More than 20 years after it hit theaters, Fight Club made headlines in recent weeks, as streaming service Tencent Video in China released the film on its streaming platform, though altered the ending to offer a “happier” conclusion to the narrative, seemingly to align with the country’s censorship standards. While the original ending has since been reinstated, director David Fincher recently weighed in on the matter, mainly highlighting the overall absurdity of the situation, while also pointing out that the revised ending also falls much more in line with author Chuck Palahniuk’s original novel than his cinematic vision.
“It’s funny to me that the people who wrote the Band-Aid [ending] in China must have read the book, because it adheres pretty closely,” Fincher noted to Empire Magazine. “Here’s what we know … A company licensed the film from New Regency to show it in China, with a boilerplate [contract]: ‘You have to understand cuts may be made for censorship purposes.’ No one said, ‘If we don’t like the ending, can we change it?’ So there’s now a discussion being had as to what ‘trims’ means.”
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The original story follows the frustrated “Jack” through his mundane and banal life, which is completely upended by a chance encounter with Tyler Durden. First engaging in underground fight clubs to break themselves out of their monotony, the pair begin pulling off petty acts of vandalism throughout the city. Tyler takes this plan to new heights by attempting to blow up financial centers around the city, only for audiences to learn that Tyler is the figment of Jack’s imagination.
In the film, Edward Norton’s Jack watches Tyler’s (Brad Pitt) plans be realized as buildings around the city explode. In the book, Tyler’s plans go unfulfilled and Jack is apprehended and sent to a mental facility. The Chinese ending edited out the explosions and included the title card, “Through the clue provided by Tyler, the police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding. After the trial, Tyler was sent to lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment. He was discharged from the hospital in 2012.”
“If you don’t like this story, why would you license this movie?” Fincher pondered. “It makes no sense to me when people go, ‘I think it would be good for our service if we had your title on it… we just want it to be a different movie.’ The f-cking movie is 20 years old. It’s not like it had a reputation for being super cuddly.”
The updated ending was only available for a few weeks before its original conclusion was restored.
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