Fight Club

***Fight Club*** is a 1999 American black comedy psychological thriller film directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter. It is based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk. The studio held Fight Club's world premiere at the 56th Venice International Film Festival on September 10, 1999. It opened commercially in the United States and Canada on October 15, 1999.

## Plot

A depressed man (Edward Norton) suffering from insomnia meets a strange soap salesman named Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) and soon finds himself living in his squalid house after his perfect apartment is destroyed. The two bored men form an underground club with strict rules and fight other men who are fed up with their mundane lives. Their perfect partnership frays when Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), a fellow support group crasher, attracts Tyler's attention.

## Why It Fights for Soap

1. The idea of having underground fight club runned by a depressed man and a strange soap salesman is very creative and executed in a very awesome way.
2. Tyler Durden is an awesome and threatening main antagonist and also somewhat of a pretty good mentor to the Narrator. The best part about him is that he doesn't tell you the goody-good motivational stuff, but what's the truth, what's the reality. His words and ideas will make you question the society’s “status quo”.
3. The cinematography is excellent, even for David Fincher film, and it has aged very well despite being a film produced in the late 1990's.
4. It follows the thriller source material book by Chuck Palahniuk very faithfully and never took any liberties.
5. Edward Norton and Brad Pitt (who worked with *Seven*) gives fantastic role performance of the Narrator and Tyler Durden. The supporting cast also includes Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf Aday and Jared Leto, in which is also fantastic as well.
6. Just like with *Seven* and *The Game*, David Fincher still gives excellent directing in this movie. And this time actually the best David Fincher's directing films of all time, alongside *Seven*, *Zodiac*, *The Social Network* and *Gone Girl*, which were all released around the same time.
7. This movie has the best dialogue, such as "***I want you to hit me, as hard as you can.***", "***Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.***" and "***The first rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club.***"
8. Awesome and atmospheric soundtrack that was composed by the Dust Brothers (Michael Simpson and John King).
9. **“You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world.”**
10. **A mind blowing plot twist:** in the last half of the film Tyler Durden is revealed to be the narrator's/jack's alter ego and imaginary friend.

## Reception

*Fight Club* received polarized reactions from critics. It was cited as one of the most controversial and talked-about films of 1999. The film later found commercial success with its DVD release, establishing Fight Club as a cult classic and causing media to revisit the film. It was universal acclaim by audiences alike. In 2009, on the tenth anniversary of the film's release, The New York Times dubbed it the "defining cult movie of our time." On Rotten Tomatoes, *Fight Club* holds an approval rating of 79% based on 178 reviews, with an average rating of 7.40/10. The site's consensus reads, "Solid acting, amazing direction, and elaborate production design make *Fight Club* a wild ride.". On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 66 out of 100 based on 35 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B-" on an A+ to F scale. The gender mix of audiences for Fight Club, argued to be "the ultimate anti-date flick", was 61% male and 39% female; 58% of audiences were below the age of 21. Despite the film's top placement, its opening gross fell short of the studio's expectations.

## Trivia

* Palahniuk's novel was optioned by Fox 2000 Pictures producer Laura Ziskin, who hired Jim Uhls to write the film adaptation. Fincher was selected because of his enthusiasm for the story. He developed the script with Uhls and sought screenwriting advice from the cast and others in the film industry. He and the cast compared the film to Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and The Graduate (1967), with a theme of conflict between Generation X and the value system of advertising.
* On Letterboxd, a popup reading "You are about to break the first (and second) rules of Fight Club. Publish anyway?" appears when posting a review.

## External Links

* Template:IMDb
* Template:Rotten Tomatoes
* Template:Metacritic
* Template:Letterboxd