Chuck Palahniuk points out that China’s censored Fight Club ending is actually closer to his book
The author of Fight Club says censorship is nothing new for his work, but the new Fight Club ending is actually more like his novel
Recently, Chinese streaming site Tencent Video released a (presumably) government-approved cut of David Fincher’s 1999 Fight Club adaptation, with the most noteworthy change being a censored ending that leaves out the the office buildings exploding and adds in a block of onscreen text explaining that the bombings were foiled by the police and that Edward Norton’s character got arrested. The new ending went on to explain that Norton’s character (referred to as “Tyler”) was then sent to a mental institution where he was eventually rehabilitated and released.
While Fight Club fans were quick to complain about how this ending undercut the story of the movie, what many of them apparently didn’t realize is that this ending is both extremely funny and weirdly closer to what happens in the book. (Come on, it’s like Poochie going back to his home planet! It’s hilarious and so pointedly contradictory to the rest of the film that it actually seems even more subversive!)
But as for the book, original author Chuck Palahniuk told TMZ that he’s not especially offended by what the Chinese censors did to the movie version. For one thing, the narrator in the book does foil Tyler Durden’s plan and get sent to a mental institution, so this version lines up better with what Palahniuk put in the novel. On top of that, the narrator being “rehabilitated” and released is also the plot of Palahniuk’s Fight Club 2 comic book, so this is a better hook for any Chinese fans who want to read that (bad) continuation of the story.
Palahniuk also explained to TMZ that censorship is nothing new to him, since his books are regularly banned in prisons and schools here in the U.S. and that foreign publishers have edited the end of his book to make it more like the end of the movie anyway. So, again, the censored Chinese ending might actually be more in the spirit of Fight Club—even if, on the surface, it seems to undermine all of that “Project Mayhem” stuff happening in the movie.
More importantly, though: It’s really funny, and anything that takes some of the piss out of Fight Club (a really good movie that is completely misunderstood by most of the people who like it) can’t be all bad.