MovieChat Forums > Fight Club (1999) Discussion > Great movie, until the end (SPOILERS, OB...

Great movie, until the end (SPOILERS, OBVIOUSLY)

posted 8 years ago by Engine_Ear
9 replies | jump to latest

So, almost 20 years after it came out, I finally saw Fight Club. And was very pleasantly surprised! I had thought that it would be some dumb-ass head-banger flick. But no, obviously. I can see why it has the cult status that it does. A very good, maybe even great movie - the premise, the acting, everything.

Until the final scene. What a letdown. I'm sorry, but having the narrator/Tyler, whatever his name was at that point, holding hands with Marla as the buildings come crashing down, like everything's going to be all right between them no matter what hell has been unleashed out there, well it has the awful flavor of "test audience ending" to it.

I mean, what's next for them? Project Mayhem team members are all downstairs, waiting for the next move. Will the new Tyler-less narrator lead them? I can't see him being satisfied with life after Fight Club - is he back to obsessing about bedroom sets? He actually hadn't changed very much. And I can't see Marla sticking around for very long in those circumstances.

Maybe I have to read the book, but to my mind, Tyler (Brad Pitt) should have been the one standing next to Marla, with Ed Norton dead on the floor. He should have been laughing demonically, with Marla giving him that moist, smoldering look she does so well.

[–] wdement 8 years ago

The ending demonstrates that the narrator is at peace. He will obviously be immediately arrested since he turned himself into the police, but he has taken full control of his own mind, while also ditching the social norms that plagued his life at the beginning and found a person who he he genuinely likes and likes him also. On a physical level, yes the narrator is screwed, but on a psychological level he'd never been better.

[–] jacobstevenmillen 8 years ago

But tyler isnt real

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

Maybe Tyler is just as real as Narrator - who is to say which personality is the dominant one, when two souls or personalities struggle to gain control of the same physical body? Tyler could just as well have ended up winning, and Narrator dying. Sure, his physical form would not be Brad Pitt, but otherwise, he could live as Tyler in the Narrator's body - which would now be Tyler's body.

I mean, Tyler already dominated a lot of the 'body time', leaving Narrator sleeping or being elsewhere, not even remembering what Tyler had been up to. So Tyler is very real, because non-real entities can't do the things Tyler obviously did.

[–] Johnspartan1982 (137) 5 years ago

Except that Norton got rid of that monster Tyler

[–] pjl69 (2647) 5 years ago

Nonsense, its one of the greatest endings ever. One of those rare instances I can't figure out how did it get through Hollywood production line, test audiences and self-censorship. Post 9/11 this movie wouldn't have been made. God bless David Fincher.

[–] DrRed (551) 5 years ago

Heck yeah. The dude holds hands with his gf while the whole world erupts around him.
Reminded me of the scene in True Lies when Arnold kisses his wife with the Nuclear denotation going off in the background.

[–] CheekyMonkey (584) 5 years ago

it's a metaphore...

The movie is about a guy who struggles with his feeling of gayness and then decides to commit to a damaged girl to prove to himself that he isn't gay...

the dude kills his gay alter-ego (brad pit) to embrace the straight way... the entire movie is him wrestling with his own sexuality... from having his masculinity threatened by domesticity, to finding comfort in the literal bosem of other men (he can cry and release)... the bathtub sharing and discussions about "whether another woman is really the answer"... only men are shot in a sexualised, glossy and alurring way in the movie... to the thrill of, ahem, "fighting" with strange men you've just met in some dark secret place that you don't talk about... there is even sexual jealousy of the pretty boy that he disfigures in one of the fights in a fit of rage...

In the end he destroys his old, gay world, as he clings onto the idea that he can go the straight way... but the audience knows what he really is and it's that feeling that is so unsettling about the movie's ending... we know he's pretending to be something he's not...

[–] LiquidOcelot (2452) 5 years ago

Strangest post i've ever read.

[–] Wuchak (8844) 4 years ago

It's an interesting interpretation and makes sense, except I disagree with the final point...

we know he's pretending to be something he's not

It could just as easily be argued that he recognized and destroyed his false self & the world thereof because he found his true self. Actually, this is the stronger argument because heterosexuality is natural whereas homosexuality is obviously perversion, a sexual counterfeit. He finally recognizes the counterfeit and totally destroys that world in favor of the genuine.