Fight Club

[GameMaster]

I watched this movie a few days ago for the first time because I've seen it on many people's lists of favorite movies. I was disappointed. And I would not place it on my list of favorite movies.















*spoiler*

The concept of a story focusing on an individual with multiple personality disorder is interesting and cool. And the way they tell the story by initially depicting two different people and gradually exposing the truth to the narrator as well as the viewer at the same time is cool. I just didn't like how it was wrapped around a huge magnitude of violence. I think they could've even kept the narrator's suppressed anti-consumerism and anti-corporate feelings without having a fight club. It was just bizarre and I don't think men would've flocked to it as they do in the movie. I wouldn't have. As I type this, I can't think of a specific alternative to the fight club. Maybe a bank robbery or some form of criminal activity. Kind of like in The Mask. Where Stanley Ipkis wakes up and realizes his closet is jam packed full of money that 'The Mask' stole from the bank the night before. I don't know. I just thought it was too violent.

*spoiler*

[Dylflon]

Well it is called Fight Club.

[GameMaster]

Well, Fight Club is ridiculous and excessively violent.

I think it should've been called, "Divided I Stand". And Tyler Durden would've been a criminal fixated on stealing from large scale businesses and giving the money to the people, not the corporate heads. And instead of organizing mindless fights, he would've organized middle and lower class America to bring down the government and build a classless, stateless social organization based upon common ownership of the means of production (see: communism).

[Canyarion]

/agree
Too violent, though the story was awesome.

[Typhoid]

This was less violent than Passion of the Christ. So I dont see what the hubub is all about.


I love Fight Club. It's a really good movie, and I actually didnt see the thing that happened, happening.

[Canyarion]

Originally Posted by Typhoid

This was less violent than Passion of the Christ. So I dont see what the hubub is all about.

I didn't see Passion of the Chist, I never will.
And the fact there is B is worse than A doesn't make A better.

[Vampyr]

Awesome movie, one of my favorites.

If you don't feel like reading what I'm about to say, just read Dylflon's post. Basically the same thing. The reason the movie was so genius is because of they way the fights and fight club symbolises everything. Without the violence it wouldn't be genius anymore.

The schitzophrenia wasn't even the main point of the movie, the main point IS the anti-consumerism anti-corporate-ism and the violence. If they took those things out, it would be taking away the very theme of the movie. The schitzophrenia was just a motif used to communicate the message. Maybe you were expecting a movie about schitzophrenia, but this isn't one.

"Jack" is a suppressed individual. His life is routine, he never does anything out of the ordinary. He is completely controlled by his possessions and the corporations. But a part of Jack realizes what's happening. He realizes that EVERYONE, not just himself, has become a lost soul, completely absorbed into thinking that what they have actually matters more than other people, or who they are. Everyone is a consumer whore. The part of Jack that understands this is just portrayed through another character, Tyler Durden.

Tyler is the nihilist in Jack. He see's that everyone living in Corporate America tries to define themselves through commercial culture, and he seeks to remove that. He seeks chaos. At one pivotal point in the movie, when Jack beats Angel Face (the only fight he actually wins), he says, "I felt like destroying something beautiful." It was Jack beginning to accept the Chaos.

The Fights, along with Tyler, are used to explore this motif. Jack, along with the other men at Fight Club, have no father figures. They were all raised by their mother's, we are a generation of men raised by women. No one has shaped their masculinity, and thus they are stuck in their "IKEA nesting instinct", as Jack put it. So the fights area way to express their primal male instincts. It's like therapy: Jack needs a way to show that he is his own boss.

[KillerGremlin]

Fight Club, dare I say, has the best opening 1 hour of most movies out there. If not all of them. It's absolutely captivating, even if the ending isn't quite as strong as the beginning. It's still a sweet movie though, and it's not like it falls apart at the end. I liked it. Don't feel too much like arguing why it's awesome though. But, the way the movie is narrated at the beginning is cool.