The Second Rule of Fight Club is, DO NOT Blog about Fight Club

In the previous blog, I discussed many of the various elements of cool that Fight Club encompasses. Although these individual elements can be found in other films, I can’t think of any movies that incorporate all or even most of them. Fight Club takes cool to another level. Everyone has their own opinions of what are the coolest movies of all time. Many people have even complied lists and post them on various sites for discussion. Some movies are debated, but I don’t think anyone can deny the cool of Fight Club.

It is extremely difficult to compare Fight Club to other films because it is a unique combination of so many different genres, as well as types of cool. Fight Club is much like Identity (2003) in the fact that the main character in both has some sort of personality disorder. The narrator becomes Tyler Durdan when he blacked out or thinks he’s asleep. In Identity, Malcolm Rivers is a psychotic killer that has multiple personalities that interact with each other in his mind. Whenever one of the murderous characters kills another in his head, he kills someone in real life. The use of personality disorders creates interesting films and makes for tremendous twist endings, like in both of these films. The twist ending is an extremely cool element, but Fight Club is a much cooler film than Identity.

Fight Club obviously has many elements a fight movie. Fight movies are all about the action and the violence. A good example of a typical fight movie is the recently released Fighting. Not one of the greatest movies I’ve ever seen, but some pretty impressive fight scenes. Fighting captures a similar style of bare-knuckle fight scenes that are in Fight Club. The characters in Fighting enter fights for the prize money and for pride, completely different from the men in Fight Club. The thrill and excitement of the fight scenes in both movies is the same even though the surrounding context is not. Pride and money are not noble motives and for that reason Fight Club wins again in the cool contest. David Fincher created a revolutionary film that combined a wide variety of genres and types of cool together with innovative cinematography. Fight Club is modern classic that should be on everyone’s top film list.

The First Rule is Do Not Blog about Fight Club

I have always heard people quote Fight Club, but I have never actually seen the film until this week. I was pleasantly surprised because I was honestly expecting a fight movie. As soon as realized the twist in the ending, I was kind of shocked and immediately thought I need to watch this again.

I believe that Fight Club was a great choice to end the semester because encompasses so many different aspects of cool that we discussed. One of the most prevalent elements of cool throughout the film is cool satire. The film satirizes capitalism and consumerism. The main example that the film uses to represent consumerism is Ikea furniture. In a similar fashion to Robocop, the satire in Fight Club provides lighthearted humor to an otherwise extremely intense movie. Towards the end the film also satirizes the subversion that is essentially the solution to the first problem. Project Mayhem becomes a cult and the film satirizes the members’ undying devotion to Tyler Durdan.

Another important element of cool in Fight club is cool escapism. The narrator escapes from his life by creating Tyler Durdan, a separate personality that comes out when the narrator blacks out and thinks that he is asleep. Tyler is the narrators escape from the life of a consumer, working a boring 9 to 5 job. The narrator’s escape through Tyler, can be compared to the escape that Tony Manero, from Saturday Night Fever, feels when he is on the dance floor.

Many of the elements of cool we have seen in film throughout the semester are also present, but in smaller amounts. There is cool love like in the film Jules et Jim. The narrator, Tyler and Marla have a pretty dysfunctional love triangle just like Jules, Jim, and Catherine. Cool imitation is also present. Allan looks up to Bogart in Play it Again, Sam and tries to imitate his cool. In Fight Club, all of the members idolize Tyler and try to be as cool as he is. Cool criminality is definitely a part of Project Mayhem. Like the gangsters in The Public Enemy, the members of Project Mayhem the city by committing a variety of crimes in the night. All of these elements of cool wrapped into a single films makes for one of the coolest movies I have ever seen in my entire life. I can’t believe I had not seen it prior to this week. Fight Club definitely made my favorites list.