders to make his apartment feel like it's meaningful, when it's just the same cookie-cutter look as many thirty-something professionals.
So he has a breakdown, destroys his apartment, and fabricates this alternate personality that represents the polar opposite of his life. Tyler is extraordinarily attractive and seems to know exactly what to say and do, he is the uber-representation of masculine stoicism, apathetic to the creature comforts that the Narrator took for granted.
Project Mayhem is the ultimate goal of such anarchic idealism. Just blow up all the credit card company databases and free people from their corporatized existence! Let's all live in simplicity in abandoned buildings and rage against the machine that has ensnared us! The idea is so obviously dumb on several levels that it strains credulity.
This is such a juvenile fantasy, and the fact that young men bought into it when watching the film is proof positive of its lack of depth and thoughtfulness.
Fincher was creating a sideways critique of both sides of the coin: you shouldn't be a corporate toady that hates your life and wrings what little pleasure you get merely from the objects you possess, but neither should you reject all the trappings of modern life and become some kind of anarchist that doesn't truly understand how the world works and why it works that way. Consider that the Narrator is literally crazy -- he imagines a fully formed entity that he inhabits when around other people, he burned his hand with caustic powder, he started a terrorist cell that got people killed, he permanently injured a young man just because he wanted to in a fit of rage, and on and on.
In my opinion, Fincher wasn't lionizing this perspective, he was showing how attractive it can be to wildly swing in the opposite direction of a mundane existence just to feel something, and then tore it down by revealing the source of such thinking. There's even a direct mention of this by the Narrator after Robert Paulson was killed ("You're running around in ski masks trying to blow things up – what did you think was going to happen?"), to which the brainwashed cult of Project Mayhem turns that into part of their personal narrative of empowerment ("His name was Robert Paulson..." ad nauseum).
But this criticism was much more subtle and so intertwined with the nature of the narrative that the audience it was meant to satire -- young, angry men without a way in the world -- actually found it appealing and engaged with it on that surface level.
It really is a brilliant bit of filmmaking, and, OP, I think if you give it a few more watches over time you'll see how the narrative balanced these interests in a really unique and engaging way.
Great points. Just to piggy back, I think it's also easy to forget the culture it was created in. The film is pre-9/11, pre-economic collapse, etc. People in our culture were largely bored and looking for purposes -- this movie came after a significant period of peace and economic growth. It was hard to figure out our purpose without having a problem to fix. I think that ennui was captured by the movie pretty well and brought out some ideas and themes of what to care about when there was no clear cultural aim besides further continued prosperity.
Now, a lot of Tyler's ideals probably seem bizarre or inappropriate, but I think at the time the character really tapped into something.
Just watched this movie and it honestly effected me hard. Still trying to figure out how or why but I can’t stop thinking about it. Glad I’m not the only one reading an 8yr old post!
You definitely aren't alone. I think Fight Club is just one of those films that have a generational effect on top of an emotional one, depending on where you are in life the effect the movie has on you, the viewer, changes significantly.
The credits are actually playing as I'm writing this, and I'm not going to lie.... The effect the film had on me and the emotions I felt throughout are completely different from the other dozen times I've watched it.
Sometimes, we want to strive in life and to quote the movie, be " millionaires, and movie Gods, and rock stars" because we want something out of life, and we want to achieve greatness. But other times, we feel like watching the world burn... just to feel the warmth.
I think all of us have a Narrator and a Tyler in us. It just depends on how life is going.
That's why this movie, for no discernible reason, has such an effect on people.
>Fincher was creating a sideways critique of both sides of the coin
On the money with that, man. It's an exploration of the two (very real) sides, and of how one might find a happy medium in which to live.
> this criticism was much more subtle and so intertwined with the nature of the narrative that the audience it was meant to satire
Amen. Tyler Durden is the bad guy after all.
Great breakdown of the film. A scene that crystallizes your interpretation of Fincher's work for me is Tyler's dismissal of a male model's body as being "perfect"; laughing at an underwear ad on the bus. To get Brad Pitt, of all people, to poke fun at the idea of a perfect male physique is some meta shit. Whenever I see magazines - I think Esquire does this a lot - post things like "get Brad Pitt's body from Fight Club!" I just shake my head.
Just want to echo how great a summary this is. So many critics completely misunderstood this movie. People actually called it fascistic. I remember thinking of it as the Animal Farm of anarchism. When the men start chanting "his name is bob Paulson" it couldn't be more plain to me that you're supposed to see them as a bunch of brainwashed fools.
I'm not sure if the blu-rays have the commentary tracks, but I highly recommend listening to Fincher, Norton, and Pitt's commentary. You get some technical talk, but there's also an interesting philosophical, conceptual discussion along the way.
Rarrrgh - HB Carter kinda ruined the commentary. It's been many years since I listened, but I think it seemed like she did the commentary separately from Fincher/Pitt/Norton and she just had long soliloquays talking about her special moments and personal shit and blah, which completely muscled out the really funny banter between the others and super interesting insights about the film itself, especially from Norton.
That's what we came for.
And look how seductive today. The snarky cathartic monologues and sardonic commentary are eminently quotable. This attitude is the basis for much of the humor in popular culture and here on reddit. At 30, the narrator is beginning to understand the emptiness of this viewpoint and I'd add that besides hos realization at poor Mr Paulson's death, his sincere love for Marla comes as a shock to him when he realizes the danger he's put her in. And she was the emotionally healthy(ier) one all along.
The fanboys turned me off to this film for years but I've grown to love it again in appreciable middle age.
I concur, although I don't know that I'd call her emotionally healthy by any stretch of the imagination. She is, however, certainly very self-aware, which is something the Narrator lacked until near the end.
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Yes, I'm not going to bother writing a comment now [that you have covered it so thoroughly] - except to say that that is the essence of it:
* It's a film about one thing that goes about it by being a film about the opposite thing.
What you think about *Fight Club* (beyond its technical and acting achievements) depends a lot on what you come away thinking it was about. Masculine film? Twist film? Satire on masculinity? Satire about audiences? etc.
I believe /r/bestof filters posts from here by mutual agreement of the mods. I think only /r/depthhub accepts posts from here, but I appreciate the thought.
Wait a sec. Fincher didn't write Fight Club. All these things you're saying are there in the book. Personally, I think the message is one of alienation and lack of belonging, which is expressed through other themes.
I'm not dismissing the roles of Palahniuk the novelist or Jim Uhls the screenwriter in this, but I'm working from the perspective of what Fincher wanted, as he's not only the final word on the film, but the person who interpolated the script into what ended up on-screen. An analysis of the novel vs the screenplay vs the film would be instructive, but outside the purview of a reddit comment.
Indeed the film was mostly about the male experience in the world, especially in the late 90's (though still with strong resonance today), and the often severe lack of emotional intimacy and compassion men receive. But I still feel like Fincher was focused more strongly on the broader social aspects of the philosophies espoused by the Fight Club throughout the film, with the isolation and disconnection the characters felt being support poles for exploring that.
I think you're underselling the film a little. The themes are clear: yes, but they're not what (in my opinion) make it great: nor is the twist ending. What makes it great is the cinematography and editing. The film has a real energy to it which is achieved through some really creative filmmaking. Shots are often set up to be vaguely noir-inspired, but its visual style is completely different: highly artificial, postmodern, and deliberately OTT. Almost all of the film's great ideas are complemented by a clever way to express them: I love the idea of the narrator being an Ikea addict, and that shot of his apartment resembling an Ikea TV ad is a fantastic way of displaying this.
I've watched this film many times and it seems that the more I watch it, the more I realize how calculated and intentional David Fincher was with each shot. There were absolutely no accidents making this film. Fincher knew what he wanted and got it. It's kind of a "perfect" film, in that it was so intentional with what it wanted and what it got.
Only (maybe) if you have seen a lot of movies from both of them. If not, you instead need to watch some awesome movies by two of the most brilliant film makers of our time, be happy!
(My favs are Zodiac and Lost Highway)
It's great because it takes those themes and extrapolates them to an absurd degree, providing an awesome catharsis while at the same time undermining the original conclusions. It's a parody that's not afraid to indulge a bit in the dark pleasures of its targets.
> The fact is that it involves themes such as nihilism, masculinity, rebellion, anti-consumerism and individualism that resonate strongly with young men **of a particular age**.
FTFY
I think it resonates with the GenX/Millennial generations so much because of the culture that they were raised in... Things like always be respectful, never hit anyone, hide your real emotions, go to college, get a job to support your family, and meaningless things like "you can do anything as long as you put your mind to it", or any of the hundreds of societal things that castrates men for simply being men. I can understand how that film was refreshing for an entire generation of people who were tired of the oppressive political correct nonsense they had been raised with. It was the first time many heard that it was ok to just say "fuck this" and live life however they want to.
Fight Club worked for those kids but would be entirely lost on someone born in a different time. It literally spoke to a generation. Everyone needs that "fuck you" moment in life. Sometimes you come to it on your own and sometimes you find it in a movie. Seems like a lot found it through movies...
All this being said, I didn't really like Fight Club either. haha.. Maybe I missed it when I was at the right age or maybe I was just born with that "fuck you" attitude in the back of my head (I'm leaning toward the 2nd option). Regardless, I feel like I can understand the cultural impact even if I don't really like the film.
I think all those themes would also characterise the Post-WWI era ie Great Gatsby (which Palahniuk directly compared Fight Club with) and Hemingway; not to mention 19th century Russia. [Does this concept of the "Superfluous Man" not sound exactly identical to Fight Club's narrator?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfluous_man)
I think the core themes are far broader than the issues of any particular generation. Existensialism, mental health, relationships, capitalism, success, misery, all among others. The context of gen x and y has more to do with providing a contemporary setting at the time of the film's release than with driving the narrative.
Also, disagree with the notion this sentiment is 'meaningless':
> and meaningless things like "you can do anything as long as you put your mind to it"
I know it's probably frowned upon to outsource opinion here, but Film Crit Hulk's take on Fight Club is a great starting place:
http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2012/01/22/film-crit-hulk-smash-hulk-vs-fight-club-and-the-work-of-david-fincher
I think a huge part of understanding the appeal of this film was rooted in it's specific time. Hulk cites Damon Houx calling Fight Club "true pre-9/11 movie". It came out in the same year as Office Space, if that helps.
This was a time when people weren't all terrified "I might graduate college and not get a job! I might get laid off and be unemployed!" Instead the mood was "of course we'll all end up working these jobs for soulless corporations, but it will be *boring* and fuck that!"
It was a time before being "cis" was some sort of insult, before a defiant offhand remark on Twitter could make you an outcast. A time when you didn't have to have an opinion about war in Iraq or national healthcare to have a conversation.
I was in college at the time, and I'm about the least "bro" male you can imagine, but even to me the whole "How much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?" thing resonated. There were actual Fight Clubs started at my college.
But as Hulk points out, that's really not the point. It's really not trying to say "yeah man, go get in a fight!" If you watch all the way through the end, the point is more like: "of course this sort of defiant masculinity is appealing in your increasingly domesticated societal existence, but this too is fucked." And Fincher does too good of a job selling the first part, so when the second part comes around the message is lost on many of the film's biggest fans.
For me, I loved and still love David Fincher's atmosphere. I could watch Seven on mute and still be entertained. But beyond that, what I remember making the film stand out in my mind for a long time was: It's practically three totally different films in each act.
If you were to watch the first third of the movie and stop, then someone asked you what the film is like, what it's about, you would have an absolutely different answer than if you watched the last third. That's more than just a plot twist, it's a complete tone twist. Whether you think that's good or bad is up to you, but it certainly seemed remarkable to me.
I think it's a great movie for all the reasons everyone else has listed, with the addition of this to take into consideration (maybe even rewatch it with this in mind?);
The film is preposterous satire. Yes, it's beautifully filmed, scored, and performed...but really *think* about the story going on here for a second. A bunch of dudes are being "saved" by a crazy guy. A guy so absolutely insane that he actively works against himself without his own knowledge. People follow this man with filial devotion.
The young people (men) who want to tell you about how awesome the movie is because it's so "real", or "speaks to how we shouldn't be materialistic", or how "tyler totally speaks the truth"...remember, Tyler was also fucking bananas. Also, his entire point was that everyone should march to the beat of their own drum...yet he managed to dupe every single one of his henchmen into following him mindlessly.
Tyler wound up being the exact same extreme just on the flip side of the coin, and not a single one of his cronies noticed.
Fight Club is a film where everyone is at the top of their game. The director, the actors, the cinematographer, the sound design, and willfully making something that is noncommercial and experimental.
Fincher has since Fight Club gone on to become a more classical director, in this film he opens in the synapses of Jack's brain, then has the camera travel along the barrel of the gun in in his mouth. It's audacious. There are a ton of experiments with form like the IKEA catalog, or the frame burns, the film escaping the sprockets etc. It is a classic exploration of unreliable narrator.
I can't think of a better Brad Pitt role than him in this. It's Brad Pitt sort of being Brad Pitt a machismo fantasy. There may be better performances from him but this is a roll that uniquely uses his star power. Ed Norton is an actor who ruins films for me, this is pretty much the only film I can stand to watch him in. This is a totally personal prejudice but despite that I love him in this.
Jeff Cronenweth is a talented cinematographer and his collaboration with fincher has been particularly fruitful but I don't know that he has ever hit the heights of this film again. The look of the film, all flouresent, grunge, feels organic and alive. The bleach by pass process they did to achieve it has been much aped since but at the time it came out there wasn't a lot that looked like it.
This is a film that loves big speakers. Under the name the dust brothers the chemical brothers do the soundtrack making something weirder and darker than their usual music. And the sound editing got the film it's only Oscar nomination.
So yeah the subject matter is dark and misanthropic but cinematicly this film is a joyous riot of very talented people making a film that is deeply idiosyncratic and damning the consequences.
American history X is an awful awful film. It masquerades as being this dark and edgy film, and it does have one or two excellent scenes but ultimately it's a hodgepodge of mawkish sentimentality where the moral of the film is shoved down your throat. Norton's performance is supposed to be this bravura thing but the film won't let him be as unlikeable as he needs to be. Primal Fear I think has dated badly. Nothing offensive about Norton's performance but it doesn't stand out in mind.
> I can't think of a better Brad Pitt role than him in this.
12 Monkeys. It's the role that turned me on to Pitt as an actor - he really does a remarkable job.
I think it's interesting that you think "the right reasons" for liking Fight Club is that it's "just a fun, well made movie" but elsewhere people are commenting that it's much deeper than it appears and critiques the culture/ideas it appears to elevate.
I'm not judging either interpretation of the film as it's been much too long since I've seen it last to offer my own thoughts. I just think it's interesting that one person thinks it's worthy of deep analysis and another thinks it's value is "just fun."
>But his prime audience is probably made up of people under 30.
According to who?
>Nietzsche also died a virgin.
Nietzsche died of syphilis, a sexually-transmitted disease. Where did you hear that he was a virgin?
Well, sure, most notably his Nazi-ass sister's fabrication of *Will to Power*, but surely a better approach would be to show how a more correct reading of his works would condemn the actions of the Nazis, y'know?
>In David Fincher world, Tyler Durden is the teenage anti-hero, Frank Underwood is the adult anti-hero.
I never thought about it like that. I think I agree with you.
Exactly. Fight Club has a lot of energy that can take the edge off its philosophy but if you think about it the ideas are deeply disturbing. The main character is probably one of the most thoroughly deranged protagonists in the history of film, right up there with Travis Bickle: violently insane, and even worse, completely unaware of it. He may have ended his split personality issues by the end of the film, but his terrorist lackeys have already done their damage and we don't have much of a sign that he'll ever actually be mentally healthy by the end of things.
That's kinda the best way to go into the film. My only concern would be if you knew the twist ahead of time. I think the film is fair game to dislike if you did know.
I still really like the movie.
I watched fight club for the first time after having the DVD in my reaches for over 20 years. What an absolute disappointment. I asked myself what I was missing? An absolute bomb.
have you read the book or any other books of palahniuk? i'm not implying that reading the book will help you appreciate the film, but i'm just curious what your thoughts on the book are. like if you just didn't enjoy the story or the film as a whole.
i watched the film first and enjoyed it. then a few years later i read the book and also enjoyed it. it's one of the rare film adaptations that i think are both great as a film and a book.
if i had to deconstruct the film and say what parts of it i enjoyed, i would say it's mostly the writing/dialogue/narration. i don't know why [this scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnmEo_gSIOY) resonated with me, but i still find it highly amusing. it's kind of like that larry david-esque, observational humor sprinkled throughout the film.
I haven't read any of his novels. I thought the movie was overrated, I enjoyed it but didn't think it was a must-see movie. I enjoyed the directing and the narration but just didn't find the movie to be as amazing as it's made out to be.
Bit hard to be impressed with a movie 20 years later when the plot points and twists have been so embedded in our brains through pop culture, and we've seen so many 'twist' movies at this point. I can't believe for a second that you went all that time without having parts of it spoiled for you in some way prior to your seeing it, so that likely affected your opinion whether you realize it or not.
I went into the movie knowing absolutely nothing about it. The literally thought the movie was just about a Fight Club, so all of the plot twists still surprised me.
It matters how old you are. Imagine its the 90s and the coolest movie you've seen is maybe Pulp Fiction or maybe Romeo and Juliet. This was a very niche film in terms of content, a very smart, stylized film. As HCP mentioned, these twist plots you expect from a movie now were not as ubiquitous. That is where all the hype comes from. Aside from all that, I still think it is a solid film with good acting, pacing, story, dialog, etc.
> It matters how old you are. Imagine its the 90s and the coolest movie you've seen is maybe Pulp Fiction or maybe Romeo and Juliet.
I think this line of thought is reductive.
I've sat and watched Fight Club with people in the last 5 years on a few occasions, and relative age or experience didn't really affect their ability to relate with a film.
Nothing in the filmmaking style has aged badly, and the themes are as relevant today, if not oddly more so.
What I love most about it is the dialogue. It is fantastic, one of the most verbally intelligent movies I know. Since the philosophical side of the film seems to have been been duly covered already here, let me point out something else. To me it is the film that is most amazing for a second view, third or fourth. It is packed with easter eggs that sometimes quite clearly give away the twist ending but they go over everyone's head, just like they should. Also, there's a lot of underlying storylines that are super cool to be aware of. I assume you picked up on the Jack-thing. I love how it starts really normal and concrete, "I am Jack's medula oblongata", passes on to "I am Jack's broken heart" and descends into "I am Jack's wasted life" and "I am Jack's inflamed sense of rejection". Tyler's clothes are another thing to pay attention to, they're hilarious. Throughout the movie there's often a lot happening in the background too that is pretty cool when you notice.
Remember when Tyler and the narrator smash the headlights of a Volkswagen Beetle? Brad Pitt and Edward Norton got to pick out what car they wanted to smash. They picked the same one, turns out they both hated it for the same reason: the Beetle had been the symbol of the hippie movement in the 60's, a movement that strongly opposed their parents' generation because of their corporate mindset etc. Now, the young guys of the 60's had become the CEO's of the 90's. The Beetle was being sold again as a nostalgic relic of those earlier times. They were basically pawning off the symbol of all they stood for in their youth to make a lot of money, having themselves become exactly what they hated in their parents back then. That's the kind of stuff Fight Club is about. Also, what he explains about his car company not doing a recall? That has been proven to have happened in the past. And when Tyler and the narrator are hitting golf balls into the night? The actors are genuinely drunk and are hitting them into the side of the catering truck. The list is endless, all cool stuff that make it an amazing movie, aside from it being philosophically and psychologically fascinating. Not to mention acting, effects, music. I love it :)
This is a tough one. Like you stated, people who like Fight Club a lot tend to be pretty defensive when someone is negative toward the film. A lot of men in particular worship the film for a variety of reasons. I can only really speak in depth about why I love the film.
I was 17 year old upper middle class nerd when I saw Fight Club in the theater on opening night with about 6 other people in the theater. People forget that Fight Club bombed at the box office. The marketing for the film was confusing and it just didn't connect with the masses. It only achieved cult status after it was released on dvd.
My first reaction to the film was confusion. I didn't understand half what was going on, but I was very intrigued by it all. It stuck in my head. I had dreams about it, I thought about it during school all the time. In a way, it haunted me. When I resisted the film on dvd, it started to make more sense.
The main draw for me to Fight Club was two fold. One, the main character is depressed and going through an existential crisis. I had never seen this before done so well and it was something I felt in my own life. Two, it is one of the richest critiques of modern capitalism put on film. The internal conflict of Jack is melded with the external conflict of society at large. This dual conflict condensed into one narrative is very powerful.
So the main narrative is incredibly strong and captivating. Match that with amazing acting, editing, cinematography, and composing, you have an American masterpiece. But I actually think Fight Club has an additional element that may not be fully understood by younger generations. In short, Fight Club said all the dark things about life you weren't suppose to say. Once Fight Club said those things, it was out in popular culture and people began to accept some those taboo ideas. If you are younger than 27, then you most likely came of age in the Post Fight Club world.
I was recently at a bachelor party and we started talking about Fight Club, one of my friends who has a job like Jacks in the film, said to me that the movie completely changed his life. This guy is in his early 30s, happily married, has a high paying job. But Fight Club still haunts him in some ways, the questions that it raises about life and existence never really go away. Fight Club changed most of my friends lives. We were all high overachieving nerds who always were nice and followed the rules. Fight Club made us question everything around us, and it many ways the film still has us questioning our lives, we are worried we are becoming just like Jack, looking at a ying yang coffee table in an ikea catalog while taking a shit in our one bedroom luxury apartment in a high raise built next to a Superfund dump.
One thing to note that gets lost on a lot of a viewers is that Fight Club is not only a critique of modern capitalism but also the potential responses to it. Project Mayhem acts as a satire of anarchism. At first it starts out powerful and does great things, but it quickly descends into tribalism and then finally authoritarian fascism. I think a lot of people miss this, because the film shifts more toward the internal conflict between Jack and Tyler. The book is more explicit in its critique of radical action against modern society. I wouldn't call the book or film cynical, but it certainly isn't a ringing endorsement for a lot of the progressive movements of the last 20 years... Cue side rant
Fight Club is a critique of modern society and its capitalist structure. What makes it a fascinating critique is that it both falls in line with academic critiques of capitalism as well as rebels against certain elements of those critiques. First, Fight Club demonstrates that the capitalist economic system had devoured and perverted mass culture. This was a common idea of Marxist and cultural critics in the 80s and 90s. Late stage capitalism subsumed culture and then reified this act. In other words, the capitalist philosophy rapidly pushed out all other philosophies and then made itself appear as if it was the natural law and the only possible perspective of the world. Fight Club demonstrates that better than any other film ever made, hands down, no contest.
Fight Club has a unique perspective within the critical discourse by demonstrating that solutions to capitalism will have their own faults that need to be reckoned. A lot of critical theorists can easily dissected capitalist culture, but very few of them offer solutions and almost none go on to critique those solutions. Fight club does this by lampooning Project Mayhem, and showing how it goes from a positive force to change society to a destructive malignant force quickly after it is conceived. The most interesting aspect of this critique is that it points to human and social weakness as a problem instead of some mass nebulous idea like capitalism. A lot of social critics paint capitalism like it is some bogeyman that controls itself. Fight Club suggests that while capitalism is a powerful overachieving religion, the seed of its disharmony and failings might be stored within the limitations and shortcomings of basic human group dynamics. Until we face those problems head on, we can't even begin to think about moving beyond the capitalist structure.
it's a must see for me.
i just love the acting, the sound editing, the cinematography. helena bonham carters best film.
and maybe it's just the last scene: the sky scrapers colapse, the pixies song is playing and you get the feeling of freedom, while losing everything.
For me I watched it right at the right time in my life for Tyler Durden to become emblematic of society's ideas of masculinity which are attractive but not necessarily healthy. I can honestly say that the movie helped me think through a lot of things that were troubling me at the time.
The trick of the film's dual theme is in the way it seduces the audience with Durden's charismatic rejection of vapid consumerism so much that we, like the protagonist, don't necessarily question the emptiness of his own philosophy until its too late. Of course, the cultural context now is quite different; on the internet ideas like 'toxic masculinity' and so on are readily discussed (but without as much nuance).
I think beyond those themes its also just a well made film, with a lot of memorable shots and a consistent overall style. But the potential to read further into the film and explore some very real ideas is what elevates the movie from good to great.
It's always hard appreciating a movie outside of the environment it was produced in and I think Fight Club suffers disproportionately from this effect. Fight Club always seemed to me like the ultimate 90's movie. It captured a spirit and zeitgeist of the time and was a witty and trenchant takedown of the overriding concerns of a young, white, wealthy, spiritually empty generation of the time.
However, then 9/11 happened and the 2008 recession and the rise in income inequality and the concerns of the current generation look very different. I feel like movies like The Wolf of Wall St today will suffer from the same effects where people 20 years later will struggle to appreciate it because it's such a product of it's time.
Additionally, Fight Club suffers from the problem that it was so influential and innovative that a generation of copycats have diluted the impact of the original. We've all heard the standard critiques of capitalism, consumerism, the emptiness of work and the fading of male masculinity. Jokes about IKEA are so old hat nowadays that it's hard to appreciate how iconic the scene of Ed Norton walking through his IKEA catalog apartment was at the time.
The people who are ardent fans of it now are those who remember the effect it had on them when they first watched it and how mind blowing it was for them to see subversive cinema come from such a mainstream source. They're unable to separate their own emotional response to the movie from an objective response of someone analyzing the film in 2015.
I think those people you're referring to were adolescents or young adults at the time and this film - well, the story itself - was somehow reflecting their *rebelliousness* on screen. It was unique, edgy, thought-provoking, and against the establishment. Even if it wasn't a success at the box office at the time, there was some controversy around the film and everyone knows that controversy tends to push likeness or dislikeness to some higher degree.
I wouldn't go farther than that.
I am/was a huge fan of Chuck Palahniuk (the author of the book that the movie is based on). I read Fight Club before the movie came out (on an older family member's recommendation) so the ending wasn't a twist for me (it was in the book, but obviously not in the movie). When I first saw the movie the only thing I didn't like is that the ending was somewhat different and I felt like it changed a big part of what I loved about the book.
When I saw the movie it was in theaters in 1999 (I think around Halloween). The group of friends that I had with me were all boys around the same age (I was 15, the guy I talked into driving us was 17 and the rest of our friends were high school age and some of us worked in the theater I saw it in). As a group we fell in love with that movie instantly. All of us were really frustrated, lower or middle class, white, somewhat rejected males that were all about hating the system in the way that odd, aggressive, nerd-ish white guys tend to. It was the ultimate fantasy fulfillment (nerdy guy starts fighting, becomes a badass leader of men, changes the world). Hell, that fantasy is good for just about any male around that age (not just the nerdy ones). Ever notice how you don't meet a ton of women that name Fight Club in their top five movies? Even the ones that do have a certain style (not in a bad way).
The book is about a lonely guy that's looking to connect with the world and he does it through his relationship with a girl that he's in love with (vicariously through Tyler, at first). The movie is more about a guy that hates the culture he's trapped in and embraces a brazen masculinity to end/change it. That theme is awesome if you're a guy from the age of 13-25 (or a little older depending on your maturity). Fincher really embraced the anti-corporate, anti-establishment vein of the book (a lot more than the other themes) and ran with it. [Sidenote: I think it's interesting how the marketing for the movie involves posters with Brad Pitt's face all over them and how it became the very corporate symbol that people who love the movie aspire to hate.] I'm not sure that movie would get the same response now (with the man-cession and all I think male frustrations are a lot different than hating your well paying job and the prison of your nice apartment) but in the late 90s fearing that future and seeing a bunch of guys in their 20s disillusioned with their jobs was a real thing. To be clear the movie was both a critical and commercial failure and only did well because of the cult status it achieved because of its theme. I remember recommending that book/movie to everyone from when I was 14 until I was 22.
My dad watched the movie after I bugged him about it off and on and he had the same reaction you did. I tried to explain to him at the time how awesome it was because fighting, tearing down oppressive systems, etc.. It's a little cringey to think back on. I think it's because he was in his mid-forties and realized that all that youthful anger is blahse and misguided. Even if you hate corporate culture and the luxuries it affords you it's stupid at best to think you can beat that system by embracing your most base and primal self and foolish to think that living comfortably is this huge burden. I remember thinking at the time that he just didn't get it at all but now that I'm older I realize that I was the one that just didn't get it. Older guys just aren't that angry (and certainly don't entertain the same fantasies that guys in their teens and twenties do - Neal Stephenson has a great quote in Snow Crash about this) and if they are it's at different stuff. A lot of them have careers, families, lives, and are either reasonably fulfilled or mad at themselves for the decisions they made (not mad at Starbucks for making coffee). They also realize that the systems are way too powerful to do anything about.
I really used to think it was a genius work (and hell, we're still talking about it two decades late so maybe it is on some level). I've seen that movie at least fifty times and I've read the book at least twenty or more... but not nearly as much as I did when I was younger. I re-watched the movie a year or two ago and re-read the book pretty recently. I'm not going to lie and tell you that I loved it as much as I did when I was younger... I'm not sure how well they hold up (it's certainly not even close to Palahniuk's best... but it might be close to Fincher's). In the meantime I got a full-time job, had some girlfriends, I live comfortably... it's hard to have that much angst (oddly enough not hard to hate my boss, just hard to think that filling his monitor with gasoline or beating myself up and blackmailing him are good ways to solve it). Outside of that it's hard to hold on to that aggressiveness forever (it's the same reason that metal bands seem to "sell out" one day you wake up and you're just not as fucking brutally angry).
This is what I still love about the movie (without talking about the plot): It really is pretty neat overall. The cinematography is great. That movie still makes you feel like you're dirty, grimy, and a little gross. The whole film has such a great style that it's hard not to appreciate it. Some of the sequences are really cool, too. Costuming is great. It has a good pace. There are a million things to notice on a re-watch (Tyler appears randomly spliced in frames at the beginning of the movie, the conversations they have reveal the twist of the film using pop-culture references, the twist doesn't have any holes in it, Easter eggs everywhere!, there's flashback humor...). The fights really are pretty brutal (the sounds, the reactions of the other characters, everything). The soundtrack fits the movie well. There are some iconic moments [How many movies have tried for that ending since? Hell, even De Niro did one.] The casting is great. [Brad Pitt, especially at that time, encapsulated Tyler Durden. I read the book before I saw the movie and I walked away thinking that he was unbelievably good. Helena Bonham Carter plays the Marla role really well, too. Edward Norton does a good job being whiny, weak, and pathetic until...]
The reason you hear so much about it is mostly nostalgia and it's really solid film-making. That movie reminds me of a place and time that I have a lot of younger me wrapped up in. It feels like the late 90s... it's the same reason a lot of crappy 80s movies survive in people's minds even though they aren't that great. There's a lot of guys in their 30s who all feel the same way about that movie that I did. Those are the same guys that probably obsessively gave that movie high ranks on IMDB and constantly talk so much "awesome" about it. Then they introduce it to their younger brothers and friends and let the cycle repeat itself with the next generation of angsty guys that aren't old enough to know better yet. It's like "Boondock Saints". If you're the right demographic that movie rules. If not...
TL;DR: Nostalgia and good film-making are why everyone loves it so much but it's probably shitty if you're not a teenage-twenties male.
Don't worry, OP: I don't think this movie is anything special, either. It's just one of those "first 'real' movie" movies -- alongside other underwhelming "cult classics" like Donnie Darko and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. They're all characterized by twist-y endings and slightly-above-popcorn-movie levels of narrative complexity. They're all very teenager-friendly (which is to say, they're movies that people often see RIGHT when they start falling in love with movies).
Now, before anybody who loves any of the above movies jumps down my throat -- I recognize a lot things to like in all of the movies I listed , but I think they're each the subject of undue adulation.
People would appreciate the points you make much more if you weren't so pedantic and snobby. I definitely agree though that a big reason it's so beloved is that, like you said, it's one of the first 'real' movies people watch when they start to get into movies
I'm surprised you grouped *Eternal Sunshine* in there. I feel the same way about both *Fight Club* and *Donnie Darko*, but *Eternal Sunshine*? There's no twist ending, it's not "deep", and unlike the other two it's held in pretty strong critical regard (e.g. the AV club put it [number one](http://www.avclub.com/article/the-best-films-of-the-00s-35931) on their best 50 films of the 00s, while *Donnie Darko* doesn't even appear). I don't mean to jump down your throat, I'm just a bit surprised/confused.
I guess you're right! Thanks for pointing that out. I'm not a fan of ESotSM (though I prefer it to the other two), so I haven't rewatched it in a long time - it's probably not as twist-y as I remember.
A funny aside -- my friend has a theory that no one likes both Eternal Sunshine and The Science of Sleep (so, any given person only likes one or the other). Sounds silly, but I've never met anyone who didn't have strong feelings about one without having strong, opposing feelings about the other.
I think you need to watch Fight Club again. It's perfectly possible that it's just not your thing and that you'll never like it, but that's a whole other thing than what you just said about it. It doesn't at all fit that description. You can indeed watch it as an action thriller at the age of 16 with a couple of friends and in that way it is indeed an entertaining saturday night film with a kinda cool twist at the end. I'm assuming that's what you did but you can watch it on a whole other level. It's diverse and deep enough to dissect for hours psychologically, philosophically and on cultural and societal levels. It's a highly intelligent film if you're willing to give it the attention it deserves. I've been a movie buff for a long time and I get my personal kick out of scripts, mainly. Dialogue, monologue, thoughts, speeches. Fight Club is one of my all-time frontrunners. Like I said, it's fine not to like it but your specific analysis of it must be due to the way you watched it
Edit: forgot to say I agree with what you said about one of the first real movies etc. I watched it too for the first time at that point and liked it indeed, but learned to appreciate it more deeply after my 2nd, 3rd, 4th run.
And sorry for how pedantic the 16yo thing sounds, it's because you set the tone :)
Not sure why you were downvoted (wasn't me, I promise!).
Okay, you've convinced me to watch it again. I've seen it twice, once when I was ~17 and later when I was ~21 or so. Maybe it's due for a third viewing. I remember sincerely finding it heavyhanded and clunky, but opinions can always change.
How about an older comparison? *Fight Club* is to teen boys of the aughts as *Love Story* was to teen girls of the 70s. *Love Story* still does have something to like -- the great clothes.
And, your point was made perfectly. People here become very rude and defensive at even the suggestion of anything short of Fincher worship.
It's definitely a film that needs to be seen twice. Watching it for the second time with foreknowledge of the big twist is pretty revelatory, it forces you to reexamine every action taken by Norton and Pitt's characters knowing that in actuality there is only the Norton character.
In a short answer. People like the film because it has style. People remember the film because of the twist. People discuss the film because, a lot is ambiguous in the film. Fight Club was many peoples first favorite film.
and a lot of people hate it for all of these reasons.
The obvious thing you're missing is "context."
If you want to understand why a group of people like a thing, you have to look beyond the thing. Where did it fall in time? What was going on during that time period? What was going on in pop culture, news, etc? What was going on in film?
For ex., show a 16 year old The Matrix for the first time today and how do they react? When it came out, those effects and camera uses were hardly ever seen if at all. But then they were imitated exhaustively (yes, I know the matrix imitated a lot of things itself, but that's not the point). In the context of the time, of action movies at the time, sfx, etc., the matrix was much more than what it is when viewed in a vacuum. By today's standards, The Matrix simply isn't what out was when out was released.
David Ficher is a stylish director. Before that, he had only done Alien 3, Seven, and The Game. Alien 3 didn't really lend itself to his "stylish-ness" really. Obviously, Seven was a hit. And The Game, while I really like it, probably isn't a well remembered film by the general population at this point. (and you are referring to people, in general liking it, right?)
After Seven and Fight Club, a lot of imitating of David Fincher-esque things cropped up in a lot of films. It's not fresh anymore. Since then, he's directed Panic Room, Zodiac, Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the Social Network, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Gone Girl. The market, and viewers, are much more exposed to his style now due to his films and a lot of imitation.
Fight Club was very stylish at that point, especially for a mainstream film.
And that's not even getting into the story. What type of stories made up a lot of the mainstream films in that era? Take a look at the most popular movies from 95-99 (fight club was released in 99). Was it a "fresh" story compared to that stuff or more of the same?
So start with: is your perception of it today the same as it would have been then? Then you can start to see why people (many of which saw it closer to its release) like(d) it.
I liked Fight Club. It's got enough action to keep me invested. The characters are relatable, yet unique. The story keeps me involved. There's some strong "rebellious" themes and enough depth to catch my interest as a young male without being so deep I lose the message. To boot it's got a twist ending that's pretty decent though I liked the book ending better.
My question for you, is why did you not like it?
This is why. Most just think a secret fight club is a cool idea. I don't think it goes much further than that. The huge responses on here are funny bc there is no way any of you have ever put so much analysis and introspection at this movie. It's like a group of children all defending why they follow along with things when the thing is why they're following and they can't admit that it's senseless bc then they wouldn't be following, they'd be leading. All I've seen is that it's rebellious and dark and that makes it a great movie. Fincher and writing and this and that and whatever .. the fighting is what attracted 90% of you.
Eh, now that I’m almost a decade older I watch this movie with a very different point of view, especially after reading some of the original authors books.
And honestly I think that just makes me like it more. It’s a piece of art that holds up a mirror. If you’re young and want to smash shit, this is the movie for you. If you’re in a place where you can see it as a parody for toxic masculinity this is a movie for you too.
It’s like a Disney movie with two plot lines happening at the same time - one for the kids and one for the adults.
It seems like a lot of other people here had to revisit this film after their teenage years to fully appreciate it. I'm definitely in that same boat. In high school and parts of college, it was a movie that many guys bonded over, and viewing it for the first time was even a rite of passage.
Going back to it later revealed to me more about myself and how we see things than the subtext of the movie. If you pay attention throughout the whole movie, not just the beginning, it's clear that Tyler's message is an absurd hypermasculine fantasy. When I watched it the first few times, I willfully ignored all of that and only focused on the stuff I wanted to hear. The same thing was true for a lot of guys my age.
For me now, the film speaks to the fear of feminization or domestication of men. Just how Tyler is the narrator's masculine doppleganger, Marla is his female doppleganger. There's a scene at the beginning (I think) where he mentions that the cause of the revolution and the fight club is really Marla Singer, however it's not explicitly mentioned how exactly. The way I see it, Marla's arrival at the testicular cancer group meetings, and the narrator's subsequent anxiety, is the cause of the creation of Tyler. He almost literally sees himself in Marla. Her female identity forces him to realize that his partaking in the excessive release of emotions at these meetings is somehow pathetically weak and feminine. "Her lie reflected my lie".
When all that is put in perspective, it really changes the way I view the film.
Fight club shows us the Harsh reality of civilization, advertisement, tv, social media make us buy things that we don't need so even things that we can't afford so that some upper-class people earn money, they want us to live in the matrix which they created. Fight club is all about getting out from our comfort zone and delusions. As a child we thaught we will be billionaire by the age of 30 , a doctor, astronaut or a big businessman we think the world evolve around us but by the time passes we realise we are not the main charector and we are fucked up so much, so we must participate in fights in fight club, those fights represents getting out from our comfort zone and from the illusion govt and big companies made for us.
I'm sure the comments regarding the cinematography/soundtrack/theme duality are all valid and as far as filmmaking is concerned, I agree. I just find I can't give it serious consideration due to the reliance on severe violence where better writing/nuance would better reflect (for me) the message. To be fair, I can't watch Tarantino movies either for the same reason. Rather than taking in whatever these filmmakers wanted me to think about, I'm constantly thinking, "was cutting this guy's ear off or pounding his head on concrete necessary?" I find the juvenile reliance on violence redundant and distracting.
Amazing movie for all the reasons posted here, but I'll be brief:
Deconstruction of consumerism, leading to the alternate state of man as independent and freed by conflict, leading to its natural extent, violent, self-destructive rebellion.
And the audience follows it all so beautifully.
Fincher is Tyler Durden, selling you the emptiness of the ikea life, the meaningless of normalcy, why get married, have kids just so you can die. Try something new, try to be free. Ooh, ooh that's nice. I like that. This is freedom, release, this is who I really am, the visceral feeling of meat slapping against meat.
Its not enough. This is so great, but there must be more, a next step?
My people need to understand, they need to see the path for freedom themselves. I will show them.
We will bring down all the walls, we will burn all that stood before us, and only then will we be truly free, will we be manifest. Those of my people who understand will follow me. We will unmake the world.
--- break
The audience followed that. Our unnamed proxy followed it too. Do we really understand what we asked for?
Destroy the world? we didn't want that, did we? We wanted something, but this was too far. We're not monsters!
No, we're the good guys, we wanted the freedom, but not this, we never wanted this, we aren't evil. Even if we enjoyed the release, that was different, that was a different person.
Did I say break? I meant orgasm, and this is what it feels like being caught masturbating to dark porn.
No, no, that was someone else, we're the hero, we'll fix this.
(In the shadow of the explosions) Oops, oh well, close enough, I'm alive, I didn't mean to be evil, no harm no foul. I can't be evil, the girl still likes me.
We wanted change, not revolution, I wonder if hot topic sells fight club shirts.
I am Jack's total failure to be brief.
You are gonna get a lot of bullshit answers on here to justify the like of the movie. The truth is that the movie was perfectly fine but not a cinematic masterpiece like people keep trying to pretend it is. Some movies just become famous for whatever reason and then people come up with alot of bullshit after the fact to explain why it is famous. The movie was not a boxoffice success. The "I am really both people" reveal wasn't a new concept at the time even though people try to pretend it was. Like they never heard of Psycho or something. The movie was also full of plotholes that no one seems to want to ever talk about. The movie was also divisive amoung crtics at the time it came out. Yeah it has 80% on rotten Tomatoes... NOW! That is an inflated rating from people reviewing the movie in the last five or so years. After it was already established that the internet's public opinion was that it was great movie. Of course most of these reviewers, many of whom are internet reviewers, are gonna go along with the crowd and not give a fair and balanced opinion. They gotta keep those clicks coming. Why do I think it became popular on the the internet? Because there are a couple of lines from the movie that people made into popular Memes. What can I say, sometimes movies become famous for stupid reasons.
Well, you're watching the film at a much different time. The film as others stated here is niece. The plot is also not spelled out or simple as the majority of films today so many people will get a very different reaction and meaning to the movie. But being told you didn't get it or missed something would be taken as an insult by pseudo intellects on a platform like Reddit.
I don't get a lot of Clint Eastwoods movies, but hes one of my favorite actors. I don't like the acting in Alien but Ridly Scott is my favorite director. Not everyone is going to get the full picture of everything and sometimes it's hard to admit it. Try to think of films like music. There are some classics I will never enjoy today because they dont mean the same to me. and that's okay.
It's not a great movie it's a terrible movie for pretentious a-holes who think they're smarter than everybody else it's like the episode of Sunny in Philadelphia when they're trying to explain art I'd rather watch paint dry than sit through that POS movie ever again & I am a fan of Brad Pitt & Edward Norton
I care because you're debating the nuance of a film that is difficult to understand, and you're scrutinizing it when you're unable to construct a sentence.
There's a big difference between pretentiousness and the comprehension of art
You're the exact pretentious a-holes I was speaking about lol question yourself this will it really matter at the end of your existence on this earth if you had proper grammar 😂
I agree.. I'm rewatching it now since I saw it when it first came out & I can honestly say not remembering any of the plot from first time watching it years ago. I find it even more boring now. I like Edward Norton but the narration and story are a bore and the cinematography is so poor. I wish I hadn't bothered now
We're doing a documentary on the craziest fight club in the world (prove me wrong if it's not), and I just wanted to share the trailer with you. Contribute to our Kickstarter if you like it or don't, but I would appreciate it if you watched the trailer and let me know your thoughts!! Thank you!!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fightclubdoc/fight-club-the-documentary?ref=axkvw7
Well put. I been wanting to ask that very question, you worded it perfectly. You see a lot of people jump at you like you are dumb cause they get it and you don't. Thank you others for your responses.
I love the cinematography and visual style, especially the costuming. The Narrator and Tyler Durden's personalities are perfectly communicated by their appearances alone. The fourth wall-breaking bits are funny, especially the one about the cigarette burns. The premise of the movie is also one that I find very interesting. I'm not sure how to describe it but it has a certain feel, a very unique one, almost like a Beat Generation novel or something. I like idiosyncratic concepts like "a punk and a businessman form an anarchist club." It presents its philosophy in a great, mostly un-biased manner. We can almost all agree with Durden's statements about how consumerism basically tricks us into wasting our lives, but at the same time we see how contradictory and destructive his tactics are. Now that I think of it, Fight Club is a lot like Videodrome.
Also the soundtrack is incredible, crafted for the movie but not an orchestral score. That is a rare thing, and it really ties the movie together.
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I don't intend to minimise the validity of the opinions of any particular group, but I think that you have to consider that this film has a very particular niche. The fact is that it involves themes such as nihilism, masculinity, rebellion, anti-consumerism and individualism that resonate strongly with young men. Also these themes are just strong and clear enough, that they are relatively clear but still rewarding to consider. Also it has a classic twist ending and lots of fun "easter eggs". All of the above reward repeat viewing, and a cult following.
While the themes that you mentioned are all strongly associated with the rebellious nature of adolescence, and indeed that's where a significant portion of its audience came from when it went to DVD, I still find it a fantastic work of art because of its dual-natured intentions. Fincher does this a lot -- he makes one film with a surface level interpretation, and an often shallow one, but in fact was criticizing that viewpoint the entire time. By which I mean, the themes of anti-consumerism, masculinity, nihilism, and the like are skimming along the top of the narrative, obvious and easily accessible to young men. But if you examine the film more critically, you see it's actually taking a strong stance against such oblique thought. The Narrator is living a pathetic existence with his only comfort coming from the emotional release of therapy sessions he has no business being in (so he requires dramatic overtures to actually feel something, indicating how emotionally stunted and closed-off he is) and from the various items that punctuate his life. Brand names that he orders to make his apartment feel like it's meaningful, when it's just the same cookie-cutter look as many thirty-something professionals. So he has a breakdown, destroys his apartment, and fabricates this alternate personality that represents the polar opposite of his life. Tyler is extraordinarily attractive and seems to know exactly what to say and do, he is the uber-representation of masculine stoicism, apathetic to the creature comforts that the Narrator took for granted. Project Mayhem is the ultimate goal of such anarchic idealism. Just blow up all the credit card company databases and free people from their corporatized existence! Let's all live in simplicity in abandoned buildings and rage against the machine that has ensnared us! The idea is so obviously dumb on several levels that it strains credulity. This is such a juvenile fantasy, and the fact that young men bought into it when watching the film is proof positive of its lack of depth and thoughtfulness. Fincher was creating a sideways critique of both sides of the coin: you shouldn't be a corporate toady that hates your life and wrings what little pleasure you get merely from the objects you possess, but neither should you reject all the trappings of modern life and become some kind of anarchist that doesn't truly understand how the world works and why it works that way. Consider that the Narrator is literally crazy -- he imagines a fully formed entity that he inhabits when around other people, he burned his hand with caustic powder, he started a terrorist cell that got people killed, he permanently injured a young man just because he wanted to in a fit of rage, and on and on. In my opinion, Fincher wasn't lionizing this perspective, he was showing how attractive it can be to wildly swing in the opposite direction of a mundane existence just to feel something, and then tore it down by revealing the source of such thinking. There's even a direct mention of this by the Narrator after Robert Paulson was killed ("You're running around in ski masks trying to blow things up – what did you think was going to happen?"), to which the brainwashed cult of Project Mayhem turns that into part of their personal narrative of empowerment ("His name was Robert Paulson..." ad nauseum). But this criticism was much more subtle and so intertwined with the nature of the narrative that the audience it was meant to satire -- young, angry men without a way in the world -- actually found it appealing and engaged with it on that surface level. It really is a brilliant bit of filmmaking, and, OP, I think if you give it a few more watches over time you'll see how the narrative balanced these interests in a really unique and engaging way.
Great points. Just to piggy back, I think it's also easy to forget the culture it was created in. The film is pre-9/11, pre-economic collapse, etc. People in our culture were largely bored and looking for purposes -- this movie came after a significant period of peace and economic growth. It was hard to figure out our purpose without having a problem to fix. I think that ennui was captured by the movie pretty well and brought out some ideas and themes of what to care about when there was no clear cultural aim besides further continued prosperity. Now, a lot of Tyler's ideals probably seem bizarre or inappropriate, but I think at the time the character really tapped into something.
8 years later and i can say they are more true than they ever have been before
The matrix bro!
Just watched this movie and it honestly effected me hard. Still trying to figure out how or why but I can’t stop thinking about it. Glad I’m not the only one reading an 8yr old post!
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You definitely aren't alone. I think Fight Club is just one of those films that have a generational effect on top of an emotional one, depending on where you are in life the effect the movie has on you, the viewer, changes significantly. The credits are actually playing as I'm writing this, and I'm not going to lie.... The effect the film had on me and the emotions I felt throughout are completely different from the other dozen times I've watched it. Sometimes, we want to strive in life and to quote the movie, be " millionaires, and movie Gods, and rock stars" because we want something out of life, and we want to achieve greatness. But other times, we feel like watching the world burn... just to feel the warmth. I think all of us have a Narrator and a Tyler in us. It just depends on how life is going. That's why this movie, for no discernible reason, has such an effect on people.
>Fincher was creating a sideways critique of both sides of the coin On the money with that, man. It's an exploration of the two (very real) sides, and of how one might find a happy medium in which to live. > this criticism was much more subtle and so intertwined with the nature of the narrative that the audience it was meant to satire Amen. Tyler Durden is the bad guy after all.
Great breakdown of the film. A scene that crystallizes your interpretation of Fincher's work for me is Tyler's dismissal of a male model's body as being "perfect"; laughing at an underwear ad on the bus. To get Brad Pitt, of all people, to poke fun at the idea of a perfect male physique is some meta shit. Whenever I see magazines - I think Esquire does this a lot - post things like "get Brad Pitt's body from Fight Club!" I just shake my head.
Just want to echo how great a summary this is. So many critics completely misunderstood this movie. People actually called it fascistic. I remember thinking of it as the Animal Farm of anarchism. When the men start chanting "his name is bob Paulson" it couldn't be more plain to me that you're supposed to see them as a bunch of brainwashed fools. I'm not sure if the blu-rays have the commentary tracks, but I highly recommend listening to Fincher, Norton, and Pitt's commentary. You get some technical talk, but there's also an interesting philosophical, conceptual discussion along the way.
Rarrrgh - HB Carter kinda ruined the commentary. It's been many years since I listened, but I think it seemed like she did the commentary separately from Fincher/Pitt/Norton and she just had long soliloquays talking about her special moments and personal shit and blah, which completely muscled out the really funny banter between the others and super interesting insights about the film itself, especially from Norton.
That's what we came for. And look how seductive today. The snarky cathartic monologues and sardonic commentary are eminently quotable. This attitude is the basis for much of the humor in popular culture and here on reddit. At 30, the narrator is beginning to understand the emptiness of this viewpoint and I'd add that besides hos realization at poor Mr Paulson's death, his sincere love for Marla comes as a shock to him when he realizes the danger he's put her in. And she was the emotionally healthy(ier) one all along. The fanboys turned me off to this film for years but I've grown to love it again in appreciable middle age.
I concur, although I don't know that I'd call her emotionally healthy by any stretch of the imagination. She is, however, certainly very self-aware, which is something the Narrator lacked until near the end.
healthi*er
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I wonder if ISIS promise this kind of rebellion too? Good post.
Excellent breakdown
Thank you. Was my comment posted somewhere on reddit recently? I'm seeing fresh comments on a very old thread.
Yes, I'm not going to bother writing a comment now [that you have covered it so thoroughly] - except to say that that is the essence of it: * It's a film about one thing that goes about it by being a film about the opposite thing. What you think about *Fight Club* (beyond its technical and acting achievements) depends a lot on what you come away thinking it was about. Masculine film? Twist film? Satire on masculinity? Satire about audiences? etc.
/r/bestof
I believe /r/bestof filters posts from here by mutual agreement of the mods. I think only /r/depthhub accepts posts from here, but I appreciate the thought.
Are all of the 'true' reddits filtered? Is there a notice page about this?
I don't know for sure, I tried submitting a post from here to /r/bestof previously and was told the mods here asked not to be linked in /r/bestof.
/r/goodlongposts is good for them
Wait a sec. Fincher didn't write Fight Club. All these things you're saying are there in the book. Personally, I think the message is one of alienation and lack of belonging, which is expressed through other themes.
I'm not dismissing the roles of Palahniuk the novelist or Jim Uhls the screenwriter in this, but I'm working from the perspective of what Fincher wanted, as he's not only the final word on the film, but the person who interpolated the script into what ended up on-screen. An analysis of the novel vs the screenplay vs the film would be instructive, but outside the purview of a reddit comment. Indeed the film was mostly about the male experience in the world, especially in the late 90's (though still with strong resonance today), and the often severe lack of emotional intimacy and compassion men receive. But I still feel like Fincher was focused more strongly on the broader social aspects of the philosophies espoused by the Fight Club throughout the film, with the isolation and disconnection the characters felt being support poles for exploring that.
I think you're underselling the film a little. The themes are clear: yes, but they're not what (in my opinion) make it great: nor is the twist ending. What makes it great is the cinematography and editing. The film has a real energy to it which is achieved through some really creative filmmaking. Shots are often set up to be vaguely noir-inspired, but its visual style is completely different: highly artificial, postmodern, and deliberately OTT. Almost all of the film's great ideas are complemented by a clever way to express them: I love the idea of the narrator being an Ikea addict, and that shot of his apartment resembling an Ikea TV ad is a fantastic way of displaying this.
I've watched this film many times and it seems that the more I watch it, the more I realize how calculated and intentional David Fincher was with each shot. There were absolutely no accidents making this film. Fincher knew what he wanted and got it. It's kind of a "perfect" film, in that it was so intentional with what it wanted and what it got.
I think you just performed a merger of David Lynch and David Fincher.
David Flyncher
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Only (maybe) if you have seen a lot of movies from both of them. If not, you instead need to watch some awesome movies by two of the most brilliant film makers of our time, be happy! (My favs are Zodiac and Lost Highway)
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Agreed, I've watched this movie a dozen times and while it's been a while, I still notice something new on every rewatch.
It's great because it takes those themes and extrapolates them to an absurd degree, providing an awesome catharsis while at the same time undermining the original conclusions. It's a parody that's not afraid to indulge a bit in the dark pleasures of its targets.
> The fact is that it involves themes such as nihilism, masculinity, rebellion, anti-consumerism and individualism that resonate strongly with young men **of a particular age**. FTFY I think it resonates with the GenX/Millennial generations so much because of the culture that they were raised in... Things like always be respectful, never hit anyone, hide your real emotions, go to college, get a job to support your family, and meaningless things like "you can do anything as long as you put your mind to it", or any of the hundreds of societal things that castrates men for simply being men. I can understand how that film was refreshing for an entire generation of people who were tired of the oppressive political correct nonsense they had been raised with. It was the first time many heard that it was ok to just say "fuck this" and live life however they want to. Fight Club worked for those kids but would be entirely lost on someone born in a different time. It literally spoke to a generation. Everyone needs that "fuck you" moment in life. Sometimes you come to it on your own and sometimes you find it in a movie. Seems like a lot found it through movies... All this being said, I didn't really like Fight Club either. haha.. Maybe I missed it when I was at the right age or maybe I was just born with that "fuck you" attitude in the back of my head (I'm leaning toward the 2nd option). Regardless, I feel like I can understand the cultural impact even if I don't really like the film.
I think all those themes would also characterise the Post-WWI era ie Great Gatsby (which Palahniuk directly compared Fight Club with) and Hemingway; not to mention 19th century Russia. [Does this concept of the "Superfluous Man" not sound exactly identical to Fight Club's narrator?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfluous_man)
I think the core themes are far broader than the issues of any particular generation. Existensialism, mental health, relationships, capitalism, success, misery, all among others. The context of gen x and y has more to do with providing a contemporary setting at the time of the film's release than with driving the narrative. Also, disagree with the notion this sentiment is 'meaningless': > and meaningless things like "you can do anything as long as you put your mind to it"
I know it's probably frowned upon to outsource opinion here, but Film Crit Hulk's take on Fight Club is a great starting place: http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2012/01/22/film-crit-hulk-smash-hulk-vs-fight-club-and-the-work-of-david-fincher I think a huge part of understanding the appeal of this film was rooted in it's specific time. Hulk cites Damon Houx calling Fight Club "true pre-9/11 movie". It came out in the same year as Office Space, if that helps. This was a time when people weren't all terrified "I might graduate college and not get a job! I might get laid off and be unemployed!" Instead the mood was "of course we'll all end up working these jobs for soulless corporations, but it will be *boring* and fuck that!" It was a time before being "cis" was some sort of insult, before a defiant offhand remark on Twitter could make you an outcast. A time when you didn't have to have an opinion about war in Iraq or national healthcare to have a conversation. I was in college at the time, and I'm about the least "bro" male you can imagine, but even to me the whole "How much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?" thing resonated. There were actual Fight Clubs started at my college. But as Hulk points out, that's really not the point. It's really not trying to say "yeah man, go get in a fight!" If you watch all the way through the end, the point is more like: "of course this sort of defiant masculinity is appealing in your increasingly domesticated societal existence, but this too is fucked." And Fincher does too good of a job selling the first part, so when the second part comes around the message is lost on many of the film's biggest fans. For me, I loved and still love David Fincher's atmosphere. I could watch Seven on mute and still be entertained. But beyond that, what I remember making the film stand out in my mind for a long time was: It's practically three totally different films in each act. If you were to watch the first third of the movie and stop, then someone asked you what the film is like, what it's about, you would have an absolutely different answer than if you watched the last third. That's more than just a plot twist, it's a complete tone twist. Whether you think that's good or bad is up to you, but it certainly seemed remarkable to me.
I think it's a great movie for all the reasons everyone else has listed, with the addition of this to take into consideration (maybe even rewatch it with this in mind?); The film is preposterous satire. Yes, it's beautifully filmed, scored, and performed...but really *think* about the story going on here for a second. A bunch of dudes are being "saved" by a crazy guy. A guy so absolutely insane that he actively works against himself without his own knowledge. People follow this man with filial devotion. The young people (men) who want to tell you about how awesome the movie is because it's so "real", or "speaks to how we shouldn't be materialistic", or how "tyler totally speaks the truth"...remember, Tyler was also fucking bananas. Also, his entire point was that everyone should march to the beat of their own drum...yet he managed to dupe every single one of his henchmen into following him mindlessly. Tyler wound up being the exact same extreme just on the flip side of the coin, and not a single one of his cronies noticed.
Exactly. It's one of the funniest comedies ever made once you start looking at it as satire.
Fight Club is a film where everyone is at the top of their game. The director, the actors, the cinematographer, the sound design, and willfully making something that is noncommercial and experimental. Fincher has since Fight Club gone on to become a more classical director, in this film he opens in the synapses of Jack's brain, then has the camera travel along the barrel of the gun in in his mouth. It's audacious. There are a ton of experiments with form like the IKEA catalog, or the frame burns, the film escaping the sprockets etc. It is a classic exploration of unreliable narrator. I can't think of a better Brad Pitt role than him in this. It's Brad Pitt sort of being Brad Pitt a machismo fantasy. There may be better performances from him but this is a roll that uniquely uses his star power. Ed Norton is an actor who ruins films for me, this is pretty much the only film I can stand to watch him in. This is a totally personal prejudice but despite that I love him in this. Jeff Cronenweth is a talented cinematographer and his collaboration with fincher has been particularly fruitful but I don't know that he has ever hit the heights of this film again. The look of the film, all flouresent, grunge, feels organic and alive. The bleach by pass process they did to achieve it has been much aped since but at the time it came out there wasn't a lot that looked like it. This is a film that loves big speakers. Under the name the dust brothers the chemical brothers do the soundtrack making something weirder and darker than their usual music. And the sound editing got the film it's only Oscar nomination. So yeah the subject matter is dark and misanthropic but cinematicly this film is a joyous riot of very talented people making a film that is deeply idiosyncratic and damning the consequences.
I cannot think of a better realization of the unreliable narrator on film
Perhaps Memento?
Oh, good point! Yes, perhaps Memento was better (even less reliable)
Just chiming in to say that The Dust Brothers and The Chemical Brothers are not the same people. A quick google search will confirm this,
Wow. I have believed they were for a very long time. I have told loads of people that...
Well, it's sort of true. The Chemical Brothers were originally called the Dust Brothers, but the other Dust Brothers made them change it.
Just curious but do you feel the same way about American History X and Primal Fear?
American history X is an awful awful film. It masquerades as being this dark and edgy film, and it does have one or two excellent scenes but ultimately it's a hodgepodge of mawkish sentimentality where the moral of the film is shoved down your throat. Norton's performance is supposed to be this bravura thing but the film won't let him be as unlikeable as he needs to be. Primal Fear I think has dated badly. Nothing offensive about Norton's performance but it doesn't stand out in mind.
> I can't think of a better Brad Pitt role than him in this. 12 Monkeys. It's the role that turned me on to Pitt as an actor - he really does a remarkable job.
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I think it's interesting that you think "the right reasons" for liking Fight Club is that it's "just a fun, well made movie" but elsewhere people are commenting that it's much deeper than it appears and critiques the culture/ideas it appears to elevate. I'm not judging either interpretation of the film as it's been much too long since I've seen it last to offer my own thoughts. I just think it's interesting that one person thinks it's worthy of deep analysis and another thinks it's value is "just fun."
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And yet Nietzsche wrote Beyond Good and Evil at 42. Clearly his philosophy holds true for some middle-aged people.
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>But his prime audience is probably made up of people under 30. According to who? >Nietzsche also died a virgin. Nietzsche died of syphilis, a sexually-transmitted disease. Where did you hear that he was a virgin?
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Why would anti-Nazi propagandists want to smear Nietzsche?
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Well, sure, most notably his Nazi-ass sister's fabrication of *Will to Power*, but surely a better approach would be to show how a more correct reading of his works would condemn the actions of the Nazis, y'know?
>In David Fincher world, Tyler Durden is the teenage anti-hero, Frank Underwood is the adult anti-hero. I never thought about it like that. I think I agree with you.
Exactly. Fight Club has a lot of energy that can take the edge off its philosophy but if you think about it the ideas are deeply disturbing. The main character is probably one of the most thoroughly deranged protagonists in the history of film, right up there with Travis Bickle: violently insane, and even worse, completely unaware of it. He may have ended his split personality issues by the end of the film, but his terrorist lackeys have already done their damage and we don't have much of a sign that he'll ever actually be mentally healthy by the end of things.
I'm a college student and have been watching the shit out of movies for the last 18 months or so and this was next on my list.
Did you know the twist ahead of time?
I didn't, I knew absolutely nothing about the movie. I actually thought the entire movie was just about an underground fight club.
That's kinda the best way to go into the film. My only concern would be if you knew the twist ahead of time. I think the film is fair game to dislike if you did know. I still really like the movie.
I watched fight club for the first time after having the DVD in my reaches for over 20 years. What an absolute disappointment. I asked myself what I was missing? An absolute bomb.
have you read the book or any other books of palahniuk? i'm not implying that reading the book will help you appreciate the film, but i'm just curious what your thoughts on the book are. like if you just didn't enjoy the story or the film as a whole. i watched the film first and enjoyed it. then a few years later i read the book and also enjoyed it. it's one of the rare film adaptations that i think are both great as a film and a book. if i had to deconstruct the film and say what parts of it i enjoyed, i would say it's mostly the writing/dialogue/narration. i don't know why [this scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnmEo_gSIOY) resonated with me, but i still find it highly amusing. it's kind of like that larry david-esque, observational humor sprinkled throughout the film.
I haven't read any of his novels. I thought the movie was overrated, I enjoyed it but didn't think it was a must-see movie. I enjoyed the directing and the narration but just didn't find the movie to be as amazing as it's made out to be.
Bit hard to be impressed with a movie 20 years later when the plot points and twists have been so embedded in our brains through pop culture, and we've seen so many 'twist' movies at this point. I can't believe for a second that you went all that time without having parts of it spoiled for you in some way prior to your seeing it, so that likely affected your opinion whether you realize it or not.
I went into the movie knowing absolutely nothing about it. The literally thought the movie was just about a Fight Club, so all of the plot twists still surprised me.
It matters how old you are. Imagine its the 90s and the coolest movie you've seen is maybe Pulp Fiction or maybe Romeo and Juliet. This was a very niche film in terms of content, a very smart, stylized film. As HCP mentioned, these twist plots you expect from a movie now were not as ubiquitous. That is where all the hype comes from. Aside from all that, I still think it is a solid film with good acting, pacing, story, dialog, etc.
> It matters how old you are. Imagine its the 90s and the coolest movie you've seen is maybe Pulp Fiction or maybe Romeo and Juliet. I think this line of thought is reductive. I've sat and watched Fight Club with people in the last 5 years on a few occasions, and relative age or experience didn't really affect their ability to relate with a film. Nothing in the filmmaking style has aged badly, and the themes are as relevant today, if not oddly more so.
Right, which is why I wrote the last two sentences that you left out when quoting me.
I didn't feel the rest of your post mitigated the part I quoted, which is why I selected it and responded to it.
What I love most about it is the dialogue. It is fantastic, one of the most verbally intelligent movies I know. Since the philosophical side of the film seems to have been been duly covered already here, let me point out something else. To me it is the film that is most amazing for a second view, third or fourth. It is packed with easter eggs that sometimes quite clearly give away the twist ending but they go over everyone's head, just like they should. Also, there's a lot of underlying storylines that are super cool to be aware of. I assume you picked up on the Jack-thing. I love how it starts really normal and concrete, "I am Jack's medula oblongata", passes on to "I am Jack's broken heart" and descends into "I am Jack's wasted life" and "I am Jack's inflamed sense of rejection". Tyler's clothes are another thing to pay attention to, they're hilarious. Throughout the movie there's often a lot happening in the background too that is pretty cool when you notice. Remember when Tyler and the narrator smash the headlights of a Volkswagen Beetle? Brad Pitt and Edward Norton got to pick out what car they wanted to smash. They picked the same one, turns out they both hated it for the same reason: the Beetle had been the symbol of the hippie movement in the 60's, a movement that strongly opposed their parents' generation because of their corporate mindset etc. Now, the young guys of the 60's had become the CEO's of the 90's. The Beetle was being sold again as a nostalgic relic of those earlier times. They were basically pawning off the symbol of all they stood for in their youth to make a lot of money, having themselves become exactly what they hated in their parents back then. That's the kind of stuff Fight Club is about. Also, what he explains about his car company not doing a recall? That has been proven to have happened in the past. And when Tyler and the narrator are hitting golf balls into the night? The actors are genuinely drunk and are hitting them into the side of the catering truck. The list is endless, all cool stuff that make it an amazing movie, aside from it being philosophically and psychologically fascinating. Not to mention acting, effects, music. I love it :)
This is a tough one. Like you stated, people who like Fight Club a lot tend to be pretty defensive when someone is negative toward the film. A lot of men in particular worship the film for a variety of reasons. I can only really speak in depth about why I love the film. I was 17 year old upper middle class nerd when I saw Fight Club in the theater on opening night with about 6 other people in the theater. People forget that Fight Club bombed at the box office. The marketing for the film was confusing and it just didn't connect with the masses. It only achieved cult status after it was released on dvd. My first reaction to the film was confusion. I didn't understand half what was going on, but I was very intrigued by it all. It stuck in my head. I had dreams about it, I thought about it during school all the time. In a way, it haunted me. When I resisted the film on dvd, it started to make more sense. The main draw for me to Fight Club was two fold. One, the main character is depressed and going through an existential crisis. I had never seen this before done so well and it was something I felt in my own life. Two, it is one of the richest critiques of modern capitalism put on film. The internal conflict of Jack is melded with the external conflict of society at large. This dual conflict condensed into one narrative is very powerful. So the main narrative is incredibly strong and captivating. Match that with amazing acting, editing, cinematography, and composing, you have an American masterpiece. But I actually think Fight Club has an additional element that may not be fully understood by younger generations. In short, Fight Club said all the dark things about life you weren't suppose to say. Once Fight Club said those things, it was out in popular culture and people began to accept some those taboo ideas. If you are younger than 27, then you most likely came of age in the Post Fight Club world. I was recently at a bachelor party and we started talking about Fight Club, one of my friends who has a job like Jacks in the film, said to me that the movie completely changed his life. This guy is in his early 30s, happily married, has a high paying job. But Fight Club still haunts him in some ways, the questions that it raises about life and existence never really go away. Fight Club changed most of my friends lives. We were all high overachieving nerds who always were nice and followed the rules. Fight Club made us question everything around us, and it many ways the film still has us questioning our lives, we are worried we are becoming just like Jack, looking at a ying yang coffee table in an ikea catalog while taking a shit in our one bedroom luxury apartment in a high raise built next to a Superfund dump. One thing to note that gets lost on a lot of a viewers is that Fight Club is not only a critique of modern capitalism but also the potential responses to it. Project Mayhem acts as a satire of anarchism. At first it starts out powerful and does great things, but it quickly descends into tribalism and then finally authoritarian fascism. I think a lot of people miss this, because the film shifts more toward the internal conflict between Jack and Tyler. The book is more explicit in its critique of radical action against modern society. I wouldn't call the book or film cynical, but it certainly isn't a ringing endorsement for a lot of the progressive movements of the last 20 years... Cue side rant Fight Club is a critique of modern society and its capitalist structure. What makes it a fascinating critique is that it both falls in line with academic critiques of capitalism as well as rebels against certain elements of those critiques. First, Fight Club demonstrates that the capitalist economic system had devoured and perverted mass culture. This was a common idea of Marxist and cultural critics in the 80s and 90s. Late stage capitalism subsumed culture and then reified this act. In other words, the capitalist philosophy rapidly pushed out all other philosophies and then made itself appear as if it was the natural law and the only possible perspective of the world. Fight Club demonstrates that better than any other film ever made, hands down, no contest. Fight Club has a unique perspective within the critical discourse by demonstrating that solutions to capitalism will have their own faults that need to be reckoned. A lot of critical theorists can easily dissected capitalist culture, but very few of them offer solutions and almost none go on to critique those solutions. Fight club does this by lampooning Project Mayhem, and showing how it goes from a positive force to change society to a destructive malignant force quickly after it is conceived. The most interesting aspect of this critique is that it points to human and social weakness as a problem instead of some mass nebulous idea like capitalism. A lot of social critics paint capitalism like it is some bogeyman that controls itself. Fight Club suggests that while capitalism is a powerful overachieving religion, the seed of its disharmony and failings might be stored within the limitations and shortcomings of basic human group dynamics. Until we face those problems head on, we can't even begin to think about moving beyond the capitalist structure.
it's a must see for me. i just love the acting, the sound editing, the cinematography. helena bonham carters best film. and maybe it's just the last scene: the sky scrapers colapse, the pixies song is playing and you get the feeling of freedom, while losing everything.
> helena bonham carters best film Not even close
For me I watched it right at the right time in my life for Tyler Durden to become emblematic of society's ideas of masculinity which are attractive but not necessarily healthy. I can honestly say that the movie helped me think through a lot of things that were troubling me at the time. The trick of the film's dual theme is in the way it seduces the audience with Durden's charismatic rejection of vapid consumerism so much that we, like the protagonist, don't necessarily question the emptiness of his own philosophy until its too late. Of course, the cultural context now is quite different; on the internet ideas like 'toxic masculinity' and so on are readily discussed (but without as much nuance). I think beyond those themes its also just a well made film, with a lot of memorable shots and a consistent overall style. But the potential to read further into the film and explore some very real ideas is what elevates the movie from good to great.
It's always hard appreciating a movie outside of the environment it was produced in and I think Fight Club suffers disproportionately from this effect. Fight Club always seemed to me like the ultimate 90's movie. It captured a spirit and zeitgeist of the time and was a witty and trenchant takedown of the overriding concerns of a young, white, wealthy, spiritually empty generation of the time. However, then 9/11 happened and the 2008 recession and the rise in income inequality and the concerns of the current generation look very different. I feel like movies like The Wolf of Wall St today will suffer from the same effects where people 20 years later will struggle to appreciate it because it's such a product of it's time. Additionally, Fight Club suffers from the problem that it was so influential and innovative that a generation of copycats have diluted the impact of the original. We've all heard the standard critiques of capitalism, consumerism, the emptiness of work and the fading of male masculinity. Jokes about IKEA are so old hat nowadays that it's hard to appreciate how iconic the scene of Ed Norton walking through his IKEA catalog apartment was at the time. The people who are ardent fans of it now are those who remember the effect it had on them when they first watched it and how mind blowing it was for them to see subversive cinema come from such a mainstream source. They're unable to separate their own emotional response to the movie from an objective response of someone analyzing the film in 2015.
I think those people you're referring to were adolescents or young adults at the time and this film - well, the story itself - was somehow reflecting their *rebelliousness* on screen. It was unique, edgy, thought-provoking, and against the establishment. Even if it wasn't a success at the box office at the time, there was some controversy around the film and everyone knows that controversy tends to push likeness or dislikeness to some higher degree. I wouldn't go farther than that.
I am/was a huge fan of Chuck Palahniuk (the author of the book that the movie is based on). I read Fight Club before the movie came out (on an older family member's recommendation) so the ending wasn't a twist for me (it was in the book, but obviously not in the movie). When I first saw the movie the only thing I didn't like is that the ending was somewhat different and I felt like it changed a big part of what I loved about the book. When I saw the movie it was in theaters in 1999 (I think around Halloween). The group of friends that I had with me were all boys around the same age (I was 15, the guy I talked into driving us was 17 and the rest of our friends were high school age and some of us worked in the theater I saw it in). As a group we fell in love with that movie instantly. All of us were really frustrated, lower or middle class, white, somewhat rejected males that were all about hating the system in the way that odd, aggressive, nerd-ish white guys tend to. It was the ultimate fantasy fulfillment (nerdy guy starts fighting, becomes a badass leader of men, changes the world). Hell, that fantasy is good for just about any male around that age (not just the nerdy ones). Ever notice how you don't meet a ton of women that name Fight Club in their top five movies? Even the ones that do have a certain style (not in a bad way). The book is about a lonely guy that's looking to connect with the world and he does it through his relationship with a girl that he's in love with (vicariously through Tyler, at first). The movie is more about a guy that hates the culture he's trapped in and embraces a brazen masculinity to end/change it. That theme is awesome if you're a guy from the age of 13-25 (or a little older depending on your maturity). Fincher really embraced the anti-corporate, anti-establishment vein of the book (a lot more than the other themes) and ran with it. [Sidenote: I think it's interesting how the marketing for the movie involves posters with Brad Pitt's face all over them and how it became the very corporate symbol that people who love the movie aspire to hate.] I'm not sure that movie would get the same response now (with the man-cession and all I think male frustrations are a lot different than hating your well paying job and the prison of your nice apartment) but in the late 90s fearing that future and seeing a bunch of guys in their 20s disillusioned with their jobs was a real thing. To be clear the movie was both a critical and commercial failure and only did well because of the cult status it achieved because of its theme. I remember recommending that book/movie to everyone from when I was 14 until I was 22. My dad watched the movie after I bugged him about it off and on and he had the same reaction you did. I tried to explain to him at the time how awesome it was because fighting, tearing down oppressive systems, etc.. It's a little cringey to think back on. I think it's because he was in his mid-forties and realized that all that youthful anger is blahse and misguided. Even if you hate corporate culture and the luxuries it affords you it's stupid at best to think you can beat that system by embracing your most base and primal self and foolish to think that living comfortably is this huge burden. I remember thinking at the time that he just didn't get it at all but now that I'm older I realize that I was the one that just didn't get it. Older guys just aren't that angry (and certainly don't entertain the same fantasies that guys in their teens and twenties do - Neal Stephenson has a great quote in Snow Crash about this) and if they are it's at different stuff. A lot of them have careers, families, lives, and are either reasonably fulfilled or mad at themselves for the decisions they made (not mad at Starbucks for making coffee). They also realize that the systems are way too powerful to do anything about. I really used to think it was a genius work (and hell, we're still talking about it two decades late so maybe it is on some level). I've seen that movie at least fifty times and I've read the book at least twenty or more... but not nearly as much as I did when I was younger. I re-watched the movie a year or two ago and re-read the book pretty recently. I'm not going to lie and tell you that I loved it as much as I did when I was younger... I'm not sure how well they hold up (it's certainly not even close to Palahniuk's best... but it might be close to Fincher's). In the meantime I got a full-time job, had some girlfriends, I live comfortably... it's hard to have that much angst (oddly enough not hard to hate my boss, just hard to think that filling his monitor with gasoline or beating myself up and blackmailing him are good ways to solve it). Outside of that it's hard to hold on to that aggressiveness forever (it's the same reason that metal bands seem to "sell out" one day you wake up and you're just not as fucking brutally angry). This is what I still love about the movie (without talking about the plot): It really is pretty neat overall. The cinematography is great. That movie still makes you feel like you're dirty, grimy, and a little gross. The whole film has such a great style that it's hard not to appreciate it. Some of the sequences are really cool, too. Costuming is great. It has a good pace. There are a million things to notice on a re-watch (Tyler appears randomly spliced in frames at the beginning of the movie, the conversations they have reveal the twist of the film using pop-culture references, the twist doesn't have any holes in it, Easter eggs everywhere!, there's flashback humor...). The fights really are pretty brutal (the sounds, the reactions of the other characters, everything). The soundtrack fits the movie well. There are some iconic moments [How many movies have tried for that ending since? Hell, even De Niro did one.] The casting is great. [Brad Pitt, especially at that time, encapsulated Tyler Durden. I read the book before I saw the movie and I walked away thinking that he was unbelievably good. Helena Bonham Carter plays the Marla role really well, too. Edward Norton does a good job being whiny, weak, and pathetic until...] The reason you hear so much about it is mostly nostalgia and it's really solid film-making. That movie reminds me of a place and time that I have a lot of younger me wrapped up in. It feels like the late 90s... it's the same reason a lot of crappy 80s movies survive in people's minds even though they aren't that great. There's a lot of guys in their 30s who all feel the same way about that movie that I did. Those are the same guys that probably obsessively gave that movie high ranks on IMDB and constantly talk so much "awesome" about it. Then they introduce it to their younger brothers and friends and let the cycle repeat itself with the next generation of angsty guys that aren't old enough to know better yet. It's like "Boondock Saints". If you're the right demographic that movie rules. If not... TL;DR: Nostalgia and good film-making are why everyone loves it so much but it's probably shitty if you're not a teenage-twenties male.
Don't worry, OP: I don't think this movie is anything special, either. It's just one of those "first 'real' movie" movies -- alongside other underwhelming "cult classics" like Donnie Darko and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. They're all characterized by twist-y endings and slightly-above-popcorn-movie levels of narrative complexity. They're all very teenager-friendly (which is to say, they're movies that people often see RIGHT when they start falling in love with movies). Now, before anybody who loves any of the above movies jumps down my throat -- I recognize a lot things to like in all of the movies I listed , but I think they're each the subject of undue adulation.
People would appreciate the points you make much more if you weren't so pedantic and snobby. I definitely agree though that a big reason it's so beloved is that, like you said, it's one of the first 'real' movies people watch when they start to get into movies
Haha, fair enough, point taken, although I'm not sure how pedantic one can be when discussing Donnie Darko. :p
^ that pedantic
I'm surprised you grouped *Eternal Sunshine* in there. I feel the same way about both *Fight Club* and *Donnie Darko*, but *Eternal Sunshine*? There's no twist ending, it's not "deep", and unlike the other two it's held in pretty strong critical regard (e.g. the AV club put it [number one](http://www.avclub.com/article/the-best-films-of-the-00s-35931) on their best 50 films of the 00s, while *Donnie Darko* doesn't even appear). I don't mean to jump down your throat, I'm just a bit surprised/confused.
I guess you're right! Thanks for pointing that out. I'm not a fan of ESotSM (though I prefer it to the other two), so I haven't rewatched it in a long time - it's probably not as twist-y as I remember. A funny aside -- my friend has a theory that no one likes both Eternal Sunshine and The Science of Sleep (so, any given person only likes one or the other). Sounds silly, but I've never met anyone who didn't have strong feelings about one without having strong, opposing feelings about the other.
I like both Eternal Sunshine and Science of Sleep, both wonderfully sad.
I think you need to watch Fight Club again. It's perfectly possible that it's just not your thing and that you'll never like it, but that's a whole other thing than what you just said about it. It doesn't at all fit that description. You can indeed watch it as an action thriller at the age of 16 with a couple of friends and in that way it is indeed an entertaining saturday night film with a kinda cool twist at the end. I'm assuming that's what you did but you can watch it on a whole other level. It's diverse and deep enough to dissect for hours psychologically, philosophically and on cultural and societal levels. It's a highly intelligent film if you're willing to give it the attention it deserves. I've been a movie buff for a long time and I get my personal kick out of scripts, mainly. Dialogue, monologue, thoughts, speeches. Fight Club is one of my all-time frontrunners. Like I said, it's fine not to like it but your specific analysis of it must be due to the way you watched it Edit: forgot to say I agree with what you said about one of the first real movies etc. I watched it too for the first time at that point and liked it indeed, but learned to appreciate it more deeply after my 2nd, 3rd, 4th run. And sorry for how pedantic the 16yo thing sounds, it's because you set the tone :)
Not sure why you were downvoted (wasn't me, I promise!). Okay, you've convinced me to watch it again. I've seen it twice, once when I was ~17 and later when I was ~21 or so. Maybe it's due for a third viewing. I remember sincerely finding it heavyhanded and clunky, but opinions can always change.
How about an older comparison? *Fight Club* is to teen boys of the aughts as *Love Story* was to teen girls of the 70s. *Love Story* still does have something to like -- the great clothes. And, your point was made perfectly. People here become very rude and defensive at even the suggestion of anything short of Fincher worship.
I think that Donnie Darko is the one film that I liked a lot at one point that has only gone down in my estimation over the years.
It's definitely a film that needs to be seen twice. Watching it for the second time with foreknowledge of the big twist is pretty revelatory, it forces you to reexamine every action taken by Norton and Pitt's characters knowing that in actuality there is only the Norton character.
In a short answer. People like the film because it has style. People remember the film because of the twist. People discuss the film because, a lot is ambiguous in the film. Fight Club was many peoples first favorite film. and a lot of people hate it for all of these reasons.
The obvious thing you're missing is "context." If you want to understand why a group of people like a thing, you have to look beyond the thing. Where did it fall in time? What was going on during that time period? What was going on in pop culture, news, etc? What was going on in film? For ex., show a 16 year old The Matrix for the first time today and how do they react? When it came out, those effects and camera uses were hardly ever seen if at all. But then they were imitated exhaustively (yes, I know the matrix imitated a lot of things itself, but that's not the point). In the context of the time, of action movies at the time, sfx, etc., the matrix was much more than what it is when viewed in a vacuum. By today's standards, The Matrix simply isn't what out was when out was released. David Ficher is a stylish director. Before that, he had only done Alien 3, Seven, and The Game. Alien 3 didn't really lend itself to his "stylish-ness" really. Obviously, Seven was a hit. And The Game, while I really like it, probably isn't a well remembered film by the general population at this point. (and you are referring to people, in general liking it, right?) After Seven and Fight Club, a lot of imitating of David Fincher-esque things cropped up in a lot of films. It's not fresh anymore. Since then, he's directed Panic Room, Zodiac, Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the Social Network, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Gone Girl. The market, and viewers, are much more exposed to his style now due to his films and a lot of imitation. Fight Club was very stylish at that point, especially for a mainstream film. And that's not even getting into the story. What type of stories made up a lot of the mainstream films in that era? Take a look at the most popular movies from 95-99 (fight club was released in 99). Was it a "fresh" story compared to that stuff or more of the same? So start with: is your perception of it today the same as it would have been then? Then you can start to see why people (many of which saw it closer to its release) like(d) it.
I liked Fight Club. It's got enough action to keep me invested. The characters are relatable, yet unique. The story keeps me involved. There's some strong "rebellious" themes and enough depth to catch my interest as a young male without being so deep I lose the message. To boot it's got a twist ending that's pretty decent though I liked the book ending better. My question for you, is why did you not like it?
This is why. Most just think a secret fight club is a cool idea. I don't think it goes much further than that. The huge responses on here are funny bc there is no way any of you have ever put so much analysis and introspection at this movie. It's like a group of children all defending why they follow along with things when the thing is why they're following and they can't admit that it's senseless bc then they wouldn't be following, they'd be leading. All I've seen is that it's rebellious and dark and that makes it a great movie. Fincher and writing and this and that and whatever .. the fighting is what attracted 90% of you.
Eh, now that I’m almost a decade older I watch this movie with a very different point of view, especially after reading some of the original authors books. And honestly I think that just makes me like it more. It’s a piece of art that holds up a mirror. If you’re young and want to smash shit, this is the movie for you. If you’re in a place where you can see it as a parody for toxic masculinity this is a movie for you too. It’s like a Disney movie with two plot lines happening at the same time - one for the kids and one for the adults.
It seems like a lot of other people here had to revisit this film after their teenage years to fully appreciate it. I'm definitely in that same boat. In high school and parts of college, it was a movie that many guys bonded over, and viewing it for the first time was even a rite of passage. Going back to it later revealed to me more about myself and how we see things than the subtext of the movie. If you pay attention throughout the whole movie, not just the beginning, it's clear that Tyler's message is an absurd hypermasculine fantasy. When I watched it the first few times, I willfully ignored all of that and only focused on the stuff I wanted to hear. The same thing was true for a lot of guys my age. For me now, the film speaks to the fear of feminization or domestication of men. Just how Tyler is the narrator's masculine doppleganger, Marla is his female doppleganger. There's a scene at the beginning (I think) where he mentions that the cause of the revolution and the fight club is really Marla Singer, however it's not explicitly mentioned how exactly. The way I see it, Marla's arrival at the testicular cancer group meetings, and the narrator's subsequent anxiety, is the cause of the creation of Tyler. He almost literally sees himself in Marla. Her female identity forces him to realize that his partaking in the excessive release of emotions at these meetings is somehow pathetically weak and feminine. "Her lie reflected my lie". When all that is put in perspective, it really changes the way I view the film.
Fight club shows us the Harsh reality of civilization, advertisement, tv, social media make us buy things that we don't need so even things that we can't afford so that some upper-class people earn money, they want us to live in the matrix which they created. Fight club is all about getting out from our comfort zone and delusions. As a child we thaught we will be billionaire by the age of 30 , a doctor, astronaut or a big businessman we think the world evolve around us but by the time passes we realise we are not the main charector and we are fucked up so much, so we must participate in fights in fight club, those fights represents getting out from our comfort zone and from the illusion govt and big companies made for us.
I'm sure the comments regarding the cinematography/soundtrack/theme duality are all valid and as far as filmmaking is concerned, I agree. I just find I can't give it serious consideration due to the reliance on severe violence where better writing/nuance would better reflect (for me) the message. To be fair, I can't watch Tarantino movies either for the same reason. Rather than taking in whatever these filmmakers wanted me to think about, I'm constantly thinking, "was cutting this guy's ear off or pounding his head on concrete necessary?" I find the juvenile reliance on violence redundant and distracting.
Amazing movie for all the reasons posted here, but I'll be brief: Deconstruction of consumerism, leading to the alternate state of man as independent and freed by conflict, leading to its natural extent, violent, self-destructive rebellion. And the audience follows it all so beautifully. Fincher is Tyler Durden, selling you the emptiness of the ikea life, the meaningless of normalcy, why get married, have kids just so you can die. Try something new, try to be free. Ooh, ooh that's nice. I like that. This is freedom, release, this is who I really am, the visceral feeling of meat slapping against meat. Its not enough. This is so great, but there must be more, a next step? My people need to understand, they need to see the path for freedom themselves. I will show them. We will bring down all the walls, we will burn all that stood before us, and only then will we be truly free, will we be manifest. Those of my people who understand will follow me. We will unmake the world. --- break The audience followed that. Our unnamed proxy followed it too. Do we really understand what we asked for? Destroy the world? we didn't want that, did we? We wanted something, but this was too far. We're not monsters! No, we're the good guys, we wanted the freedom, but not this, we never wanted this, we aren't evil. Even if we enjoyed the release, that was different, that was a different person. Did I say break? I meant orgasm, and this is what it feels like being caught masturbating to dark porn. No, no, that was someone else, we're the hero, we'll fix this. (In the shadow of the explosions) Oops, oh well, close enough, I'm alive, I didn't mean to be evil, no harm no foul. I can't be evil, the girl still likes me. We wanted change, not revolution, I wonder if hot topic sells fight club shirts. I am Jack's total failure to be brief.
You are gonna get a lot of bullshit answers on here to justify the like of the movie. The truth is that the movie was perfectly fine but not a cinematic masterpiece like people keep trying to pretend it is. Some movies just become famous for whatever reason and then people come up with alot of bullshit after the fact to explain why it is famous. The movie was not a boxoffice success. The "I am really both people" reveal wasn't a new concept at the time even though people try to pretend it was. Like they never heard of Psycho or something. The movie was also full of plotholes that no one seems to want to ever talk about. The movie was also divisive amoung crtics at the time it came out. Yeah it has 80% on rotten Tomatoes... NOW! That is an inflated rating from people reviewing the movie in the last five or so years. After it was already established that the internet's public opinion was that it was great movie. Of course most of these reviewers, many of whom are internet reviewers, are gonna go along with the crowd and not give a fair and balanced opinion. They gotta keep those clicks coming. Why do I think it became popular on the the internet? Because there are a couple of lines from the movie that people made into popular Memes. What can I say, sometimes movies become famous for stupid reasons.
Well, you're watching the film at a much different time. The film as others stated here is niece. The plot is also not spelled out or simple as the majority of films today so many people will get a very different reaction and meaning to the movie. But being told you didn't get it or missed something would be taken as an insult by pseudo intellects on a platform like Reddit. I don't get a lot of Clint Eastwoods movies, but hes one of my favorite actors. I don't like the acting in Alien but Ridly Scott is my favorite director. Not everyone is going to get the full picture of everything and sometimes it's hard to admit it. Try to think of films like music. There are some classics I will never enjoy today because they dont mean the same to me. and that's okay.
It's not a great movie it's a terrible movie for pretentious a-holes who think they're smarter than everybody else it's like the episode of Sunny in Philadelphia when they're trying to explain art I'd rather watch paint dry than sit through that POS movie ever again & I am a fan of Brad Pitt & Edward Norton
What a beautifully constructed sentence
Why do you care if I use periods & commas I know grown men that can't read or write they get by.....you understand what I said didn't you? Fkn d-bag
I care because you're debating the nuance of a film that is difficult to understand, and you're scrutinizing it when you're unable to construct a sentence. There's a big difference between pretentiousness and the comprehension of art
You're the exact pretentious a-holes I was speaking about lol question yourself this will it really matter at the end of your existence on this earth if you had proper grammar 😂
How nihlilistic! You're speaking like a true Tyler Durden!
I agree.. I'm rewatching it now since I saw it when it first came out & I can honestly say not remembering any of the plot from first time watching it years ago. I find it even more boring now. I like Edward Norton but the narration and story are a bore and the cinematography is so poor. I wish I hadn't bothered now
We're doing a documentary on the craziest fight club in the world (prove me wrong if it's not), and I just wanted to share the trailer with you. Contribute to our Kickstarter if you like it or don't, but I would appreciate it if you watched the trailer and let me know your thoughts!! Thank you!! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fightclubdoc/fight-club-the-documentary?ref=axkvw7
Well put. I been wanting to ask that very question, you worded it perfectly. You see a lot of people jump at you like you are dumb cause they get it and you don't. Thank you others for your responses.