Hi everybody, and welcome to Mark Overanalyses Film, the podcast where I overanalyse a different film every episode. Today, I’ll be looking at 1999’s Fight Club.
Of course, the first rule of Fight Club is that you do not talk about Fight Club, and that might be because talking about Fight Club is a pretty good way to go about sounding like an idiot. Fight Club is over 20 years old, and it’s still hard to find much out there that really feels compelling as a complete explanation of what this story really means and how it goes about meaning it. And this is despite the fact that there is source material, the 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk. So one of the many things I find so interesting about Fight Club is that it can be such a cultural touchstone, and yet remain somewhat inscrutible. And further yet, that somehow I still feel that, at least on some level, if I didn’t understand it exactly, I had a sense of it. I think this is due to its structure, as I’ll pick up on later.
First though, I’ll look at the fundamental features of the protagonist, and then I’ll go through the main story beats by looking at the sequences of the film. At the end, I’ll talk about the main things I learned along the way.
Ok, so, with all that in mind, I’ll begin doing so by asking the 5 key questions about the protagonist…or the Narrator… or Jack… or Tyler… Or Cornelius. At least we know his name is not Robert Paulson.
Q1: Whose story is it?
Or, who is the protagonist? Now to my mind, this is relatively straight-forward, but I have seen people suggest it’s Tyler Durden, as in Brad Pitt. For my money though, it has to be The Narrator, played by Ed Norton. To keep things simple, I’m mostly going to call him Jack. Jack is the one whose change defines the film and what it means, at least to my mind.
So, who is Jack? He’s a 30-year-old “boy”, working in an American city, for one of those big faceless American companies. He probably makes a good wage, but it doesn’t matter, cos he wastes it on buying junk to cover up the gaping chasm of existential dread within.
Q2: What is his life dream?
The ‘life dream’ here refers to what it is that the protagonist wants before the story really begins. Jack’s dream at the start of the film is to disappear. He daydreams about death, and he is, in many ways, half-dead already. How does this dream manifest itself? Well, asides from an apparent deathwish, he wants to sleep — really sleep. And sleeping is a kind of temporary disappearing.
Q3: What is his want?
“Want” here refers to the thing which drives the protagonist through Act II of the movie. So, it needs to be a clear, tangible goal to structure the whole story. As such, the want here is a “SMART” goal, in that it is Specific, Measurable, Attainable (just about), Relevant, and usually but not always Time-bound.
Act II begins with Jack meeting Tyler and going for a beer with him, and it ends with Jack realising that they’re the same person, and collapsing from the psychic shock. But what is the SMART goal here? Whether or not this is specific enough is up for debate, but ultimately, what Jack is looking for throughout Act II is Tyler’s acceptance, for Tyler’s embrace: to be subsumed by Durdenism. So Jack’s want is something in or around the question “Will Jack become just like Tyler?”
Q4: What is his need?
“Need” refers to the piece of wisdom or human quality that the protagonist needs to learn throughout the story. It is the fundamental change that does, or does not, occur within the character by the end of the story. So it should be something primal and universal to the human experience.
When we first meet Jack , he says he’s “never fully asleep, and never fully awake”. At the end, with gun to his mouth, he says “My eyes are open”, which is another way of saying “I’m awake.”, or “I’m fully conscious”. It’s a notable change. But why has this happened? Well, one other big thing has changed. He’s formed a real connection with someone: Marla. Why I believe this to be his need, I’ll get into much more, later.
Q5: Does he get what he wants and/or what he needs?
I think it’s fair to say that Fight Club has an unconventionally happy ending. Significantly unconventional. And so, it makes sense that the protagonist in this scenario would not get what they want, but get what they need. Which is probably why as grubby, dirty, and sordid as Fight Club appears, it doesn’t really leave the viewer feeling down or defeated or depressed. I don’t think it does anyways. But then, Fight Club is controversial, so I’d also like to discuss this aspect in greater detail towards the end.
For now though, I’ve attempted to answer the 5 key questions, and I would like to look at Fight Club’s sequences.
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There is normally, but not always, 8 sequences or stages in a film. A sequence is a combination of scenes that are tied together by having a single overriding dramatic question or tension, and they tend to be between 10 and 15 minutes in length, though as shown in Fight Club, they can be quite elastic. A good way to think about it though, is that every 10-15 minutes, the audience should be on some level asking themselves a different dramatic question.
Now, in the films that I’ve covered so far, the sequences have perfectly matched up with the 8 sections, but I should note here that Fight Club probably has 10 sequences. So, Section 4, which I would term the “Greater attempts to solve the problem” actually contains the 4th and 5th sequences of Fight Club, while section 6, the “Bridge from the Honeymoon Sequence to the Low point”, contains the 7th and the 8th sequences. Now, if you’re to have 10 sequences, this placement makes total sense, as I will get into, but mostly I’ll be focusing on the 8 ‘stages’.
One further point about sequences is that the central tension of a sequence should be introduced promptly, but once it has there is quite a bit of freedom to move around within that sequence. Fight Club does this liberally, as Tyler and Jack are often reacting to choices the other makes.
With all that said, let’s look at the 10 sequences and 8 stages of Fight Club.
Act I contains the first 2 sequences. Sequence I is generally some version of ‘life as it is’ for the main characters, before the events of the film take place. Now, Fight Club has one of those “begins at the end” beginnings, which I generally think is kind of a cheat, but it’s undeniably effective, and it makes sense to introduce the narration here. Once we’ve been introduced to where we’re going to end up, and how crazy things are going to get, the narrator tells us how all of this has to do with a girl, Marla Singer.
We then see that Jack was suffering with insomnia and working a dehumanising job. Importantly, this is closely tied to his unchecked consumerism. He keeps buying crap and his is a shallow existence, devoid of the texture of suffering, connection, and real meaning, even while he categorises pain and suffering in his job. There’s a lot of interesting cause and effect relationships in Fight Club, and this is the first. He’s never fully awake because he can’t sleep, but he, arguably, can’t sleep because he’s never fully awake.
The way he learns to cope with this is to attend Support Groups. At these groups, he says “I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.” Now, to my mind, that’s not what’s happening here, but it’s great characterisation that that’s how he sees it. There’s a tremendous amount of dramatic power in a protagonist learning the wrong lesson from something. But, rather than losing all hope, to my mind at least, he’s still clinging to pride here. These people are opening up and supporting each other. He cries first because Bob embraces him. A human connection is what allows him to cry. But at this point, it’s an imperfect mechanism for connecting with people. He’s lying, which protects him, so this connection is dubious. It’s insecure. And then…
Sequence II begins, with the introduction of Marla Singer. This is a classic inciting incident: the event without which our story as it is would not happen. Marla, in copying his lie, ruins everything for Jack, so we ponder the sequence II tension: Will Jack get rid of Marla? A quick note: Marla here is a threat because she strains the lie within Jack’s coping mechanism. Which is exactly what she will do again throughout Act II. So, after attempting to ignore her for a while, Jack eventually confronts her and works out a deal, which is again exactly what he’ll do later. But something in her intrusion to his life has raised his discomfort. We as an audience don’t go back to groups. We now see Jack increasingly waking up in strange places. And eventually, he wakes up beside Tyler Durden — right after having an intense death fantasy. And he is beguiled.
Now, where exactly you want to draw the end of Act I and the start of Act II here is a debatable, and not really important. But at 24 minutes, Jack himself tells the audience what we’re next going to see: the story of how he came to live with Tyler — so we have our next dramatic tension. Within 3 minutes, Jack will get home to find his condo ablaze. One thing I always find interesting here is that he looks at his destroyed furniture and his takeaway is: “A houseful of condiments and no food. How embarrassing.” What a weird thing to worry about right now?! But of course, that kind of fear of other people’s judgements is exactly what drives him to Tyler.
Anyways, by now, we’re starting Act II, which begins with Sequence III: the first attempts to solve the problem. So, really here we’re seeing how Jack is introduced to Tyler’s world, and how he decided to stay there. But, before he does so, there’s an easily overlooked detail that is also notably not in the script — and I’ll discuss why it isn’t later. Before he calls Tyler, Jack calls Marla. But… when she answers, he doesn’t speak. The fact that he chooses in this moment to speak to himself rather than speak to Marla is the character’s flaw put into action.
What follows then is our full introduction to Tyler, and a classic “What’s the plan” scene, which introduces us to what Act II is about. They have a conversation about his stuff and consumer culture, he asks to stay with Tyler… and they have their first fight. And they love it. Then we basically have a long montage of Jack getting used to Paper St and the beginnings of what will soon be termed Fight Club.
This sequence ends with a really important conversation. Tyler and Jack talk about how they were abandoned by their dads and left to be raised by women. They feel abandoned by masculinity, and this discomfiture with masculinity is arguably what leads to their fear of women and femininity. Jack says he can’t get married cos he’s a 30 year old boy. Tyler wonders if another woman is really the answer they need. Now, we’re about to move out of this sequence but I want to point out two things here. 1. In just a few minutes, Jack is going to start seriously singing the virtues of Fight Club. In so doing he states “A guy came to Fight Club for the first time, his ass was a wad of cookie dough. After a few weeks, he was carved out of wood.” By this logic, Jack should already be carved out of wood. But apparently he’s still a boy. While he achieves a physical confidence and expression, he remains emotionally stunted. How many fights will it take for you to be an actual man, Jack?! On a similar note, right before Fight Club is officially introduced, Jack happens to see Marla. At the same time, he’s talking about how his problem in life had been that he hadn’t been angry enough. In the next scene he says all he could about was the next fight. He is not, he protests, thinking about Marla.
Once Tyler introduces the rules of Fight Club, we really have little doubt that this is Jack’s life now. So, we’ve answered the first tension. But this is only the end of Sequence III, and Sequence IV will begin with the character’s first unconscious move towards their need. And it really is unconscious here. 20 minutes ago, he rang Marla and didn’t speak. Now Marla calls him, and Tyler takes up where he leaves off. Who’s interested in Marla? Not Jack… But maybe Tyler…who is *let me check my notes*, yep, also Jack.
Now, Sequence IV, or Section IV as I’ll call it here as it actually contains 2 sequences, is defined as “Greater attempts to solve the problem”. It’s fairly common in a film over 2 hours to have 2 sequences here I think. Act I generally can’t be much longer than 30 minutes or we’d get restless waiting for the story to really begin. And we could do with the protagonist making their first unconscious move towards their need, or to “accept the call” by the 40 or 45 minute mark, cos that’s when they really get in on the adventure. Once that happens though, we have a bit of breathing space before we need to hit the midpoint, cos our story is fully up and running.
Anyways, Marla has come back into his life, and the question of this sequence becomes some variation of “Will Jack make peace with Marla?” This sequence is dominated by Tyler and Marla’s crazy sex, while frustrated Jack gets more hostile at work. Note: this means he is having sex with Marla, and he’s getting more aggressive with those around him. He’s going to greater lengths to deal with the problem. Someone’s getting closer, so he’s pushing people away. The cops are also now suspecting foul play with his apartment. This sequence comes to a close when Marla makes a sexual pass at Jack and he basically calls her trash. You can find this scene easily online by the way, and note how, as Marla talks about the condom being the glass slipper of their generation, how much it looks like Jack is masterbating! He’s furiously scrubbing something, but initially not looking at it. He’s holding it right by his crotch, but staring blankly, mouth agape, into the distance. This is no accident.
The closer she gets, the more aggressive he scrubs, until he dismisses her. She storms off and we begin our next sequence, which is defined by the question: “Will Jack and Tyler make soap?” This isn’t a dramatic question, but it doesn’t have to be. What is dramatic is what happens while they’re making this soap. The how and they why of it all.
Now, what ‘soap’ represents in Fight Club could probably be a whole podcast in and of itself. But there’s some key elements to consider. Firstly, the first soap, according to Tyler, was created through human sacrifice. Cleansing came through sacrifice. Secondly, Marla has made a pass at Jack, and this is a way for him to get revenge on women. Just watch Jack’s face when he says “It was beautiful. We were selling rich women their own fat asses back to them.” He never looks so contemptuous as he does at this point. These two elements combine in one of the most iconic moments in the film: the chemical burn.
As Tyler burns his hand, his last refuge is a fantasy about Marla. Tyler literally slaps him across the face. The idea is to focus on the pain, not on God, and not on Marla. Tyler might be talking about God, but his essential point is: he doesn’t need approval. Or shouldn’t at least. There’s a connection drawn here, which is throughout the film, that if you can take the physical pain, you can somehow numb yourself to emotional pain, or emotional need. In the earlier scene with Marla, there’s already been a connection made between cleansing and masturbation as a means of rejecting others, especially women. BUT — and I can’t stress this enough — the film is eventually going to prove this to be false. And that process begins in earnest as we reach the midpoint, or: the character’s first conscious move towards his need.
So, at the start of Act II, Jack called Marla but didn’t speak. Sequence IV begins with Marla ringing him and him leaving her potentially to die. Now, Marla calls him at work, and he takes it, and when she asks him to come over to check for a lump on her breast, he does so.
He goes over, and the tone is different now. Like with the groups earlier, the shadow of death looms, but these 2 know each other. Marla’s tenderness is real, and directed right at who he is, no pseudonym, no Tyler, no dodge. Now, he’s not ready to accept this, so he beats a hasty retreat. But something begins to happen here — something that will define section V, or here sequence VI: the honeymoon sequence.
The honeymoon sequence is when the character starts acting in accordance with their need, and in this case, Jack and Tyler begin to drift apart. Tyler gives his most famous speech, about the disappointment of a generation of men who feel they’ve been lied to, then gives out homework assignments. This moment really stuck out for me when I first watched Fight Club, cos it’s so shrouded in darkness and mystery. And it really is notable how much of a shift it is. What Tyler is up to is now suddenly beyond Jack’s knowledge. So we’re left with the question: “Will the protagonist find out why they have homework assignments?”
Everyone goes out and picks fights, and the hijinx get wilder and wilder. And you can hear it in the music, can’t you? This is fun at this point, because like the Narrator we’re not too concerned about where all this is going yet. And speaking of Jack, we have another iconic scene: where he beats himself up in front of his boss. He says himself that he thought of his first fight, with Tyler, but he no longer needs Tyler to do this you might notice. This sequence begins to turn though with a trip to the convenience store. It’s hard to ignore how compelling Tyler is in the scene with Raymond K Hessell. It is probably Tyler’s most compelling argument, and it ropes Jack right back in. “You had to hand it to him. He had a plan, and it started to make sense, in a Tyler sort of way…”
A bit like the first 3 sequences, there’s generally something of a time limit on the Honeymoon section. Films are built on conflict, so while the next section can have multiple sequences, it’s rare that a honeymoon period can last too long. And this sequence ends in the next full scene, where Jack tries being softer with Marla. But this softness immediately leads to issues for him, because she starts asking questions. The moment she does, Tyler starts drilling in Jack’s head and puppet masters him into shutting her out again. “Applicants” then start turning up at the door. And so we find out why Tyler was giving out homework assignments — because Tyler is building an army.
And so we enter Section VI, the bridge from the honeymoon sequence to the low point. And we begin with the first of two sequences here (number VII now) and its question: Will Jack find out why Tyler is building an army? As I’ve said previously, this section is normally full of troubles, and that is very much the case here. Jack has seemed pretty comfortable with letting Tyler get a bit away from him, but that changes here. As soon as Tyler has a few Space Monkeys going, he starts blowing stuff up. And Jack is horrified. He realises how out of step he is when he asks what’s going on and the others laugh at his questioning. I also love in this scene how boyish Jared Leto’s Angel Face seems in being attracted to the reporter on TV. I don’t know if this is a reach, but it might be worth noting that within 4 minutes of commenting on the attractiveness of a woman, Jack beats the living shit out of him.
But that might be a reach, because there is of course, another reason for this: Tyler has shown him favouratism. And this is where the argument-counterargument relationship is really rich. Jack is really trying to not need other people. But when Tyler shows favouratism to another, he becomes enraged — the only emotion that he’s been developing. It might be tempting to try and not need approval, but it is in the end impossible. And this, after all, is really self-hatred caused by a lack of self-approval. Jack pounds Angel Face, but he can’t overcome the emotional hurt within.
Jack and Tyler leave and go for a drive. Seven, The Game, Fight Club, Zodiac: boy oh boy, can Fincher do a car scene. Jack eventually confronts Tyler about being left out and Tyler, rather than letting him in, tells him to let go. He also, notably, reveals that he blew up his condo, which would seem like a huge reveal if it wasn’t only a part of an even bigger reveal coming down the road!
Now, it’s worth noting thematically that in his mind Jack is literally a passenger here, with Tyler at the wheel. Tyler convinces Jack to fully let go, but of course, Jack letting go is actually Tyler taking more control. They crash, and as Jack recuperates in a semi-coma, Tyler explains that he has a vision for the world, and then he abandons Jack. So, will Jack find out why Tyler is building an army? Yes. Tyler wants to destroy civilization. Geez. And to think, all Jack really needed was a girlfriend.
But at that, we have a new question for our eighth sequence: will Jack find Tyler? At this point, he’s been rejected. He points out himself that Tyler has abandoned him, just like his Dad did. But as dejected as he is, he’s not quite at his lowest ebb yet, and he still wants to be reunited with Tyler.
He wanders around, a stranger in his own house, he unwittingly rejects Marla, and then sees his one real friend (y’know, what’s his name?) dead. He resolves to chase down Tyler. All over the country. But he can’t find him and can’t figure out why.
And then we have the reveal: but it’s such a big reveal that we are actually told it 3 times. The Bartender calls him Tyler Durden. Then Marla, over the phone, calls him Tyler Durden. Then finally, in conversation with Tyler, he finally admits to himself that “We’re the same person”.
There’s a few things worth pointing out here: This is the end of the second act, the low point, or the moment where the counterargument is at its strongest. So, first of all, Jack refuses to face reality. He refutes this as “impossible.” Second of all, Tyler says “We simply do not have time for this crap” and Jack collapses, as if on cue. It really seems as though Tyler is in total control. Finally, the thing that really ends the dramatic question of Act II “Will Jack become just like Tyler?”, the thing that finally and completely pits Jack against Tyler is Marla. The last thing they talk about is Tyler’s threat to Marla’s life. We know that Jack can’t let this happen, and so it not only answers the central tension of Act II, it also gives us the first dramatic tension of Act III: Will Jack save Marla before Tyler gets to her? Quick aside: Tyler, you’ll notice, has shaved his head to fully embrace Durdenism, but Jack has not. It’s a small visual queue to show the answer to the central Act II tension.
Act III is made up of two sequences: the false resolution and the true resolution. Something I find interesting here is that the first of these sequences is often dominated by the protagonist being lost and feeling dejected. But that was actually in the last sequence in Act II. Here, Jack is full of action, but it remains something of a low point because everything now feels so stacked against him. His conscious self — his agency — seems no match for his unconscious. The only thing he does accomplish is to have a huge fight with Marla. She says she’s done — because, you’ll notice, he’s still withholding. He tells her her life is in danger but won’t say why. And so she gets on a bus, destination unknown, and theoretically leaves his life forever. At this point, his solution is still to separate himself from others. The height and end of the false resolution.
So, there’s one question left: and so we’re in our true resolution with our final tension: Will Jack stop Tyler? It’s maybe worth a quick mention here how good Fincher is at pacing and muscular story-telling. There’s lots of stuff that does not make sense in this movie, really almost everything, but it’s insane that when Jack goes to the police that almost all the cops are in on the plot. And that they’re going to cut his balls off in the middle of the police station, with their boss outside the room?! What do the next 30 minutes of that plan look like?!
Anyways, he escapes, and for some reason none of that bothers me at all! And now he has no option but to try and stop Tyler in person. Whether it’s because he’s coming to terms with his psychic need or because he’s appropriately motivated, Tyler has less control over Jack at this point. Which is good news for Jack as it means he’s able to defuse the bomb, but bad news for Jack as it means that Tyler gives him one hell of a beating. And then we get back, finally, to where we were at the beginning. Once again we have a couple of things combining here: the impending arrival of Marla prompts Jack into action, but also he accepts responsibility — or agency — for all of it. He puts a gun to his head and tells Tyler “My eyes are open”, another way of saying “I’m fully awake”.
Now the fact that he shoots himself through the mouth, but the bullet ‘kills’ Tyler is one of those all-timer matter of opinion type dealies. If one were so inclined, you could make the argument that he has indeed learnt from Tyler that a willingness to lose everything is freedom. He has also been slowly developing a greater capacity for risk and pain throughout the film: first fighting, then a chemical burn, then a car crash. Ultimately though, it is this feeling of agency: that he has accepted his agency and taken control that is the key component. And what has spurred him to do so? In my view: Marla. And that’s because of what happens next. Marla joins him, and notably he sends the men away. As Tyler’s plans blow up in their faces, he takes her hand and tells her, with one of the all time great final lines: “You met me at a very strange time in my life.” As the world explodes around them, they hold hands and turn to each other.
My goodness. What a movie. What an ending. There’s only one thing missing. A penis. Ah, there it is.
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Epilogue
I could wax lyrical about Fight Club all day, but I’d like to focus on two related aspects in particular. First of all, I’d like to talk about the hidden importance of Marla. It took me a while to figure out the structure of Fight Club. It was only when I really focused on the question of what choices the narrator makes that I really got it. It’s a basic question for sure, but surprisingly easy to overlook. With Tyler, Jack is largely following and/or observing. And Tyler is such a larger than life figure that he’s hard not to get distracted by.
But the scenes where Jack makes decisions are the ones with Marla. And these decisions map his trajectory. At the end of Act I, he calls her but doesn’t speak. At the end of Sequence III, she calls him but he chooses to leave her to die (if he believes her). When she makes a pass at him, he calls her trash. At the midpoint though, she asks for help and he comes. He’s brusque, but soon tries to be softer with her. He feels guilty. When this leaves an opening for vulnerability though, he goes with Tyler and shuts her out, ending the honeymoon sequence. He then rejects her without realising when he himself feels rejected by Tyler’s absence, thinking that she’s not really interested in him. Then he rejects Durdenism when Tyler threatens her life. I think part of the reason why this didn’t stand out immediately is that many of Fight Club’s sequence tensions are not directly about Marla. And if there are 6 sequence tensions in Act II as I’ve outlined here, only the second of them is obviously based around Marla. The others: chasing the dream of Tyler. But on reflection, these others are largely caused by Marla. Jack creates Tyler after Marla invades his groups. He moves in with him to avoid speaking to Marla. He burns himself shortly after Marla makes a sexual advance on him. All of Tyler’s actions could be viewed as a reaction to Marla’s. And I think this is why, as I said earlier, that I felt like I understood Fight Club without really being able to put my finger on exactly why. The film hides this growth towards Jack’s need in plain sight while distracting us with the dynamism and pizzazz of Tyler and the exponential growth and menace of Project Mayhem.
There’s another point to note on this: it’s different in Jim Uhl’s script. In Uhl’s script, Jack doesn’t call Marla at the end of Act I. Many events are moved around but most fascinating to my mind is that the midpoint is the Raymond K Hessell scene. This plays out quite like the film’s scene, except for the notable fact that Tyler tells Jack at this point that he blew up his condo. This then becomes Jack’s first conscious move towards his need. And at the end of Act II, Tyler does not threaten Marla’s life. There’s more, but I think this gets to the point. In the script, Marla is much more the reward that Jack gets for attaining his need. The fact that in rewrites, Fincher et al decided to shape the story much more around Marla is a clear sign that they made a conscious decision to make her the cause for Jack’s change, rather than their relationship just being the result of it. In this way, in the film, if not in the original script, Marla represents the argument of the film.
Now this idea of argument is something I am especially keen on discussing in Fight Club. We are presented with a problem: Jack is somnambulant, feeling untethered from everyone else and from feeling much of just about anything. And then, he looks to the counterargument of the film: personified by Tyler. If you can just rid yourself of your need for others, says Tyler, if you can just purify yourself of emotional need through pain... you can be free.
Now, there’s a reason why Tyler Durden is so iconic and quotable. There’s some real appeal to a lot of what he’s saying, especially to dispossessed young men. But the important point here is that Tyler’s is the counterargument. And for the argument, or thesis, to be proven, it should be tested by the strongest form of its counterargument. We’ve all seen that film where the girl has a choice between the rich snob and the work-in-progress soul mate, and lo and behold, she chooses her soul mate. That is an argument of sorts. But while it often is comforting, it’s never actually convincing. Cos the so called counterargument is too busy shouting at a waiter, or obviously flirting with other women, or being Bill Pullman to ever actually pose a problem to the argument.
So for a really good story to work, we need a real counter-argument. But there’s something else to note. The very talented screenwriter Hugh Travers once told me a story to illustrate a point: A monster comes to a village. The hero trains and trains. Eventually, the time has come to do battle. If the hero wins the battle, the story is about bravery and hard work overcoming any obstacle. If the hero loses the battle, it’s a story about hubris and knowing your limitations. It’s a great illustration of the fact that: endings define stories.
At the end of Fight Club, Jack rejects Tyler. He sends the men away to be alone, open, and vulnerable with Marla. This is the argument, and a rejection of the counterargument. Now, I can understand to some extent the controversy around Fight Club, but personally I’m glad that Fight Club makes the counterargument as compellingly as it can. It’s why Fight Club is great, and so iconic. These dark impulses are real and present. And Jack really does use elements of this counter-argument, or antithesis, to overcome his initial problem. But while Jack is beguiled by Tyler for most of the film, the key point is that he rejects Tyler at the end of the story and chooses Marla and the argument of human connection.
And so, I am not only told by Fight Club, but I am convinced by Fight Club, that things really can get dark, and modern life really can be tiring and isolating and desensitising and dehumanising, and despite all of that, we still need each other, and we can find each other. And that, for my money, is the message and the power of Fight Club.
This has been Mark Overanalyses Films on Fight Club. In the next episode, I’ll be looking at selfishness, death, and obsession in the family movie Soul! If you enjoyed this episode, please like, rate, follow, recommend, and whatever else it is that’s good for this kind of thing! A special thanks to Mary Kate O’Flanagan who taught m everything I know about film, including these methods. Thanks for listening. Take care of yourselves, and see you soon.