Fight Club - Raves, Rants and Reviews (Some spoilers*)

[everythingsxen]

Preface: Most people have certain preconceived notions about Fight Club and have no idea about the twists and turns in it. So try to keep the spoilers to a minimum and give warnings ahead of time.

Fight Club (Which has an unholy abomination of a video game coming soon :eyes: ) has been one of my favorite movies since it was released on my birthday, a few years ago.

I personally love that movie. I think it is an absolutely amazing film. The plot twists suprised me, it is one of very few films that I never saw it coming.

As for its overall themes.....

I will get to that in my spoiler section below.

Now for the rant. I came across a review/indictment of Fight Club entitled "Fight Club is a Neo-Nazi handbook". What a load of horse crap.

http://www.boundless.org/2000/departments/atplay/a0000190.html

I found this article very annoying.

***SPOILERS***











I find the entire premise of the film, the anti-capitalism anarchy plan to be soooo cool.

The big twist of the film, who is actually who, was so cool to me as well.

I also appreciate all the little things, like the single frames of Jack in certain spots.

If you read that article, the reviewer talks about the Fight Club boys comitting murder, so he obviously didn't watch the film, since as anyone who saw the movie knows, the buildings were empty when Project Mayhem detonates them.

This article really annoyed me.

[REVOLT823]

1. Totally with you , dude

I watch it regularly, loved the theme of the film, loved that they erased the debt record so everyone could start over, loved the anti-authority theme, everything, oneof my all-time favorites

[Liberal Classic]

2. The only rule of Fight Club...

...is not to go see Fight Club.

[everythingsxen]

3. So have you actually seen it?

Or did you take your own advice and didn't see it?

[Rabrrrrrr]

4. An incredible movie

that gets nowhere near the accolades it deserves. Not only great as film (artistically) but the social commentary is up there with the best of science fiction.

I LOVED it. Only saw it once (a couple years ago on DVD), but I still remember a lot of it, and that says something when one remembers a lot of a movie (or any story) on just one watching.

[puerco-bellies]

5. Damn it!!!

The first rule of fight-club;
Do not talk about fight club.

The second rule of fight-club;
DO NOT TALK ABOUT FIGHT-CLUB!

Tyler Durden is God.

[mdmc]

7. well my student loan would never go away

no matter how many building blow up.

I bet alot of people would die if a bunch of buildings blew up.

[Khephra]

9. I didn't want to comment on that, but since you mentioned that

The ending of the book is different from the novel. It's clear that there are people in those buildings in the book. That's my only problem with the film--it romanticizes the situation too much.

[Khephra]

6. Fight Club confuses people

because it sets up a premise and then shows the good AND bad sides of the new situation. There's no Utopia in the world of FC, only change and growth/decay. It all just depends on whether or not your going to grow a tree or a weed.

I forget who said it, but I've heard that every good thesis contains within it an anti-thesis statement. FC does that. Boy, does it do that.

(There's similar arguments in comics over a book called "The Authority". Originally when they were created, the characters weren't supposed to be the "good guys" but a lot of readers weren't used to stories that showed an ambiguous, non-black/white situation and saw them as heroic instead of "complete bastards" as originally intended.)

[bigbillhaywood]

10. "I forget who said it"--Hegel, and by extension, Marx. nt

[Khephra]

11. Thanks!

Accurate quoting after 1AM has never been a strong suit.

:-)

[Mike Niendorff]

15. great insight on this, keph.

> There's no Utopia in the world of FC, only change and growth/decay.

I've been turning this thing around in my head ever since I first saw it, and I think that's the best synopsis of the film I've seen yet. What begins as Fight Club eventually metasticizes into Project Mayhem. Every cure becomes a new disease. "You are not special. You are not a unique and beautiful snowflake. We are all part of the same decaying compost heap." And therein lies Palahniuk's point.


MDN

[Supply Side Jesus]

8. What I found odd...

That the movie defintetly had the anti-consumerism message yet, they had alot of product placement. I wonder if that was intentional? If so, what were they getting at?

favortie quote: "The things you own, end up owning you."

[CanuckAmok]

12. There is an excellent write-up on the movie in "Race Traitor"

(spoilers)



from a few years ago...

It really is an amazing story. It says more about "Generation X" than Douglas Coupland or that hack Richard Linklater could ever hope to say.

I think the most important theme in the whole story (book and movie) is that there is no such thing as a simple case of right versus wrong, good versus evil... each hero is someone's villain, each terrorist is someone's freedom fighter, etc

Durden says "It's only by losing everything that you can begin to achieve anything". The destruction of the ego, and of consumerism, the first step towards self-realisation and real revolution.

Plus, the actual writing is very clever. There are so many clues that Durden is the narrator... references to the first fight during the narrator's beating himself in the boss' office (or hotel manager's office in the book), and clever forshadowing dialogue:

Tyler (on phone): "Who is this?"
Narrator: "Tyler?"

[bigbillhaywood]

13. Read that article, it's from a Christian website that seems to spend

a lot of time railing against postmodernism and stresses the importance of placing God in education. No wonder they didn't like the movie. The movie's philsophy seemed to be a type of nativist/luddite anarchism mixed with nihilism. The actions of Durden's cadre were very Unabomberesque in their targets, tactics, and (at least insome part) their goals.

[CanuckAmok]

14. Who is "Henry Hyde"?

forgive my ignorance...

[bigbillhaywood]

16. I don't think I mentioned Henry Hyde

[CanuckAmok]

17. The article does...I jut wondered who he was.

n/t

[bigbillhaywood]

18. There's a Republican rep by that name who chaired Clinton's

impeachment hearings. Let me rescan the article and check the context.

[bigbillhaywood]

20. Yep, that's the one. By the way, this is definitely a RW Christian site,

albeit a more glossy one for "hip" Gen-X fundies (as if fundies could ever be hip). They have a link to Focus on the Family on the home page-- a notoriously right wing Christian organization.

[dolo amber]

19. Love love LOVE

me some Fight Club!! :bounce:

It stimulates my brain penis like nothing else. I *am* Jack's smirking revenge. :D