The law prevails in new Chinese edit of ‘Fight Club,’ and Chuck Palahniuk seems OK with that - OregonLive
“May I never be complete,” Edward Norton’s character says in “Fight Club.” “May I never be content. May I never be perfect.”
In China, he gets his wish.
Rather than the satisfying, perfect bang that ends the 1999 movie, the character now fails miserably in his effort to sow chaos.
The Chinese government recut the ending of the influential, David Fincher-directed movie before allowing it to stream in the country. TMZ reports that the beautiful explosions in the original release have been excised in favor of a black screen with the message:
“The police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding.” Norton’s character, it adds, was sent to a “lunatic asylum,” where he remained until 2012.
That’s because the law always wins in China, or so its authoritarian rulers want its billion citizens to believe.
Portland author Chuck Palahniuk, on whose cult-classic novel the movie is based, seems pretty OK with this.
“The irony is that the way the Chinese have changed it is they’ve aligned the ending almost exactly with the ending of the book, as opposed to Fincher’s ending, which was the more spectacular visual ending,” he told TMZ. “So in a way, the Chinese brought the movie back to the book a little bit.”
Hollywood embraces its freedom today, just as it did in late 1990s when Fincher made “Fight Club,” but it used to have restrictions similar to the ones China now imposes.
The Hays Code, a self-censorship guide in place among the major studios from the 1930s until the 1960s, insisted that in acceptable movies “the sympathy of the audience shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin,” and it even banned “lustful kissing.”
-- Douglas Perry
source: https://www.oregonlive.com/entertainment/2022/01/the-law-prevails-in-new-chinese-edit-of-fight-club-and-chuck-palahniuk-seems-ok-with-that.html
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