Trust me. Everything's gonna be fine.
Fight Club (dir. David Fincher, 1999)
I.
One has many good reasons to despise the Chinese Communist Party: for what they did to sparrows, for example, during the Four Pests campaign; for the mindless destruction of the four olds during the Cultural Revolution; and for the misery they have inflicted on the entire world thanks to the Wuhan coronavirus.
But now there's a new reason to hate the CCP: for what they have done to the ending of David Fincher's Fight Club (1999), one of my favourite films ...
II.
Although recently authorising the movie's availability on the streaming platform Tencent Video, the censor-morons of the CCP just couldn't allow it to pass without imposing their own brutal edit.
Thus, whilst the original film closes with a strangely touching scene in which the unnamed narrator-protagonist (played by Edward Norton) holds hands with Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) and watches as the world of financial services comes tumbling down in an explosive finale courtesy of Project Mayhem, the new Chinese version cuts this scene entirely and replaces it with a black screen upon which a caption reads:
The police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding.
It is also revealed that Norton's schizophrenic character was sent to a lunatic asylum for psychological treatment.
This is so ridiculous: we are now living in a world in which the defenders of the banks and credit card companies are the Chinese Communist Party ...! One is tempted to remind them of Chairman Mao's famous line oft-repeated by members of the revolutionary Red Guard:
Marxism comprises many principles, but in the final analysis they can all be brought back to a single sentence: It is right to rebel.
Anyway, for those who would like to be reminded of - or perhaps watch for the first time - the original ending of Fight Club in all its terrible beauty and dark humour, click here.
This post is in memory of Robert Paulson.
Update: 07-02-22: It seems that the original ending to Fight Club has been restored in China. I doubt this was due to the above post, but as a friend of mine joked: TTA 1 CCP 0.
