David Fincher has finally offered his thoughts on China censoring the ending of his film Fight Club, saying “it makes no sense to me.”
Last month, Fight Club went viral again after China’s largest video streamer, Tencent Video, featured the film with a completely new ending that was in total contrast to Fincher’s version. It was only after fierce backlash that Tencent Video decided to restore the director’s original ending.
If you’re not familiar with the iconic 90s film, here’s a recap of the Fincher ending (yes, spoilers ahead!): Edward Norton’s narrating character kills is alter ego, Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden, before watching the city burst into flames below him, which apparently confirms that his plan to destroy civilisation has come to fruition.
In China’s altered ending, the film finished before the city burst into flames, with a title card inserted stating that authorities managed to stop the anarchy before it happened.
Now, in a new interview with Empire, Fincher discussed the censorship. “It’s funny to me that the people who wrote the Band-Aid (ending) in China must have read the book, because it adheres pretty closely (to the final pages of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel).”
Interestingly, Palahniuk said the same thing after the censorship. “The irony is that the way the Chinese have changed it is they’ve aligned the ending almost exactly with the ending of the book, as opposed to Fincher’s ending, which was the more spectacular visual ending,” he said after it happened. “So in a way, the Chinese brought the movie back to the book a little bit.”
Fincher continued: “Here’s what we know. A company licensed the film from New Regency to show it in China, with a boilerplate (contract): ‘You have to understand cuts may be made for censorship purposes.’ No-one said, ‘If we don’t like the ending, can we change it?’ So there’s now a discussion being had as to what ‘trims’ means.”
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The Gone Girl director also expressed confusion as to why any streamer would be interested in showcasing an altered Fight Club. “If you don’t like this story, why would you license this movie?” he pondered. “It makes no sense to me when people go, ‘I think it would be good for our service if we had your title on it… we just want it to be a different movie.’ The fucking movie is 20 years old. It’s not like it had a reputation for being super cuddly.”
It’s not the only huge film or TV show that China has censored. Just this week, it was revealed that one of the country’s most popular streaming platforms has completely altered the first season of Friends to remove all references to sex and LGBTQ people. That means there was no mention of Ross being single due to his wife coming out as a lesbian.
For more on this topic, follow the Film & TV Observer.
Check out a guide to the philosophy of Fight Club:
