Fight Club (film)

Reaction and themes

Fight Club was released in the United States on October 15, 1999 to mixed reviews. While some critics raved about the film, many high-profile critics denounced it. Janet Maslin of The New York Times compared it favorably to American Beauty while Roger Ebert called it "macho porn." The graphic violence of the fights seemed to upset most critics, although only one person is actually killed in the film.

Related Topics:
October 15 - 1999 - Janet Maslin - The New York Times - American Beauty - Roger Ebert - Porn

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The film opened with $11 million, a surprise #1 movie in a close race that weekend at the box office. However, it fell very quickly in subsequent weekends, finishing with only $37 million in the U.S. It was regarded as a failure as the budget was $63 million, not including advertising which could have been another $20-30 million. Even with the $63 million later accumulated overseas, executives at 20th Century Fox still felt the movie was a severe disappointment, so much that Entertainment Chief Bill Mechanic was fired. According to Mechanic, he had personally clashed with Fox owner Rupert Murdoch over Fight Club and it cost him his job, barely a year after Fox's Titanic had become the highest-grossing film ever made.

Related Topics:
Box office - Advertising - 20th Century Fox - Rupert Murdoch - Titanic

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Fight Clubs salvation turned out to be the DVD market which was experiencing rapid growth at the time. The two-disc package featured four audio commentaries and hours of extra material, offering an in-depth analysis of the film. Fight Club would eventually break even and later become profitable thanks to booming DVD sales. Entertainment Weekly, which had originally given the film a negative grade of D, later ranked the DVD #1 on its list of "The Top 50 DVDs You Need To Own."

Related Topics:
DVD - Analysis - Entertainment Weekly - Grade

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The film's highly critical view of consumerism and modern living echoes Naomi Klein's book No Logo and also caused discomfort among some critics. Critics like Ebert decried what they described as fascist themes throughout the film, while others have commented on anarchist, nihilist, and buddhist ideals. Both are represented in the transformation of the fight club, an anti-materialistic organization of individuality to Project Mayhem, a more organized anarchy, led solely on the authority of Tyler Durden. The amorphous nature in which these seemingly opposed philosophical systems melded together is the cause for much of the disagreement over the philosophical core of this film.

Related Topics:
Consumerism - Naomi Klein - No Logo - Fascist - Anarchist - Nihilist - Buddhist - Philosophical

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Parallels are also drawn between Tyler Durden's vision of the world after his revolution, and the views of Theodore Kaczynski, a.k.a. the Unabomber. This can be seen in one scene where Tyler talks about abseiling down the Sears Tower in clothes that will last you the rest of your life and hunting elk on abandoned freeways.

Related Topics:
Theodore Kaczynski - Abseil - Sears Tower - Elk

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Some elements from the film have found their way into the mainstream, such as the first two rules of fight club — both of which are You do not talk about fight club — or the name "Tyler Durden" itself.

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