Fight Club is a bad movie

[UTK]

The reason I'm posting this is because I go on Reddit pretty often. I don't go on a lot of sections, though, and the one I probably browse the most is AskReddit. And every damn time there's a question about a good movie, a "mind fuck" movie, a movie with a great twist ending - Fight Club is always a top answer. And it's actually gotten on my nerves. It doesn't bother me that people like it; it bothers me that people see its ending as a good twist ending...because it's not. By any means.

The twist makes no goddamn sense. The movie tries to sell off having half a frame of Brad Pitt appear early in the movie as good foreshadowing. People will go back knowing Tyler isn't real and will go, "Oh my god, how did I not see that! Wow, what an amazing film!" But the majority of the shit the Narrator / Tyler does is impossible. Both Tyler and the Narrator can be seen interacting with everybody and anybody around them at any given time. Hell, sometimes they're both interacting with other people in the same damn frame. How can that be? (Example: After the Narrator first meets Tyler and they land, Tyler steals a car and drives off, to which other people react and yell at / run after him. While that happens, the Narrator is arguing with an airport security officer about his luggage. Both these things had to have happened.) This applies to scenes where the Narrator is watching Tyler do things: how can this be? How can he have this perspective in those situations when he never would have. And then there's the scenes where Tyler is doing something and the Narrator is doing something completely different at the same time. How could he be having sex with Marla as Tyler and at the same exact time be sitting in his room reading as the Narrator? Being in his room, watching the house shake from the sex that he's having? What? Then there are the scenes where Tyler and the Narrator interact with one another in front of people, like when they're fighting in the car with the two idiots from the fight club in the back. Is the Narrator yelling at himself? Is he driving but also experiencing being in the passenger seat, wrestling himself with the wheel? How can that, in any form of psychosis, be a thing? (Not to mention that he crawls out of the passenger's seat after the car crashes.) Not to mention, on top of all this: he seriously had multiple cross-country flights where he started new fight club after new fight club and had no recollection? That probably took days. Where did he think all that time went?

So why do people think it's such a great twist? Because so many people are unable to predict it. But why are they unable to predict it? Because it's actually impossible to predict. Now, I don't mean nobody has the mental capacity to predict it. Plenty do. But even if the thought crosses your mind that Tyler is actually imaginary, the thought should leave as quickly as it came because you should also think, "Well, half the shit the Narrator and Tyler have done is actually physically impossible if one of them isn't real."

Also, what's up with the very ending? How does shooting himself in the cheek do anything? Shouldn't he have had to shoot himself in the head?

Fight Club's ending shits on films with actual twist endings that are plausible; The Usual Suspects being a prime example.

I don't know why I'm posting this here. Actually I do. It's because I always read AskReddit threads too late for my comments to be seen.

[Chewy]

Because he's insane and it's all from his perspective.

[Circled Square]

Because he's insane and it's all from his perspective.

Yeah, this.

[lyonssv]

I love this movie. One of my favorites.

Plus you just broke the number one rule about Fight Club, dude! You don't fucking talk about Fight Club!

[UTK]

Because he's insane and it's all from his perspective.

The problem with that though is that instantly makes the "great twist ending" not so great. It's not something you could actually accurately predict from the beginning, which is what a great twist is. Since the viewer sees this twist as physically impossible, it makes no sense. If the Narrator is insane and anything goes, then the film has the freedom to do whatever it wants, which is fine, but I don't understand how people can compare it to other films with good plot twists when the film didn't really have to try. Hell, they could've revealed at the end that the Narrator is actually Marla, and it would make just as much sense in the context of the movie.

I feel like his insanity is less part of the movie and more something abused by the movie in order to make excuses for nonsensical writing. This is why it worked better as a book.

[Everlong]

Yeah I'm with Chewy on this. The twist confirms the fact that the narrator is unreliable. Those "impossibilities" take a different light in that regard. If the narrator struggles with his own identity, it stands to reason his versions of events might not be particularly perfect either.

I also disagree that a great twist has to be something you could rationally predict from the beginning. A great twist is something that adds to the story in a positive way, which I believe the twist at the end of Fight Club does.

I don't think Fight Club is "best movie evar" or anything like that, but I enjoy it and find it to be a lot of fun, especially on a first watch. Deifnitely not a bad movie by any stretch.

[UTK]

What makes a twist good is how the author/filmmaker is able to mislead the reader/viewer and then make the big reveal and have it still make sense. Think about murder mysteries. There's always some sort of twist at the end that makes you go, "Oh shit, they did it?" Then you can go back to the beginning and read through it and you'll see a number of clues that point to that person doing it. If the murderer was revealed at the end and the identity of the murderer was entirely out of left field and there were no contextual clues pointing to them, it would be a shitty murder mystery.

Fight Club thinks it laid the foundation for the twist, but it didn't really. A couple of second-long silhouette shots of Brad Pitt and a coupe of scenes of Marla being confused are not good contextual clues. The movie throws out its ability to provide good ones when it did everything I mentioned in the first post.

My issue with Fight Club is its plot twist, which I think is lazy and shouldn't be held up as a great twist. I'll admit the movie as a whole isn't that bad. Although it does annoy me with how preachy it is; plus everything Tyler says sounds like something a 14-year old would post on Facebook to try to sound deep.

[VaderBomb]

Not a huge fan myself.

[Chewy]

What makes a twist good is how the author/filmmaker is able to mislead the reader/viewer and then make the big reveal and have it still make sense. Think about murder mysteries. There's always some sort of twist at the end that makes you go, "Oh shit, they did it?" Then you can go back to the beginning and read through it and you'll see a number of clues that point to that person doing it. If the murderer was revealed at the end and the identity of the murderer was entirely out of left field and there were no contextual clues pointing to them, it would be a shitty murder mystery.

Fight Club thinks it laid the foundation for the twist, but it didn't really. A couple of second-long silhouette shots of Brad Pitt and a coupe of scenes of Marla being confused are not good contextual clues. The movie throws out its ability to provide good ones when it did everything I mentioned in the first post.

My issue with Fight Club is its plot twist, which I think is lazy and shouldn't be held up as a great twist. I'll admit the movie as a whole isn't that bad. Although it does annoy me with how preachy it is; plus everything Tyler says sounds like something a 14-year old would post on Facebook to try to sound deep.

You're wrong and your face is ridiculous. Now git off my lawn.

[Circled Square]

damn it chewy