More than twenty years after its release, Fight Club is considered a classic. Among IMDb's top-rated movies, it sits at number eleven between The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Forrest Gump. But it's not even David Fincher's best film (Se7en, The Game, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo are much better.) To be considered among the greatest of all time is laughable.
Fight Club has every ingredient necessary in making it a classic film. A daring director in David Fincher at the very top of his game. A cast starring Edward Norton and Brad Pitt taking their performances to physical limits. And a shocking plot twist that turns the entire story upside down. It's all there. But Fight Club tries to be more than that what it is. And writer Chuck Palahniuk is to blame.
Palahniuk wrote the novel Fight Club in 1996. He has become the Marilyn Manson of fiction authors. Write something so dark and twisted, that you need to look away but inevitably must finish. However, too often with Palahniuk's work, he needlessly bogs down the story with grotesque visuals and symbolism that students could identify in a fourth-grade class. In Fight Club, the author belabors the idea that the club is an anarchist reaction to capitalism. Everything outside of the club is monotonous and a reflection of what America in the 20th century has materialistically become. The underlying motif is meant to be cleverly hidden in which we suddenly have an "ah ha" moment when we figure it all out. The wittiness of the plot and symbolism is mistaken for the wittiness of the prose. The satire and one-liners are great. But when you shed the story of the gritty stylistic choices and the not-too-symbolic symbolism, you're left with a bunch of guys beating the shit out of each other because they hate their lives. Fight Club wants to be deep and complex. But instead it's shocking and shallow.
Because of the stunning twist and David Fincher and Brad Pitt, the movie Fight Club is a wolf in sheep's wool. It's not a classic movie. It gets a seat in the executive lounge knowing full well that everyone else earned their position while Fight Club is tapping the face of its knock-off Rolex. Without Fincher and Pitt's success from Se7en, Fight Club would be about as well-known as the film adaption for Palahniuk's Choke. And you didn't even know that existed.
Fight Club has every ingredient necessary in making it a classic film. A daring director in David Fincher at the very top of his game. A cast starring Edward Norton and Brad Pitt taking their performances to physical limits. And a shocking plot twist that turns the entire story upside down. It's all there. But Fight Club tries to be more than that what it is. And writer Chuck Palahniuk is to blame.
Palahniuk wrote the novel Fight Club in 1996. He has become the Marilyn Manson of fiction authors. Write something so dark and twisted, that you need to look away but inevitably must finish. However, too often with Palahniuk's work, he needlessly bogs down the story with grotesque visuals and symbolism that students could identify in a fourth-grade class. In Fight Club, the author belabors the idea that the club is an anarchist reaction to capitalism. Everything outside of the club is monotonous and a reflection of what America in the 20th century has materialistically become. The underlying motif is meant to be cleverly hidden in which we suddenly have an "ah ha" moment when we figure it all out. The wittiness of the plot and symbolism is mistaken for the wittiness of the prose. The satire and one-liners are great. But when you shed the story of the gritty stylistic choices and the not-too-symbolic symbolism, you're left with a bunch of guys beating the shit out of each other because they hate their lives. Fight Club wants to be deep and complex. But instead it's shocking and shallow.
Because of the stunning twist and David Fincher and Brad Pitt, the movie Fight Club is a wolf in sheep's wool. It's not a classic movie. It gets a seat in the executive lounge knowing full well that everyone else earned their position while Fight Club is tapping the face of its knock-off Rolex. Without Fincher and Pitt's success from Se7en, Fight Club would be about as well-known as the film adaption for Palahniuk's Choke. And you didn't even know that existed.