Fight Club author, novelist Chuck Palahniuk reveals that his biggest problem with Brad Pitt’s David Fincher adaptation lies with the ending.
During a long interview with Variety to present his twentieth novel, Not Forever, But For NowWriter Chuck Palahniuk revealed what did not love in David Fincher’s adaptation of his most famous novel, Fight Club.
Based on the novel of the same name, the 1999 film starring Brad Pitt tells the story of an employee who embraces a more anarchic lifestyle after meeting the rebel Tyler Durden and joining a secret club that will drag him into a spiral of violence , starring Edward Norton and Brad Pitt, and directed by David Fincher, Fight Club, the film was heavily criticized by critics and then became a cult.
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When asked if there were parts of the film that bothered him or that he didn’t like, Chuck Palahniuk indicated the film’s ending, the “ticking bomb” countdown and Tyler’s final showdown wouldn’t fit. to his vision of history. Here are his words:
“I wasn’t a big fan of the ticking time bomb, that countdown to the end. And the writer Jim Uhls put that in because obviously there’s such a cliché, and I’ve learned to accept that it’s a cliché.”.
How the ending of Fight Club differs from the novel
The ending of Fight Club sees the Narrator finally realize that Tyler Durden is actually a double personality within himself and learns that the latter has planned with Project Mayhem to cancel the debts of many by blowing up the buildings that house the credit records. Having failed to defuse one of the explosives, the Narrator and Tyler clash in a nearby skyscraper overlooking the buildings set to be destroyed in the presence of their partner Marla. The narrator ultimately turns the gun on himself, shooting himself in the mouth to kill Tyler’s personality, but he does not die. Joined by Marla, who, in the meantime, has been dragged into the building by some members of the club, he witnesses the collapse of the credit institutions where the bombs had been placed.
Even in the novel Tyler had a plan to blow up a skyscraper, although in that case he was driven by the desire to become a martyr by dying in the explosion together with the Narrator. But Tyler’s plan is unsuccessful, the alternate personality vanishes before the Narrator can shoot and kill him, and the explosives malfunction. The Narrator shoots himself anyway, but survives and is admitted to a psychiatric hospital where members of Project Mayhem operate awaiting Tyler’s return. A more open ending that David Fincher modified to give a clearer conclusion to his story.