h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Oh boy oh boy oh boy

I'll start off by saying i like fight club a lot for various reasons however i must contest your article. Some of this however may be inacurate as my copy of fight club is some miles away although I will check and make ammendments on say wednesday.

Firstly:
"one of the most original films to be produced in years – Fight Club"

You'll be aware of the book then thus rendering any idea of originality the sole credit of the author not the film. Your also
ignoring the following
- the matrix (1999); argueably the most original film in years, originally confined to a minor release that quite simply blew people away in its pre-weta days although due to repeated channel 5 showings is now looked on with some distain.
-American beauty (1999); One of the few films that moves me each time I watch it and one i can never find a good comparison with.
- American history X (1998); if you havent seen this you really should. Another Ed Norton film and argueably better then fight club because of the way in which it embraces and then channels back white supremacy.
- The Truman show (1998); Any idea of society controlling you or breaking from the norm, right here buddy. And as the script was written a year or so before in 1996 I beleive (the reason why Niccol had to work on Gattaca) it cuts the legs from under the originality of fight club premise although again the book is a good counter.

I shall move on however, as that is only your opinion.


"The premise of Fight Club begins deceptively simply enough: our main character, Ed Norton (whose character name remains vague for the first part of the film), seems reasonably normal enough, albeit with some strange habits "
NOOOOOO! He isn't reasonably normal enough. He absolutely detests his job. Reasonably normal is being satisfied with your job and having a gripe at actually having to work. The film opens with a gun in his mouth, and your trying to tell me he's reasonably normal? No matter how you look at it it does not begin simply. That opening shot smacks you in the face - it isnt faded in, its a shot from a high angle iirc. Its a smack in the face saying this guy is submissive. But he's not in tears. Hes composed. No man alive with a gun in there mouth would be that composed. From that moment we are aware that this isnt going to be a normal ride.

"as some kind of insurance adjuster figuring out mortality and recall rates based on a mathematical equation he uses."
We should know from this alone that this isnt going to be a normal kind of film. The way its presented in its darkly comic style I find hilarious although I should imagine my grandmother would never buy a car in the same way ever again.

The whole initiation of the film is shouting 'OI this guy was regular. Lets screw him up and see what happens'. The idea is that he represents the everyman. The greatest films indeed all the films above - even in a way american history x - have an every man character. Thats what makes them so brilliant and successful. Lets face it whose more average then Neo - pasty faced computer geek who hardly ever goes out and hates what he does in the real world. Or Truman (TRUEman...) who is painfully normal.

"this dependence on support groups, despite the fact that he has no real need of them in any normal sense of the word. "
Notice how theres no insomniacs support group? He has no way of dealing with his insomnia in terms other insomniacs, so why no turn it into cancer? Works for him seemingly and to be honest having not slept for a few days ive been tempted to try it...

"So it is that Marla becomes the object of everything that he hates because two posers, we find out, cannot co-exist together comfortably."
Okay where do you want to begin? How can you say that when the end shot is of these two posers silouted against the fall of civilisation?

Also, I dont agree with how little significance you place on the flat being blown up, especially after its established so wonderfully for the sole reason of blowing it sky high. He creates a micro-cosem of the film. His flat and its destruction is the film. Look at the beginning after the gun bit and see how clean and fresh everything looks, then degrades into blood and sweat. The point? Rebirth. Ed Norton can't be reborn by simply walking out his flat and giving Mr Pitt a phone call. NO! He must destroy himself and start again. Like society.

"The fight is so affirming, causes such a rush, gives each so much confidence that they decide men everywhere can and ought to do this and thus Fight Club is born"
Its farce. Thats the point of the initial fight. Not the adrenaline rush itself, but the total loss of inhibition. Why do you think he smacks him on the ear and not the face. That bit borderlines stupidity but we keep watching because both wanted a fight and it never decends into total loss of emotional control like a fight does. Lets face it, if your in a scrap you dont want to stop. Yet even in the thick of it, when there adrenaline is rushing highest, you get the feeling that there carrying on for the hell of it. By losing there inhibitions they are in effect shedding societies judgements on them and are able to revert to men once more - pure men unchanged by society and its rules.

"Fight Club, however, will go too far."
NO! The whole point is that it never goes far enough. Thats why he goes all over the country. Whether he goes global or not im not sure but chances are one place escapes in which case everything they've tried to create is destroyed as the masses cling to what they know.

"Yes, the story is rather dark and in many ways sick"
I like its black humor, but I've seen worse in a film. Take Sanjuro for one, although another escapes me at the moment having not slept for a day and then some.

Outragous I'm not sure about. I mean American History is an outragous film without a doubt and I dont know whether I'd put fight club in its league, especially when you consider that Mr Pitt is playing the sane brother of the character he plays in fifth element.

I also find it odd that you give fight club the credit for Norton proving he can act and not american history x (and yes I will bang on about it some more)

"It is not like so many cult classics that leave us empty and stupid"
Sorry but it is. One of the beautiful ironies of fight club is that it says 'hey this is your life, thanks for watching'. You watch Ed Norton do the right thing and bring civilisation back to its beginnings so that it can rebuild itself better but then you go back to your 9 to 5 job, sit around the water cooler talking about how good it was, before wandering home to your lovely furniture and your nice house.

You say you changed from yoga to kick boxing. Did you change your life though? Whats the point in making that simple change if it makes nothing else. Acknowledge fight club as a good film not a life changing one. Seemingly nothing about it has inspired a complete life change in anyone or we'd see this happening right now. There'd be tylors popping up all over the place. What we instead see is this - people love the film, do some fighting, love the film more. They watch, the buy, they consume, they buy more. We will forever be consumers on the teet of the media, and never the revolutionaries we envision ourselves to be because we never could be that person - we love the system too much.

If I'm wrong think of it this way. Without the system we hate, where fight clubs dont exist, we get a film like fight club, able to inspire but not to the point of action. The world of fight club we get no film like fight club, and are rendered to being inspired to action on a regular basis, usually by tylors in our own lives.

As george orwell puts its 'the war is never meant to be won, only continued'. One of the main message of fight club is that this is the world we live in - we hate and depend on it, and nothing could ever move us to confront it with enough force to stop it.