As David Fincher’s Fight Club turns 25, Rafa Sales Ross examines the film’s complex association with dangerous ideals and its impact on the wider culture.
I know, I know. The first rule of Fight Club is that you don’t talk about Fight Club. But, guess what? A special occasion asks for some rule-breaking, and what better way to honor David Fincher’s subversive 1999 classic than to celebrate its 25th anniversary by bending the law a little? With that being said, if you haven’t seen the film yet, we’re about to dive headfirst into plot details—and this one is much, much better experienced without spoilers. Ready? Let’s go.
Adapted from Chuck Palahniuk’s eponymous 1996 book, Fight Club follows The Narrator (Edward Norton), a nameless corporate worker who, plagued by insomnia, begins to roam groups in a desperate attempt to reach the deep emotional catharsis that will at last allow him to sleep. His fool-proof scheme proves not so simple once fellow tourist Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter) begins gate-crashing his meetings, thus ruining the illusion. Restless once more, he meets and befriends the mysterious Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt).
That friendship is the catalyst for The Narrator’s physical and mental unraveling, with Durden and the aimless man initiating the titular Fight Club, an underground group where men beat the crap out of one another in search of a very different kind of catharsis. With nods to über-powerful corporations like IKEA and Starbucks and a clear contempt for the children of the Pepsi Generation, raised on cola and zapping through endless TV channels, Fight Club became the epitome of the Y2K rebellious anti-capitalist sentiment. The film would come to be adopted by every generation that came after as the globalized world sank deeper and deeper into the post-modern despair of Fincher’s thriller.
A few weeks before turning 25, Fight Club reached the top of Letterboxd’s 1,000 Most Watched Films list. It recently got bumped to second place by a very fitting successor, Todd Phillips’ Joker, back trending following the release of Joker: Folie à Deux. Phillips’ and Fincher’s pictures are often coupled in conversation, with Krixtian calling Joker “the Fight Club of our generation but not in a good way,” Gray saying that “Fight Club fought so that Joker could joke,” and Lila adding that “Fight Club is like Joker for people who’ve actually read The Communist Manifesto.”
But there is one key difference between the two films: while Joker chronicles the mental breakdown of an ostracized, lonely man in a world drenched in tortuous nihilism, Fight Club is built upon a sense of camaraderie—community, even. Both stories capture antagonistic yet critical aspects of the men’s rights and incel movements in the anguish of loneliness and isolation and how it leads to a desperate need to belong—to see oneself mirrored in another, regardless of what is reflected.
This association means that if you are a young woman going on a date with a man who seems overly keen on Fight Club, that might be seen as a red flag. Fincher’s cult classic s the ranks of other red-flag films in the age of incel culture alongside Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive and the mad clown, of course. These films are the equivalent of guys who are a bit too enthusiastic about cryptocurrency, give Jordan Peterson the benefit of the doubt and have read-only dodgy self-help bestsellers and Bret Easton Ellis.
While Fight Club’s central anti-consumerist idea goes directly against the lavish lifestyle of Andrew Tate and mega-rich master pickup artists, much of the film can be easily co-opted by their followers, from its careless treatment of women that frames Marla somewhere between nagging impediment and sexual object to Durden’s endlessly quotable one-liners on the state of modern masculinity. Still, nothing in Fight Club speaks more clearly and directly to the anguishes of modern men—be them women-hating incels or chronically isolated outcasts—than Durden’s iconic monologue:
“Man, I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see it squandered. Goddammit! An entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars—but we won’t. We’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”
Lia echoes many other Letterboxd in her encapsulation of the tricky relationship between being a fan of Fight Club and being a Fight Club fanboy in a review that has amassed over 28,000 likes: “I love Fight Club but I hate people who love Fight Club.” In the comments, JefeBromden further hits the nail on its head: “Fight Club is objectively a good movie, but it gives [its] fans an excuse to hate everything they already hate even more.”
Fincher himself has repeatedly condemned the idolization of Tyler Durden. Last year, while promoting The Killer, the director said he is “not responsible for how people interpret” the film, adding, “It’s impossible for me to imagine that people don’t understand that Tyler Durden is a negative influence. People who can’t understand that, I don’t know how to respond and I don’t know how to help them.”
To get a better understanding of the relationship between the film and its fans a quarter of a century on, we spoke to some Letterboxd who, like Jason Momoa, spotlight Fight Club as one of their four favorites.
“It was the first time I’d watched a movie and realized how good movies can be, and that [films] don’t exist just for entertainment purposes but to change us, to affect us,” says Abby of first watching Fight Club at age thirteen. “It has had such an impact on me and altered my life completely. In a way, I’m in film school because of this movie.”
Tyler, who watched the film at fourteen, had a similar first impression: “At that point in my life, I had not watched capital-F ‘Films’. I was taking movies at face value, not trying to imagine what the director might be trying to plant throughout. Like most men at that young age, I ired the rebelliousness that it spoke to. That sort of anti-consumerism was something I had never been exposed to before.” “It made me appreciate the work that goes into the art form, and I started to take film viewing more seriously,” echoes David.
Has the appropriation of Fight Club by incel culture changed the way these fans relate to the film? Of all the surveyed, not a single one said it actively tainted their enjoyment of Fincher’s thriller, but some did become more wary of openly discussing their love of the movie. Ranee, for example, is afraid that enjoying Fight Club might lead to “cancellation.” “I prefer to like it secretly. I don’t mention it to people very much because of their mixed reactions I’d like to avoid.”
“The movie is great for many reasons and I don’t like it any less because a bunch of mouth-breathers never learned critical thinking,” Tyler was quick to add, while Christian is a bit more placid: “My perception of Fight Club hasn’t changed. I still consider it to be my favorite film of all time, but I don’t align myself with the [incel] community whatsoever. Like most people, I don’t condone the events that transpired in the film because causing anarchy and destroying things isn’t the way to go. I know that this is a film, but unfortunately, stuff like this can happen in today’s society.”
“I was confused when my friends later saw the film and kind of unquestioningly wanted to be him or saw him as cool,” says Leninhawk of his friends’ perception of Durden. “I thought it was rather obvious that not only was he the villain of the film, but he co-opts some decent anti-capitalist ideas to skew lost young men into forming a fascist cult.”
“I don’t have any worry about incels co-opting and misunderstanding the film potentially tainting my love for the movie,” David emphasizes. “I’m reminded of films like V for Vendetta or The Punisher whose imagery and ideas have been similarly manipulated and hijacked. Art is often open to interpretation and parsed to fit one’s beliefs, but in the case of Fight Club, incels don’t seem interested in recognizing the absurdity and irony of it, other than taking the most malicious parts of art to feed their own anger.”
The year 1999 saw one of the most legendary crops in the history of cinema, from veteran directors like Stanley Kubrick and George Lucas releasing landmark pictures Eyes Wide Shut and Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, to a new generation of talents coming out the gate guns blazing, including Sofia Coppola’s feature debut The Virgin Suicides, and up-and-coming directors like Paul Thomas Anderson and M. Night Shyamalan with Magnolia and The Sixth Sense (and this is without diving into world cinema, with Pedro Almodóvar’s All About My Mother, Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher and Claire Denis’ Beau Travail coming out that same year).
In his book Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen, film journalist and author Brian Raftery describes the last hurrah of the millennium as “the most unruly, influential and unrepentantly pleasurable film year of all time,” with Letterboxd member (and filmmaker) Edgar Wright electing 1999 as his favorite movie year. It was an auspicious collusion of independent filmmaking language—from grittier themes to ambivalent endings and non-linear timelines—and big studio paychecks, resulting in films that appealed to both the disenfranchised youth that played Nirvana on their cassettes and the older boomers raised on the tail end of ’70s New Hollywood and big ’80s blockbusters.
“I don’t think Fight Club could have happened in any other year but 1999,” Raftery added when speaking about the serendipitous timing that birthed Fincher’s nihilist classic. “Fincher was at a place where he could get a good cast and good money. Brad Pitt was a big enough star that he could say, hey, I want to make this crazy, nihilistic, violent look at the dark underbelly of America’s soul and get it made at a big budget.”
It’s only natural that films produced within the same narrow window of time would feel in conversation with one another, and Fight Club shares many of its central themes with other 1999 hits. The idea of duality in the relationship between The Narrator and Tyler Durden also permeates Being John Malkovich and The Talented Mr. Ripley, while a denouncement of capitalism and consumerism is present in both The Matrix and The Insider. The Matrix and Fight Club, much like eXistenZ, also explore themes of parallel realities—real or imaginary.
The turn of the century saw several films prodding at themes of queerness, with But I’m a Cheerleader, Boys Don’t Cry and Cruel Intentions (plus a misguided Three to Tango) broadening conversations around therapy conversion, trans identity and outdated queer stereotypes within American culture. Fight Club’s queer undertones might not have been at the forefront of the film’s initial reading in 1999, but have been discussed and dissected in length by younger generations—and, boy, is it a popular topic amongst Letterboxd …
In the film’s most-liked Letterboxd review by our very own Mia Lee Vicino, she classifies this tale as “the best satirical gay romcom ever made,” with Mollie sending a clear message: “step aside filmbros, this one is for the gays.” Blake makes a very good point by highlighting that “Tyler making ‘no shirts’ one of the rules is gay as fuck,” while Siobhan poses a great question: “fellas is it gay to be in love with your imaginary friend?”
Two of the Letterboxd we spoke to about Fight Club vividly the cultural and political climate at the time the film was released. “I love how it captured the hollow emptiness of capitalist success, coming in 1999 when the economy was good and the US was largely at peace, and yet happiness still seemed elusive for those who had ‘done everything right’ to be successful as defined by capitalism and the American Dream,” says Leninhawk, who first watched Fight Club in theaters during its original showings.
“The ’90s was one of the most rapidly changing cultural eras, and it probably felt like a lot of men were being left behind or not given enough time to find their place in society as it was surging into the internet age,” theorizes David, who still re the film’s many cable reruns.
And then, of course, there is the lasting impact of Fight Club in cinema and wider culture in the 25 years since its somewhat lukewarm first theatrical run. Fincher’s anti-capitalist tale found an almost unprecedented afterlife thanks to its now legendary physical release, and continues to find many fans in the years since, including filmmakers and creatives who openly speak about the film’s effect on their output.
“Fight Club was one of my big inspirations for the show,” said Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail, with Bottoms director Emma Seligman noting that, while crafting her very own female twist on the fight club premise, the reception to Fight Club “was definitely in the back of my mind in of fighting being an outlet for men in that movie to experience intimacy in a way that they’re not allowed to in other ways.”
Several other features are clear points of comparison when speaking about Fincher’s adaptation, from Richard Kelly’s cult classic Donnie Darko and its strange, unsettling view of the end of the world (“I hope that when the world comes to an end I can breathe a sigh of relief,” notes a baby-faced Jake Gyllenhaal as the titular character); to two other Gyllenhaal vehicles in Enemy’s unnerving prodding at duality and the flimsy foundations of identity and Nightcrawler’s ruthless chronicling of how capitalist greed can lead to inhumane desensitization.
Then there are the films that tap into Fight Club’s criticism of the crumbling American Dream, with God Bless America seeing a spree-killer pluck a monologue straight out of the Tyler Durden book while justifying his violence: “America has become a cruel and vicious place. We reward the shallowest, the dumbest, the meanest and the loudest. We no longer have any common sense of decency.” In American Psycho, another serial murderer longs for the golden days of Americana, with Christian Bale’s Patrick Bateman claiming that we “have to encourage a return to traditional moral values. Most importantly, we have to promote general social concern and less materialism in young people.”
Fellow Christian Bale vehicle Jackass crew, the franchise first popping up on MTV less than a year after Fight Club opened in cinemas.
A quarter of a century on, Fight Club remains just as thrilling a film as it was when it first reached audiences, an almost perfect combination of sharp editing, a memorable score by the Dust Brothers, Jeff Cronenweth’s finely desaturated cinematography and two powerhouse lead performances, with Norton and Pitt respectively delivering some of their best work. It’s easy to see why generations old and new flock to the film, and Dirk is generous in his praise, which encapsulates much of the love for the film on Letterboxd: “Should this film be considered a ‘classic’? Most definitely, but I do think it looks at all the other ‘classics’ with a big ‘fuck you I don’t care’ grin. And it should, because no film like it has been made since.”
