Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

Discussions of specific films and franchises.
Message
Author
User avatar
Tribe
The Bastard Spawn of Hank Williams
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 7:59 pm
Location: Toledo, Ohio
Contact:

Re: Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

#26 Post by Tribe » Thu Nov 12, 2009 12:01 pm

'Fight Club’ Fight Goes On
November 8, 2009
‘Fight Club’ Fight Goes On

By DENNIS LIM
CULT films, the critic Danny Peary wrote in his 1981 book “Cult Movies,” “are born in controversy” and elicit “a fiery passion in moviegoers that exists long after their initial releases.” By those measures David Fincher’s “Fight Club,” a movie that stirred vitriolic ire when it came out 10 years ago and today inspires obsessive, often worshipful scrutiny in both lowbrow and highbrow quarters, is surely the defining cult movie of our time.

In his memoir Art Linson, a producer of the film, describes the aftermath of the first screening at the 20th Century Fox lot: ashen-faced executives imagining their higher-ups (including Rupert Murdoch) “flopping around like acid-crazed carp wondering how such a thing could even have happened.”

The nervousness over screen violence was at a renewed high in the wake of the shootings at Columbine High School, and this must have seemed like the worst possible time to release a film in which an army of alienated men, led by Brad Pitt’s charismatic Tyler Durden, an übermensch in a red leather jacket, engage in bare-knuckle brawls, antisocial vandalism and outright revolutionary terrorism. When “Fight Club” opened in October 1999 after much defensive maneuvering from the studio (which delayed the release and struggled to find a marketing hook), the pundits eagerly took aim.

“The critical reaction was polarized,” said Edward Norton, who plays the film’s nameless narrator, “but the negative half of that was as vituperative as anything I’ve ever been a part of.”

In one of the more apoplectic slams, Rex Reed, writing in The New York Observer, called it “a film without a single redeeming quality, which may have to find its audience in hell.” More than one critic condemned the movie as an incitement to violence; several likened it to fascist propaganda. (“It resurrects the Führer principle,” one British critic declared.) On her talk show an appalled Rosie O’Donnell implored viewers not to see the movie and, for good measure, gave away its big twist.

As many had hoped and predicted “Fight Club,” which had a budget of more than $60 million, bombed at the box office, earning $37 million during its North American run. But the film’s potent afterlife is proof that, as Mr. Norton put it, “you can’t always rate the value of a piece of art through the short turnaround ways that we tend to assess things.”

Not only has “Fight Club” performed exceptionally well on DVD — it has sold more than six million copies on DVD and video, and is being issued in a 10th anniversary Blu-ray edition on Nov. 17 — but it has also become a kind of cultural mother lode.

Besides elevating the profile of the novelist Chuck Palahniuk, who wrote the original 1996 book, Mr. Fincher’s film has spawned a video game (featuring the Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst as a character) and a Donatella Versace fashion line (men’s wear adorned with razor blades). The swaggering gospel of Tyler Durden, much of it taken verbatim from Mr. Palahniuk’s book, has provided the cultural lexicon with one seemingly deathless catchphrase (“The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club”) and numerous pop-sociological sound bites (“We’re a generation of men raised by women”; “You are not your khakis”).

Reports and urban legends about real-life fight clubs and copycat crimes still pop up occasionally. In the academic sphere, as an Internet search of scholarly journals reveals, “Fight Club” has inspired a host of interpretations — Nietzschean, Buddhist, Marxist — in papers that take on topics including the “rhetoric of masculinity,” the “poetics of the body” and the “economics of patriarchy.”

Mr. Fincher, who crammed the collector’s edition DVD, released in 2000, with a trove of deleted scenes and behind-the-scenes supplements (all are available on the new Blu-ray version), said the movie needed time to be freed from initial preconceptions. “It was sold as, hey come see people beat each other up,” he said recently by phone from Boston, where he was shooting a film about the founding of Facebook called “The Social Network.” To his irritation Fox ran ads during wrestling matches, and many critics described it as a head-banging testosterone fest. But Mr. Fincher has observed that “women maybe get the humor faster,” he said, adding that young female audiences seemed to appreciate the film’s satirical spin on macho posturing. Reached by e-mail, Mr. Palahniuk went further and called the film “the best date flick ever.” “The ‘Fight Club’ generation is the first generation to whom sex and death seem synonymous,” he said, pointing out that the “meet-cute” between the characters played by Mr. Norton and Helena Bonham Carter occurs in a support group for the terminally ill. Having grown up with an awareness of AIDS, younger readers and viewers, he added, “could identify with the implied marriage of sex and death; and once that fear was acknowledged those people could move forward and risk finding romantic love.”

Mr. Fincher, Mr. Norton and Mr. Pitt, who were all in their 30s when they made the film (as was Mr. Palahniuk when he wrote the book), have each talked about being personally struck by the angry-young-man disaffection of “Fight Club.” When Mr. Fincher read the novel, he said, “I thought, Who is this Chuck Palahniuk and how has he been intercepting all my inner monologues?”

The movie’s arrival in the season of pre-millennial anxiety gave it the aura of what Mr. Norton called “an end-of-the-century protest.” A highly personal work made within the studio system, it also seemed like part of a larger cinematic groundswell. “There was a feeling that our crowd was starting to express itself,” Mr. Norton said, referring to a bountiful year for young American filmmakers that also saw revelatory works like Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia,” David O. Russell’s “Three Kings” and Spike Jonze’s “Being John Malkovich.”

But as with all generational touchstones there is the matter of a cultural divide. “People get scared, not just of violence and mortality, but viewers are terrified of how they can no longer relate to the evolving culture,” Mr. Palahniuk said. Some older audiences prefer darker material in conventional forms; they “really truly want nothing more than to watch Hilary Swank strive and suffer and eventually die — beaten to a pulp, riddled with cancer, or smashed in a plane crash.”

The secret to the enduring allure of “Fight Club” may be that it is, as Mr. Norton put it, quoting Mr. Fincher, “a serious film made by deeply unserious people.” In other words, a film as willing to take on profound questions as it is to laugh at and contradict itself: what is “Fight Club” if not the most fashionable commercial imaginable for anti-materialism? A movie of big ideas and abundant ambiguities, it can be read and reread in many ways.

Mr. Fincher said, “Every once in a while someone will send me their thesis and ask, Is this close to the mark?” He sometimes shares the papers with Mr. Palahniuk and the actors but said it’s ultimately not for him to decide.

Mr. Norton agrees. “Joseph Campbell has that great idea about mythologies, that a myth functions best when it’s transparent, when people see through the story to themselves,” he said. “When something gets to the point where it becomes the vehicle for people sorting out their own themes, I think you’ve achieved a kind of holy grail. Maybe the best you can say is that you’ve managed to do something true to your own sensations. But at the same time you realize that this has nothing to do with you.”

flyonthewall2983
Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2005 3:31 pm
Location: Indiana
Contact:

Re: Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

#27 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sun Jan 31, 2016 12:18 am

Watched it again, and to my surprise it still holds up. I thought it would be one of those films that I'd grow out of. I felt it was pretty profound stuff when I was 17, and 15 years later some of that is still true. The line about fathers being our models for God and what happens when they fail really should have struck the chord it did now back then. I'd never considered my lack of traditional faith as having anything to do with my own situation, but I can clearly remember when he left that I did begin to question the whole idea of the man upstairs.

It really feels like a film of it's time now. Culturally, I remember 1999 mostly as Y2K paranoia and testosterone-driven drivel. In it's sort of hyper-driven pace, it probably could resemble something that would have felt at home with the sort of audiences Fox pandered to in promoting it. But the ideas would have clearly gone over most of their heads. And it's the ideas that elevate it beyond your standard thrillers of the time that were aping Tarantino (and even Fincher himself to a degree since there were a slew of Se7en-inspired pictures).

Beyond any of that, I still find it pretty funny. More in the physical humor (and particularly the brief shots of Jack in Tyler's place when the reveal happens) but it's still a clever picture. And still holds up. For me anyway.

flyonthewall2983
Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2005 3:31 pm
Location: Indiana
Contact:

Re: Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

#28 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Fri Mar 11, 2016 12:26 pm

https://vimeo.com/84546365" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

User avatar
therewillbeblus
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm

Re: Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

#29 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Nov 20, 2020 12:41 am

The blu-ray menu for the 10th anniversary edition is a pretty solid gag
SpoilerShow
popping up as a replica for the menu of fellow-Fox title Never Been Kissed, and stalling for what must be at least ten long seconds before the static finally sets in and triggers a deviation to the real menu
My relationship with this film is strange. I grew from a youthful obsession to disliking it more and more over time, but revisiting it again closer in age (a bit older) to 'Jack' helps, and I think the film is a lot funnier than I used to, although it's always had clear comedy. There are plenty of cleverly placed jokes in the first part that have a Tashlinesque construction to them, more than I remembered- and the interpersonal social satire between Norton and Carter is even more hilariously biting than the consumerist person-in-environment stuff. The first talk with Marla plays out like a classically-molded screwball comedy set to the beat of the opening tracking shot of The Ladies Man in its lavishness and overpopulated gags vying for the space.

Even if I have mixed feelings about the places this goes, the first act's 'self-help meetings infiltration' is a very intelligent and bold take on our need for not only connection but to be the center of the world, ours or another's- or rather ours through another's. The irony is so rich in inauthentically joining a group geared towards the same endgoal of authentic emotional release, which is achieved, that it becomes encouraging and cynical at once. As for the rest, I agree with GI and Sausage's takes on the previous page so much that it's not worth regurgitating a copied less coherent iteration. Still, there is something that strikes a particular chord in me in this process of using extremist philosophies to devolve one's attention to their own insecurities and pain, in lacking an identity through an equal lack of support from society. The concept of blame here is a tangible gesture to externalize reasons for what cannot be summarized: that feeling of emptiness, not being able to sleep unless crying and being 'seen'. The progression of Jack upping the ante into reinforcing such a narrative with increasingly dangerous concrete acts is a byproduct of desensitization, the addict's craving for 'more' and a signal that nothing can fill this hole in him but the more challenging avenue of simply sitting with his feelings and looking around him with acceptance. The handholding at the end that Sausage wisely points out is incredibly life-affirming to all watching who relate to Project Mayhem's ideology in some way (I'd assume most of us, in a more conservative form) because it professes that we can achieve some semblance of peace within the parameters available to us internally, and not only through radical depersonalization to find belongingness (another bitter irony). That Jack needs to craft an entire persona and movement inauthentically to find that authentic need for catharsis all the way up the ladder reflects the same drive in the meetings. It also doesn't make what transpires deserve any less empathy, even if it does serve to raise unavoidable attention to both the problems with seeking consolation through others without giving- unless that 'giving' is part of a transaction that betters the self- and the deep-seated, perhaps uncomfortable truth that we desire such transactions and that these aims, however selfish, may also be reframed as completely authentic and beneficial within our non-altruistic environments.

User avatar
TheKieslowskiHaze
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2020 10:37 am

Re: Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

#30 Post by TheKieslowskiHaze » Fri Nov 20, 2020 10:45 am

I feel similarly (re your first few sentences). I kinda hate it, I guess. But I haven't seen it in a long time, and I'm not sure if I actually hate it or if I just hated seeing posters for it in every single college guy's dorm room ten years ago.

User avatar
therewillbeblus
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm

Re: Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

#31 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Nov 20, 2020 11:03 am

It may be worth giving it another shot. Even though I've seen it so many times in my youth that I know the whole thing front-to-back, I was surprised to find how much more I appreciated it now that I've emerged from the condescending pedestal I was on before, and more willing to meet the film on its terms. And, as I mentioned in my thoughts, there were a lot more comedic bits to discover that borrow from silent comedies, early screwballs, and the Tashlin era!

User avatar
Fandango
Joined: Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:09 am

Re: Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

#32 Post by Fandango » Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:23 pm

Thank you for reminding me of the film yet again. I feel compelled to give my breakdown of it.

Jack's plight throughout the film is the journey of a boy who has grown up without a father. Throughout Fight Club, Jack searches for an authority figure to show him the path towards manhood, what's worth striving for, and how to get there. We hear him repeat, "what's next?", implying that the main character has not yet found what it means to be a man. While Jack may have had a father in the conventional sense, his father was absent, likely also a product of feminine upbringing.

Jack's life is filled with the traditions passed on to him, where the path to drown out who you are and forget about your existential problems lies in the structure of schooling, work, and marriage. This is the goal that Jack has been taught to strive towards, and his journey is a spiritual journey, as he discovers that it is the path to nowhere. Jack, despite being 30, is still seen symbolically as living under the maternal influence. The way he sleeps is symbolic of a boy sucking on his thumb. His surroundings are a symbolic gesture of maternal comfort; his symbolic father is his boss; the firm he works for is the family that feeds him; and his house, which he furnishes with feminine accoutrements, is the womb. Jack is lonely, as he realizes that the material objects which he has been taught to place the most value on, are unable to replace the void of relationships and his own masculine inadequacy.

His discontentment with life manifests in the form of suicidal ideation and insomnia. As a product of society whose ultimate goal is to maximize happiness and minimize pain, Jack seeks a prescription to stop feeling the way he does, hoping to stunt any potential for growth which requires pain. Bob's breasts are further symbolic of Jack's inability to break away from the maternal tether holding him back. The film makes allusions to castration, with the basketballs around Jack during his meeting attendance, the scene where Tyler threatens to castrate the man, as well as Jack's own encounter with the detectives. This indicates to the audience that Jack does not see himself as a man, but as a boy ("I am six years old again," and "I can never get married.").

Upon Tyler's arrival, Jack goes through a ritual, transitioning from a state of boyhood entering manhood. This is symbolized as his apartment blows up, removing him from the comfort of the material and maternal. His plight now is to become a man without a father, which he attempts to do through Tyler, his alternate ego. Jack begins to hate his father, as Tyler tells Jack that he saw his father as a God, but that his God rejected him, and he likely never loved him. He then begins to attribute the pain he feels as being caused by those around him, eventually believing the world is the cause of this pain (terrorist organization).

Marla, also a product of Jack's imagination, is the mother figure, with Tyler serving as the father figure. The relationship between the three presents the audience with a family dynamic, where the child hates one sex and admires the other. Marla (mother) has chosen Tyler (father), and as a result, discards Jack (son). This is why in the second half of the film, Jack turns against Tyler, his father, and ends up killing him.

Jack's path in the film may be seen as one of the many paths boys take in order to discover what it means to be men. As the traditional values of yesterday are dead, boys don't know how to be men. Their fathers, products of this same dissolution, are unable to teach their boys how to be men, as they themselves aren't.

And so, what we see toward the film's end is that Jack, absent Tyler's presence, must assume Tyler's role. He must become the father that Tyler was to Jack. One of the moral here, it seems, is that children, growing up without fathers, eventually must grow up and become fathers; yet without guidance, what kind of men will they become? The final moment has Jack metaphorically or physically killing himself, indicating that the makeshift father (Tyler, television, mother), is no substitute for the real thing.

User avatar
aox
Joined: Fri Jun 20, 2008 12:02 pm
Location: nYc

Re: Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

#33 Post by aox » Tue Jan 25, 2022 1:12 pm

China gives 'Fight Club' new ending where authorities win
The Narrator still proceeds with killing off Durden, but the exploding building scene is replaced with a black screen and a coda: "The police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding".

It then adds that Tyler -- a figment of The Narrator's imagination -- was sent to a "lunatic asylum" for psychological treatment and was later discharged.
I haven't read the book, but apparently, this is closer to the book's ending?

User avatar
Computer Raheem
Joined: Wed Jun 16, 2021 7:45 pm

Re: Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

#34 Post by Computer Raheem » Tue Jan 25, 2022 1:36 pm

aox wrote:
Tue Jan 25, 2022 1:12 pm
China gives 'Fight Club' new ending where authorities win
The Narrator still proceeds with killing off Durden, but the exploding building scene is replaced with a black screen and a coda: "The police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding".

It then adds that Tyler -- a figment of The Narrator's imagination -- was sent to a "lunatic asylum" for psychological treatment and was later discharged.
I haven't read the book, but apparently, this is closer to the book's ending?
In terms of book accuracy, yes and no. The Narrator does end up in a mental ward, but the book ends with the staff revealing themselves to be members of Project Mayhem and planning more elaborate acts in the wake of "Tyler"'s disappearance. It conveys just how far an ideology can spread from its originator's control, an ending that definitely hits closer to home today (in my opinion) more than the ending of the film does.

It is pretty funny to see how both endings can ultimately be twisted to serve a pre-set ideological purpose, when the harm of blindly following ideology is one of the core themes of both the book and the film. (Full disclosure: I'm not comparing the Chinese government's beliefs and/or actions to that of Project Mayhem's, just recognizing the irony in such a drastic edit.)

User avatar
The Fanciful Norwegian
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 2:24 pm
Location: Teegeeack

Re: Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

#35 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Tue Jan 25, 2022 1:45 pm

This is a really common practice in China. A lot of people know about the alternate ending for Infernal Affairs where Andy Lau's character gets arrested, but usually you don't see anything that elaborate, just a card at the end explaining that the cops came along and tied up everything in a nice little bow. Life Without Principle got one for its mainland version and there are multiple cases of mainland films having that kind of epilogue on the domestic version but not the international/festival version. Lou Ye was so pissed when they added one to Mystery that he removed his director credit from the domestic release.

The best example I've seen, though, is the mainland version of Vengeance, which recycles a shot from an earlier scene with Hallyday and Maggie Shiu where you can't see their faces, then dubs in some all-new dialogue revealing that Costello has miraculously recovered his memory, and also the cops have found an Interpol warrant dating back to his former career as a hitman and he's under arrest.

User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

#36 Post by domino harvey » Tue Jan 25, 2022 3:58 pm

Reminds me of what Hitchcock did in many episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Rather than censor or weaken the narrative ending of the teleplays shown, which often broke the "rules" of comeuppance and moral decency, Hitchcock would come on at the end and assure the viewer that so and so was caught by police, in a way that was so divorced from what we saw that it was impossible to reconcile with the content itself and thus didn't really impact the story at all

User avatar
The Elegant Dandy Fop
Joined: Thu Dec 09, 2004 3:25 am
Location: Los Angeles, CA

Re: Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

#37 Post by The Elegant Dandy Fop » Tue Jan 25, 2022 4:50 pm

The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:
Tue Jan 25, 2022 1:45 pm
This is a really common practice in China. A lot of people know about the alternate ending for Infernal Affairs where Andy Lau's character gets arrested, but usually you don't see anything that elaborate, just a card at the end explaining that the cops came along and tied up everything in a nice little bow. Life Without Principle got one for its mainland version and there are multiple cases of mainland films having that kind of epilogue on the domestic version but not the international/festival version. Lou Ye was so pissed when they added one to Mystery that he removed his director credit from the domestic release.

The best example I've seen, though, is the mainland version of Vengeance, which recycles a shot from an earlier scene with Hallyday and Maggie Shiu where you can't see their faces, then dubs in some all-new dialogue revealing that Costello has miraculously recovered his memory, and also the cops have found an Interpol warrant dating back to his former career as a hitman and he's under arrest.
My favorite one is Righting Wrongs where two characters illogically cheat death and ends with a comically short five-second scene where someone gets sentenced for murder. Police Story has one too that destroys the comic timing of its perfect finale to show all the criminals getting arrested in the mall.

Piggybacking on Domino's comment, there's also The Wrong Man, one of Hitchcock's grimmest films that ends with a title card trying the negate the previous 105 minutes.

User avatar
The Fanciful Norwegian
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 2:24 pm
Location: Teegeeack

Re: Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

#38 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Tue Jan 25, 2022 4:56 pm

The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote:
Tue Jan 25, 2022 4:50 pm
My favorite one is Righting Wrongs where two characters illogically cheat death and ends with a comically short five-second scene where someone gets sentenced for murder. Police Story has one too that destroys the comic timing of its perfect finale to show all the criminals getting arrested in the mall.
Those are fun examples, but it should be clarified that those wouldn't have been for the mainland—at that time Hong Kong films weren't released there unless they were co-productions, which were extremely rare. No Jackie Chan movie got a mainland release until Rumble in the Bronx. Until the 2000s alternate endings like that were intended for other markets with stricter censorship, like Singapore and Malaysia (and Taiwan before their censors loosened up in the '90s). Fulltime Killer has an alternate ending filmed specifically for the Malaysian release.

User avatar
The Elegant Dandy Fop
Joined: Thu Dec 09, 2004 3:25 am
Location: Los Angeles, CA

Re: Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

#39 Post by The Elegant Dandy Fop » Tue Jan 25, 2022 5:06 pm

The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:
Tue Jan 25, 2022 4:56 pm
The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote:
Tue Jan 25, 2022 4:50 pm
My favorite one is Righting Wrongs where two characters illogically cheat death and ends with a comically short five-second scene where someone gets sentenced for murder. Police Story has one too that destroys the comic timing of its perfect finale to show all the criminals getting arrested in the mall.
Those are fun examples, but it should be clarified that those wouldn't have been for the mainland—at that time Hong Kong films weren't released there unless they were co-productions, which were extremely rare. No Jackie Chan movie got a mainland release until Rumble in the Bronx. Until the 2000s alternate endings like that were intended for other markets with stricter censorship, like Singapore and Malaysia (and Taiwan before their censors loosened up in the '90s). Fulltime Killer has an alternate ending filmed specifically for the Malaysian release.
Ah! Interesting! Would they have been used subsequently when they do get mainland releases?

User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

#40 Post by domino harvey » Tue Jan 25, 2022 5:17 pm


User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

#41 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Jan 25, 2022 6:43 pm

The most infamous 'real' one of these type of endings has to be the abrupt conclusion to Blood Debts (spoilers)! Which inevitably became a meme (spoilers for all sorts of films)
Last edited by colinr0380 on Wed Jan 26, 2022 4:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
The Fanciful Norwegian
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 2:24 pm
Location: Teegeeack

Re: Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

#42 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Tue Jan 25, 2022 7:58 pm

The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote:
Tue Jan 25, 2022 5:06 pm
The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:
Tue Jan 25, 2022 4:56 pm
Those are fun examples, but it should be clarified that those wouldn't have been for the mainland—at that time Hong Kong films weren't released there unless they were co-productions, which were extremely rare. No Jackie Chan movie got a mainland release until Rumble in the Bronx. Until the 2000s alternate endings like that were intended for other markets with stricter censorship, like Singapore and Malaysia (and Taiwan before their censors loosened up in the '90s). Fulltime Killer has an alternate ending filmed specifically for the Malaysian release.
Ah! Interesting! Would they have been used subsequently when they do get mainland releases?
TBH I don't know. The only place you'd really see edited versions in the mainland is on TV or streaming, since they never came out theatrically and the market for legitimate DVDs was never strong. Both of those movies are on big Chinese streaming sites, but they're geo-locked, so I can't see which versions they're using.
Spoilers for a 36-year-old movieShow
The original ending to Righting Wrongs incidentally doesn't seem like it'd run afoul of the "crime doesn't pay" rule, given that the criminals still die. I've read that the ending was changed after the movie underperformed in Hong Kong and the producers concluded it was at least partly because of the bleak ending. So they did some reshoots before releasing it to the major HK export markets (Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, etc.), with other bits of violence removed to placate local censors. Then that version was cut by about eight minutes for Western markets to remove some scenes of comic relief/unnecessary exposition. I don't know if this is all accurate, but maybe the extras on the Dragon Dynasty DVD go over it.

flyonthewall2983
Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2005 3:31 pm
Location: Indiana
Contact:

Re: Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

#43 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Wed Jan 26, 2022 2:20 pm



flyonthewall2983
Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2005 3:31 pm
Location: Indiana
Contact:

Re: Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)

#45 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Mon Feb 07, 2022 7:06 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Fri Nov 20, 2020 12:41 am
The blu-ray menu for the 10th anniversary edition is a pretty solid gag
SpoilerShow
popping up as a replica for the menu of fellow-Fox title Never Been Kissed, and stalling for what must be at least ten long seconds before the static finally sets in and triggers a deviation to the real menu
SpoilerShow
The film itself makes a brief homage to Drew Barrymore, in the form of a picture of her from an entertainment magazine, distorted by the incoming rain, who I think read was first up for Marla.

Post Reply