FIGHT CLUB Author Talks About His One Problem With the Ending of the Film and What Another Cut Got Right

Before Fight Club was a cult classic movie starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, the story was a book written by Chuck Palahniuk. The author released his debut novel in 1996, and it followed the story of “an anonymous narrator [who] finds escape from his hollow life through an underground fighting club where men find their true selves through shared pain.”

The 1999 film brought the author a lot of attention, and fans loved the adaptation, though Palahniuk had one hang up about how his story was changed to fit the screen, and he explained it in a recent interview with Variety, saying:

“I wasn’t a big fan of the ticking bomb, that counting down clock near the end. And [screenwriter] Jim Uhls stuck it in because there’s obviously such a trope, and I’ve grown to accept that it is a trope.”

Meanwhile, CB reports that last year, Chinese streamer Tencent Video replaced the ending of Fight Club to show law enforcement triumphing over Tyler Durden's plans, though they eventually restored the original ending of the movie. However, at the time, Palahniuk pointed out that the altered ending was actually a bit closer to the original story's ending than the 1999 movie's was. The movie's original ending had The Narrator watch Tyler's plan come to fruition as buildings blow up all over the city while China's altered ending cuts before the explosions and offered a title card reading, "Through the clue provided by Tyler, the police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding. After the trial, Tyler was sent to lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment. He was discharged from the hospital in 2012," which more closely aligns with the book.

Palahniuk said of the changed scene:

"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. So, in a way, the Chinese brought the movie back to the book a little bit."

It’s interesting that this short alteration was actually more satisfactory to the author than the original film. I liked the 1999 movie and the way it played out. If you read the book, what do you think about the scene, and the change that was made in the Chinese cut?