27年前，布拉德·皮特电影《搏击俱乐部》票房惨败，却因另一个原因成为经典

The year 1999 brought us some of the best movies of the decade. That year gave us The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, Magnolia, American Beauty, and The Blair Witch Project. Then, on October 15, came David Fincher’s Fight Club, a movie that was able to piss people off before anyone even had a chance to see it. The film, based on a novel by Chuck Palahniuk and starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, was not exactly what audiences expected from a big Hollywood studio. And though the first rule of Fight Club is that you don’t talk about Fight Club, eventually people had a lot to say about it.

Norton stars as The Narrator, an unnamed insomniac office worker who becomes enamored of Tyler Durden, played by Pitt. Together they form an underground fight club that evolves into Project Mayhem, an anarchist movement determined to destroy consumer society. Helena Bonham Carter is Marla Singer, who gets involved with both men as things get out of hand. Screenwriter Jim Uhls adapted Palahniuk’s 1996 novel, mixing dark comedy, psychological horror, and social satire into a film that would have been a tough sell no matter how Fox marketed it.

Fox Didn’t Want to Talk About Fight Club

Fight Club cost about $63 million to make and opened to just $11 million, though it was number one at the box office during its opening weekend. It went on to gross approximately $37 million in the U.S. and $101 million worldwide. It was not quite the box office smash hit Fox had hoped for. The studio also had a hard time figuring out how to market the film. The movie was delayed to October after the shootings at Columbine High School, with ads focusing on Brad Pitt’s body and the underground fighting rather than what the film was really about. The movie was featured in a Fox promotional reel in front of The Phantom Menace that marketed Fight Club alongside Anna and the King, Fox’s family event remake of The King and I, and the Don Bluth animated film Titan A.E. Advertising Fight Club next to family entertainment probably wasn’t the best move.

Then there was Rosie O’Donnell. The comedian hated Fight Club so much that she intentionally spoiled its biggest twist on her daytime talk show. O’Donnell said in a 2021 interview that Courtney Love had to inform her that Pitt and Norton were still pissed off about what she’d done. I can’t really blame them. Fincher did so much work hiding the movie’s central twist in plain sight. Here’s the clip of her critique of the film:

DVD Gave Fight Club a Second Life

Fight Club arrived on DVD on June 6th, 2000, and that’s when things started to turn around. The two-disc collector’s edition was packed with four audio commentaries, deleted scenes, documentaries, and promotional material. This was back when DVD extras were a big deal, and Fight Club gave people plenty of reasons to spend more time with the movie. Fincher also enjoyed the format by adding secret features, odd theater PSAs, and other little goodies dotted across the discs. The 2009 Anniversary Blu-ray even started with a fake menu for Drew Barrymore’s Never Been Kissed before revealing you were actually watching Fight Club. The prank was masterminded by Fincher himself, who got permission from Barrymore. Guess we know who Fincher likes as a talk show host.

But the real advantage of DVD was its rewatchability. Tyler Durden appears in single frames before he is introduced, and Fincher has littered the film with clues that are obvious once you know what you are looking for. Those discoveries were starting to be shared, and the movie was getting recommended to friends who’d missed it in theaters. The first rule of Fight Club was not to talk about Fight Club. Everyone began breaking the rules after it was released on DVD.

Project Mayhem Eventually Went After Batman

After the release of Fight Club, several members of Project Mayhem eventually made their way into Batman’s world. Jared Leto, who played Angel Face, played the Joker in Suicide Squad, and Holt McCallany, who played the Mechanic and would later star again for Fincher in Netflix’s Mindhunter, appeared as the rooftop burglar Batman confronts in the first scene of Justice League. You could almost see Fight Club as a prequel to Leto’s Joker, with Angel Face eventually leaving Project Mayhem for Gotham City. Even Meat Loaf, who played Robert Paulson, had a connection to Batman. His 2006 album Bat Out of Hell III included the song “In the Land of the Pig, the Butcher Is King,” which was originally written by Jim Steinman for an abandoned Batman musical. Apparently, Project Mayhem is a good job to have on the resume for Gotham’s underworld. Below is the Batman the Musical version of the Meatloaf song, because if I have to remember it, so do you:

Tyler Durden became one of Pitt’s most recognizable characters, although some viewers missed that the movie was satirizing his ideology. Project Mayhem is essentially a cult whose members surrender their identities while believing they’re fighting for freedom. Nevertheless, Tyler’s speeches became endlessly quoted, and the movie inspired real-world fighting clubs. There’s something wonderfully ironic about an anti-consumerist movie becoming a merchandising phenomenon. Nothing better demonstrated this misunderstanding than the PlayStation 2 and Xbox video game Fight Club, released in 2004. Rather than delving into the film’s critique of masculinity and violence, it became a generic fighting game in which players could brutally beat each other, complete with bone-breaking finishing moves. It even included Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst as a playable character. The game received a miserable 37 on Metacritic, indicating that its developers had completely missed the point of Fight Club.

Palahniuk eventually continued his story with Dark Horse Comics, which released Fight Club 2 in 2015 and Fight Club 3 in 2019, both illustrated by Cameron Stewart. The sequels centered on Tyler Durden’s ongoing influence and the consequences of Project Mayhem. Stars Pitt and Norton were photographed together at a World Cup match at SoFi Stadium earlier this year, resulting in yet another round of Fight Club jokes on the internet. Twenty-seven years later, people are still discussing the film. Based on that reunion, Norton is still trying to talk himself into a sequel.