A movie better than its book

Rating: 10/10 (2 January 2003)

I first saw Fight Club about two years ago. Of course, I loved it. I own the soapbox DVD. So when the time came for me to choose some reading material last summer, I picked the book to read and see how it compared. I actually liked the movie better than the book. I think it is better than the book, something that does not happen often (see Jurassic Park, both versions of Red Dragon, many Stephen King translations to film, etc.)
The book is definitely unique. It is told like the poems the Narrator reads about Jack's organs. It is a lot of first person dialogue from a guy you are sure is a wimp. I think the movie improves on it by the gimmicks like the changeovers and frames inserted. Moreover, I feel the ending to the book was rather lacking and disapointing (maybe because of the great ending to the movie). Most importantly, I think the movie emphasizes the actual Fight Club/Project Mayhem aspect better. It is a major source of conflict in the film, while more of a backdrop in the book. The book is more of an exploration of the relationship with Marla and the narrator's state of mind. It's also very short (if you try, you can read it in a day), while the movie is over two hours long. If you read the book, you'll see a lot of the dialogue is lifted from there, but I think some of the quotes from the movie are snappier (the "I want to have your abortion" line on the alternate take found on the DVD is from the book, but the line "I haven't been f**ked like that since grade school" is just hilarious.) About the only scene I could see from the book making the movie better/funnier is Tyler cooking Marla's mom's collagen "gift."
The movie's very deep. We, the audience, see characters in the same light as the Narrator does as the movie progresses. Though Tyler seems to be the perfect buddy and collaborator, we all soon find him to be just a psycho and the liberated space monkeys as lemmings. The despised Marla (I am Jack's raging bile duct) we all come to find endearing... somehow. 10/10