“A few weeks ago, I was telling someone what my favorite movies are. A friend partly overhears. “”Did you just say your favorite movie is Fight Club and your second favorite movie is Fight Club?”” “”No, it’s just my second favorite”” “”Damn, that woulda been awesome””. Truth.
That opening theme gets me so turned on and charged up every time I hear it. I dont even need to watch the rest of the movie to feel ready to run outside and kick some ass and take names.
Chuck Palahniuk is god. I’ve said this, and explained why before. Even if he never wrote another book, Fight Club would be enough to earn him that status. I read Fight Club multiple times. One of those times, I was ona plane, and the chapter I was on was most unfortunate.
I wont spoil, for the 2 of you out there who dont know how it ends, but what hit me so hard about the ending was that I essentially saw the film twice without knowing. My first viewing was senior year in high school, at a friend’s house with a big group of people. I had to get home before my curfew so I left around the car crash scene. The movie stuck with me, so I rented it a week later. I was floored.
If you know anything about me and my personal philosophies, you’ll know that the idea of non-conformity is what I most strongly believe in. I refuse to do something simply because that’s what everyone else is doing. Actually, everyone else doing it is usually reason enough for me to choose not to participate. I have to feel like everything is my own decision, because I want something, because it will make me happy. Not because it’s expected or someone else wants it. Fight Club plays very heavily on that theme. Except in this case, it takes it to the extreme where these “”spacemonkeys”” reject losing themselves to confirmity within society and end up conforming to each other in their own world. There’s such beauty and brilliance in that irony, and its funny in the right light.
But what also makes Fight Club so special is that there are so many other themes that are important to different people. My BFFF discovered it’s brilliance a few years ago. For him, the theme that he latched onto was the idea of men not knowing what it truly means to be a man, and searching to find that direction. At the time, that was something he was thinking about a lot. I never noticed that theme in the countless times I watched until he pointed it out to me, and likewise, he never found my nonconfirmist trend until I pointed it out to him. I just \m/ love that Fight Club can really be anything you want it to be.
The movie is an equally brilliant adaptation. At least every other day I find an excuse to quote it, and a different quote each time. Sometimes big iconic lines, other times smaller more subtle ones. When someone recognizes one of the lesser known lines, I know I’ve found a kindred spirit. And I know I dont hafta sell you on the cast: Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter. Anything I hafta say about them will likely be preaching to the choir.
Fight Club also presents another contender for my favorite scene in a movie.”