For the past few weeks, Fight Club has been in the headlines after cinephiles noticed that China censored the ending to the over 20-year-old film. Interestingly, Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk had a surprising reaction to the film’s censorship thanks to the Chinese version matching the ending he originally wrote in the book. (In the new edit, Tyler Durden is arrested by the police before he can blow up several credit card buildings. He’s released from jail years later to pursue a happier life.)
However, the situation seemed to resolve itself when Tencent Video, who was streaming the film in China, quietly removed the censored ending with no explanation as to how or why the edits were made. Until now. In a new interview, Fight Club director David Fincher reveals how the whole thing happened and why it makes absolutely zero sense to him.
According to Fincher, the film was licensed to stream in China with the standard boilerplate provision that “you have to understand cuts may be made for censorship purposes.” What no one expected is that those cuts would involve just straight-up changing the ending (which will now be a concern going forward), and Fincher, for the life of him doesn’t understand the reasoning behind any of it. Via Empire:
While the ‘trims’ are more significant than that word implies, Fincher is less frustrated, more bemused by the whole situation. “If you don’t like this story, why would you license this movie?” he asks. “It makes no sense to me when people go, ‘I think it would be good for our service if we had your title on it… we just want it to be a different movie.’ The f*cking movie is 20 years old. It’s not like it had a reputation for being super cuddly.”
Like Palahniuk, Fincher also found it amusing that the edit actually matches the book, which means whoever censored it more than likely read the source material. Was this whole thing just someone taking “the book was better” to the extreme? Probably not, but maybe.
(Via Empire)
Source: https://uproxx.com/movies/david-fincher-how-fight-club-censored-china/
