Fight Club: China alters the ending of the cult classic and its transgressive message

New episode of censorship in China to a film, in this case, the 1999 cult film Fight Club by David Fincher starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. Chinese users have noticed that the end of the film has been completely censored and modified through its recent release on the streaming platform Tencent Video, erasing the original transgressive message in one fell swoop and making the establishment get away with it. This is what media outlets such as Collider report, detailing how the Chinese government has edited the film to allow its distribution in the country.

China and censorship in cinema

For years, Chinese censorship has only allowed the release or distribution of a certain number of foreign films per year, most of which are censored by the government. This has been the case of the recent release of The Fight Club through the streaming platform Tencent Video, a film that offers in its Chinese version a totally different outcome to the original film.

In the original film, Edward Norton's character, the Narrator, ends up with his imaginary alter ego Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt, contemplating the collapse of numerous skyscrapers through numerous explosions and implying the impending end of civilization.

Full screen

In the Chinese version, all this footage has been cut and a final message has been added that has nothing to do with the original idea. In the censored film, the story ends with Durden's murder and a message with a black screen: "the police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding". Not without adding that Durden was sent to an insane asylum to earn his freedom shortly thereafter.

Closer to the book

Although the edited ending is resolved with three lines of text, it curiously has an ending closer to Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 book. In the original ending, the bombs do not explode, and indeed, the Narrator is captured by the police after shooting himself in the mouth. The last chapter puts the Narrator in a place he describes as heaven, thinking he died. However, it's not angels watching over him, but people from Project Mayhem who state "We miss you, Mr. Durden."

Source | Collider