Fight Club - I gave up a bit more than part-way through
- Thread starter Gaith
- Start date
I must say that the particular criticism of the Norton character and Marla not getting it on directly seems very odd to me. How is this a plot hole? Or proving the movie lacks humanity?
Marla first shows up as an imposter on those self-help groups, mirroring the protagonist's own behaviour which he does sort of feel bad for. It takes him out of the experience of being accepted without question and being cared about. That's why he dislikes her at the start. But he's sort of a nice guy and so he helps her with the breast examination (and I find it sort of creepy that he's apparently expected to want to have sex with her because of that - can't men and women just be friends?) and why he helps the guy from the testicular cancer group and tries to get Marla out of danger later on.
Tyler Durden is everything he can't be, an anarchist, a sexual beast, an asshole, a radical. Over the course of the story, he does get more similar to Tyler. But in the end, he manages to regain control of himself and to become a more complete person. Or something like that.
Yes, the movie is somewhat juvenile, and of course, it doesn't really offer a viable solution to the inital problem, the alienation many people feel towards this consumerist society. That doesn't make it a bad film, though. There's no accounting for taste, of course.
Marla first shows up as an imposter on those self-help groups, mirroring the protagonist's own behaviour which he does sort of feel bad for. It takes him out of the experience of being accepted without question and being cared about. That's why he dislikes her at the start. But he's sort of a nice guy and so he helps her with the breast examination (and I find it sort of creepy that he's apparently expected to want to have sex with her because of that - can't men and women just be friends?) and why he helps the guy from the testicular cancer group and tries to get Marla out of danger later on.
Tyler Durden is everything he can't be, an anarchist, a sexual beast, an asshole, a radical. Over the course of the story, he does get more similar to Tyler. But in the end, he manages to regain control of himself and to become a more complete person. Or something like that.
Yes, the movie is somewhat juvenile, and of course, it doesn't really offer a viable solution to the inital problem, the alienation many people feel towards this consumerist society. That doesn't make it a bad film, though. There's no accounting for taste, of course.
Quoted for truth!
And I have to say the music.... which might be included in the style...
And Meat Loaf.... Meat Loaf's appeal cannot be understood in a description.
Sure they can, but that was obviously her attempt to seduce him. Why she would want to do so is something the movie never accounts for, but they both knew she didn't really ask him there to check for cancer.
One hardly needs to be a sexual beast to have sex with someone throwing herself at one like that.
How about the ludricrousness of the explicitly stated notion that throwing a few punches is a more effective muscle-building technique than going to the gym? How about the movie's glorification of senseless violence in making the fighting look so easy, fun and exciting, with (as Ebert points out) no broken fists, etc.? The point about the credit-card data backup is a good one, too.
My favorite scene was the one with the convenience-store clerk. It was dramatic, there was a real, believable character, and the plot briefly made total sense even on its own terms. Alas, the rest of what I saw just wasn't on that level.
But aye, Meat Loaf is great, even when playing such an emasculating part.
I think in the end, at the end of the movie, the ludicrousness of the glorification of violence is dealt with. In the end, Norton's character turns on the violence. He realizes it's not an answer, that it goes to far...
Checkmate
Commodore
Not when you go into it having already decided you're not going to enjoy it.@Trekker4747: Oops... got me.
A movie should compel one to keep watching by its halfway mark at the very most.Got bored. Read plot summary and reviews. Sticking to my conclusions. Not sorry.
And you weren't impressed after that, shocker.
You ever know someone who was so lacking in confidence, they become essentially androgynous? That was basically the main character.
If I'd decided that, I wouldn't have started it at all. I gave it a chance because I greatly enjoyed Seven.But go on, keep joining the crowd in dumping on me; makes you seem real mature.
Sure, but in my experience, those sorts of guys aren't in touch with their masculinity enough to enjoy bare-knuckled fighting.
Again, you're judging half a character. Though of course you may think and like whatever you want, it's hard to take your opinion seriously when you didn't even bother to watch the whole thing.Sure, but in my experience, those sorts of guys aren't in touch with their masculinity enough to enjoy bare-knuckled fighting.
I think Gaith is trying to make a subtle point about how people don't bother to form their own opinions and instead parrot around things that they've found on the internet. At least, I hope so.
It's also not supposed to be a hyper-realistic movie. It's simply suspension of disbelief that's a part of making the story work.
By using Ebert and synopses of a movie he hasn't watched?
It's a very subtle point.
Agreed. I would hardly hold the movie up as a realistic film. It's a fantasy. It's a VERY unreliable narrator.
agreed. if you're going to debate a film to this extent it would help if you actually finished it. heck, you'll most likely find even more things you dislike and we can debate that.Again, you're judging half a character. Though of course you may think and like whatever you want, it's hard to take your opinion seriously when you didn't even bother to watch the whole thing.Sure, but in my experience, those sorts of guys aren't in touch with their masculinity enough to enjoy bare-knuckled fighting.
With respect, Bull. The Narrator is, for all dramatic purposes, an independent character until the very end at least, and one who takes clear enjoyment in the hyper-masculine allure of Fight Club, so the notion that he shouldn't be able to feel lust because Tyler does doesn't add up. And your saying that I need to watch every frame of the movie to grok it doesn't neccessarily make it true.Again, you're judging half a character.Sure, but in my experience, those sorts of guys aren't in touch with their masculinity enough to enjoy bare-knuckled fighting.
Checkmate
Commodore
Yeah you would. As do most of the people on this forum at one time or another. You need fuel to bitch about, and when you can't think of anything, you go searching for something new to do so.
It's seen practically every day. You're nothing special, aside from being quite a bit more egotistical than most.
I have already said to keep this thread on topic and stop the little escalating slagging match going on here. If it continues, infractions will be issued. Discuss the content of the movie Fight Club, not the posters in this thread, or don't post in it again. That goes for everyone.
Sure, but in my experience, those sorts of guys aren't in touch with their masculinity enough to enjoy bare-knuckled fighting.
Well, he didn't expect to either. Tyler Durden suggested it and he decided why not. It ended up being a release he hadn't anticipated. The movie sets up a conflict between the restrained side and the free side. Fight Club was a way to release all restraints.
So, if you're a man and a woman throws herself at you, you must have sex with her, otherwise it's unrealistic? That's one screwed-up world view.
If you're referring to the scene where they comment on the adverts with half-naked muscled men in the bus, that's not what I'm getting out of this scene. The muscles of those models are just for show (and probably enhanced by artificial means) while the muscles the two main characters have acquired are useful, at least from their point of view. I agree in so far as there is a difference between muscles for show and muscles you get from stuff like hard work and which actually mean strength. Also, there's at least one scene where we see someone working out for Fight Club, so it's hardly just 'throwing a few punches'.
Oh, please. Are the Rocky movies a glorification of senseless violence? Many boxing films make the fighting look easy, fun and exciting, too. I don't doubt that the fighting would be exciting due to the adrenaline rush. And I suppose it's some kind of fun to the men, just like boxing is to others. The film does its very best to portray it as a pretty ugly affair, though, all in all, which is probably a lot more realistic than how violence is portrayed in many mainstream Hollywood movies. I know that at the time, some of my friends who had seen it were appalled by the fight scenes.
What's the obsession with broken fists? The notion that you can't hit someone else or even beat him up without breaking your hand is rather ridiculous. When boxing became popular (again, I suppose one has to say) in the early 19th century people hit each other with their bare hands. I doubt the sport would have survived if people had broken their hands all the time doing that. In the movie, some serious injuries are shown, I mean, one guy gets his face smashed in, so why harp on about a particular injury not getting shown?
I don't see how any of these things automatically make this a bad movie.
Without some kind of contextual explanation, with a woman in that sort of situation, yes, it can be unrealistic. She obviously called him there to seduce him, and he went - unless you think he actually believed her breast cancer examination story, in which case you take him for a total moron.
No, I'm referring to the line:
A guy who 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.
Which I now see doesn't quite say what I originally retained, but it does sort of imply it.
Okay, I'll broaden the criticism: the injuries they sustain, at least in the parts I watched, don't seem to cause any lasting pain. Narrator removes a tooth with more casualness than anything, and in spite of their many bruises, members seem more or less fine shortly after their fights.
As for the question of whether or not the movie glorifies the violence... again, I'll defer to Rabin's take on the full movie, which strikes me as fully plausible.