Rewatch – Fight Club
Director: David Fincher
Starring: Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf
Year: 1999
Original Rating: ★★★★★
New Rating: ★★★★☆
We were all 19 once.
When I first saw Fight Club — on DVD, in my college dorm, surrounded by other guys who thought Tyler Durden was saying something important — it felt revolutionary. Anti-consumerism as religion. Masculinity as violence. The whole “reject society and find yourself through destruction” thing. We quoted it constantly. We thought we understood.
Twenty-five years later. Hmm.
The movie is still brilliantly made. Fincher’s craft is undeniable. The editing. The visual tricks. The way information is revealed. The twist — which everyone knows now but still works — is set up meticulously. On a technical level this is filmmaking at its peak.
Brad Pitt’s performance is iconic for a reason. Tyler Durden is charismatic and dangerous and exactly what a certain kind of lost young man wants to be. Norton plays the pathetic Narrator with perfect weariness. Helena Bonham Carter remains underrated as Marla — she’s doing something complex and the guys I watched with in college didn’t even notice her character.
But. Here’s the thing.
The movie is a satire. Fincher and Chuck Palahniuk (who wrote the novel) are MOCKING Tyler Durden. The fascist undertones of Project Mayhem are not accidental — they’re the point. Tyler’s philosophy is seductive and wrong. The Narrator has to reject him to be free.
Except. The movie makes Tyler SO cool. So appealing. It films him like a god. And generations of viewers — including 19-year-old me — missed the critique entirely. We wanted to BE Tyler. We recited his speeches about working jobs we hate to buy shit we don’t need without recognizing ourselves in the punchline.
Fight Club is a victim of its own success. The satire was too effective. The style overwhelmed the substance. And now we have entire political movements built on the philosophy the movie was supposedly critiquing.
That’s not entirely the movie’s fault. Art can’t control its interpretation. But rewatching now I see the seams. I see how hard Fincher is trying to have it both ways — criticize the ideology while making it irresistibly watchable.
I still think it’s a great movie. But it’s a complicated greatness. And I’ve lost the ability to watch it without thinking about the generation of guys who got the wrong message.
Four stars. One star deducted for everything it spawned.
My rating: ★★★★☆