(rock music)
- (Michael) What’s up, Wisecrack? Michael here. Welcome to the first episode of our new series, Book v. Film,
where we’ll size up the differences between our favorite films and shows, and the novels,
mangas and comics they’re adapted from. I guess it should be called film slash television show vs
novel slash comic slash other source material but, well, whatever. And rest assured - this
ain’t no listicle: in classic Wisecrack fashion, we’ll ask the eternal question: what does it all
mean? Our first case study: Chuck Palahniuk’s 1996 novel - Fight Club and its transformation into the
1999 David Fincher film of the same name. On the surface, the movie seems like a near-carbon copy
of the book, with a few minor details changed. But what if those minor details actually change the
message of the film? Let’s find out. And obviously spoilers ahead for the (*film*) and novel.
For starters, let’s see what the film and novel have in common. The
basic story beats are pretty much the same. In both, we open on a guy with a gun in his mouth
before jumping back to the events that brought him there: Faking it at cancer support groups
with another phony named Marla meeting a guy named Tyler Durden who convinces him to start
a fight club that fight club escalating into a terrorist faction and the big surprise reveal:
Tyler is the narrator’s alter ego. We end back at the beginning, the narrator with the gun
in his mouth, killing off Tyler Durden. So basically the same story, right? Even some
of the most memorable speeches in the film are taken practically word for word from the novel.
- (Narrator) When you buy furniture, you tell yourself, that's it, that's
the last sofa I'm gonna need. Whatever else happens, I've got that sofa problem handled.
- (Michael) But don’t call the film a carbon copy just yet. Let’s take a look at the minor,
but meaningful differences between the two.
Difference Number One: This Line. As it turns out,
a lot of the criticisms of the movie, justified or not, can be understood through this line:
- (Tyler) Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes. Working jobs we hate
so we can buy sh*t we don't need.
- (Michael) Now, before you Fight Club-stans throw your books at me in protest, yes -- this line is
taken from a very similar one in the novel. But strangely enough, in the book, it’s said
by one of Tyler’s henchmen, The Mechanic. So what impact does this difference make? Well, director
David Fincher spelled it out in an interview, explaining that “The real ‘act of sedition…’”
would be to spend a sh*tton of money on a film “and to put movie stars in it and get people to
go and talk about the anticonsumerist rantings of a schizophrenic madman.” Having Brad Pitt - a
bonafide A-lister - give these anti-consumerist speeches legitimizes the argument. And it worked.
People still emulate Tyler to this day. If you search “Tyler Durden jacket” on Amazon… well,
you can take your pick. That’s not the only difference. To make sure people invested in
Tyler and his message, the film softened many of his rougher edges. For instance, in the novel,
Tyler eventually becomes homicidal, killing the Narrator’s boss and the Mayor’s Special
Envoy on... Recycling? Let's go to the book and see about this one: Marla yells, "You shot the
mayor's special envoy on recycling!" Tyler shot the mayor's special envoy on whatever.” However,
the film goes out of its way to show that Tyler has no intention of harming anyone.
- (Tyler) We’re not killing anyone, man. We’re setting them free!
- (Michael) So there’s the whole “blowing up the credit card buildings” thing. But movie Tyler
makes a point that the buildings are empty. And even when he threatens a convenience store clerk
at gunpoint, it’s revealed the gun has no bullets. Getting rid of Tyler’s darker characteristics
makes his ideology all the more enticing. It’s easy to dismiss the words of a homicidal madman,
but it’s much harder to do so if that person technically isn’t hurting anyone. So, clearly,
Tyler Durden takes on vastly different meanings as a character when you compare the film to the
novel. But that’s not all. Difference Two: The Meeting. The way the Narrator first meets Tyler
is also dramatically different in the film. Here, The Narrator first encounters Tyler on an airplane
during a business trip. But in the novel [scene pauses, plane bg gets cropped and a stock photo
beach is slid in], he meets his other-half while he’s lounging on a nude beach. Why this
change? See, there two facets to the Narrator and Tyler’s relationship: the mentor/mentee aspect,
and the more… carnal side. The book’s meet-cute is pretty homoerotic. The film’s the airplane scene,
however, primarily presents Tyler as a mentor, introducing the narrator to unsettling, new ideas.
- (Tyler) You know why they put oxygen masks on planes?
- (Narrator) So you can breathe. - (Tyler) Oxygen gets you high.
In a catastrophic emergency, you take giant panicked breaths,
suddenly you become euphoric, docile. You accept your fate.”
- (Michael) This speech mirrors the Narrator’s status quo -- He’s a corporate drone moving
through life without any agency. Just like the people on the plane, he’s accepted his fate:
he will work his dead-end 9-5 job in perpetuity. Tyler, however,
jolts The Narrator out of this comfort zone.
- (Tyler) How’s that working out for you?
- (Narrator) What? - (Tyler) Being clever?
- (Michael) This is the central tenet to their dynamic in the film: a mentorship where Tyler
forces the Narrator to examine his life choices and break free from his self imposed shackles.
However, in the novel, when The Narrator first meets Tyler, he’s buck ass-naked and lying in
the sand. And what’s the very first thing the Narrator notices about Tyler? His body.
“How I met Tyler was I went to a nude beach… Tyler was naked and sweating,
gritty with sand, his hair wet and stringy, hanging in his face.” Just one second.
Now, to be fair, the film definitely plays into their homoerotiscm -- with bath breaks,
petty jealousies and all. But it also blurs the line between the narrator’s jealousy of Tyler’s
hyper-masculinity and his straight-up sexual desire for the guy. In contrast, the novel -- by
having them meet at the beach, really centers the plot on the whole “I want to be and maybe want to
bang this man” thing. But it’s not just the central relationship of the story that changed.
Which brings us to Marla. Difference Number Three: Marla's Backstory. The film explicitly frames
Marla as an unfulfilled object of the Narrator’s desire, and also as his kind of mirror-image.
Just as he fakes having diseases to get a good cry, so does Marla, and this infuriates him:
- (Narrator) Marla you liar, you big tourist, I need this! So get out!
- (Michael) But this pared-down version of Marla necessarily excises much of her
backstory. This in turn makes her a far less sympathetic character than she is in the novel.
In the film, Marla doesn’t really have a reason to go to the cancer support groups.
When asked about it, she simply says:
- (Marla) It’s cheaper than a movie and there’s free coffee.
- (Michael) But in the novel, Marla tells the Narrator that she goes to these groups to
feel more alive. Let's go to the book to check this one out. “All her life, [Marla] never saw
a dead person. There was no real sense of life because she had nothing to contrast it with...
Now that she knows where we're all going, Marla feels every moment of her life.”
Later on in the film, Marla asks the Narrator to check her breast for lumps
- (Marla) I need you to check and see if there's a lump in my breast.
- (Michael) The Narrator checks, doesn’t feel any lumps and then immediately asks to leave.
However in the novel, The Narrator actually does feel a lump - and what’s more:
this isn’t the first time it’s happened to Marla. It turns out her first breast cancer
scare is what prompted her to go to the support group in the first place. So yes,
the Narrator’s description of Marla is identical in the film and the novel --
- (Narrator) Marla's philosophy of life, she told me, is that she can die at any moment.
The tragedy of her life is that she didn't.
- (Michael) BUT it takes on an entirely different context in each version. In the film, the line
comes across as a little edge-lordy or even ironic since Marla isn’t sick. However, in the book,
it’s a tragic declaration. Marla might actually be dying - she goes to a clinic to see but leaves
after deciding she’d rather not know. If she *is* dying, she doesn’t want her life to end in a
drawn-out process of being sick in a hospital. But her tragedy is that she won’t die unexpectedly,
saving her from the prolonged ritual of dying from cancer or anything else. As a result, everything
Marla does - including her suicide attempt - has extra weight in the novel. But in the film,
Marla becomes merely a goal for the Narrator and a means to expose his own self-loathing. He believes
that if he can become more of a ‘man,’ he will be deserving of her affection. This isn’t a mutual,
reciprocated love story-- it’s all one sided -- with an emasculated man puffing up his own ego
so that he can be macho enough to ask a girl out. So basically, Marla gets a short shaft.
Difference Number Four: The Credit Card Building. But we haven’t dealt with arguably the most
action-packed part of the story: The whole terrorist turn. Now, in the film, Tyler plans to
blow up buildings housing credit card companies. In the novel, he has a very different target.
Why is this interesting? Because it further changes how we view him. In the film, Tyler’s
plan is to destroy any records housed by credit card companies, giving everyone a clean slate.
- (Tyler) Out these windows, we will view the collapse of financial history.
One step closer to economic equilibrium.
- (Michael) However, in the novel, he’s far more self-motivated, viewing himself as a Messianic
figure. His ultimate plan isn’t to destroy a bunch of credit card companies. Instead he wants to blow
up the tallest skyscraper which will topple onto a national museum, taking himself out in
the explosion as a martyr. His ultimate goal: to prop himself up as a legend and become immortal.
Let's check this part out in the book. “This isn't really death… We'll be legend. We won't
grow old." Whereas Tyler’s plan in the novel is presented as purely self-aggrandizing destruction,
the film adds a selfless political angle - something that audiences would in fact even root
for. This was very much intentional. As producer Ross Grayson Bell recalled: “I said, ‘What if they
blow up the credit card companies, and everybody woke up one day and they didn’t have to pay their
bills?...' We needed something where the audience members would cheer the destruction of the world.”
The film ends with bombs exploding as Marla and the narrator watch, holding hands. Even if we
know on some level that Tyler dying is “justice served”, we can’t help but sympathize with him and
his cause at least a little bit. However, in the novel, the bombs NEVER go off. Tyler’s plans are
thwarted by his own incompetence. And this kind of makes him the punchline, not the hero. “Nothing
explodes... I say, Tyler, you mixed the nitro with paraffin, didn't you. Paraffin never works.”
Here, Tyler’s failure serves as a refutation of everything he’s espoused and stood for. This
change affects how the audience ultimately views the character -- in the novel, we laugh at Tyler,
yet in the film - we cheer him. Difference Number Five: The Lost Ending. Ok, so, the movie ends with
buildings collapsing and a Pixies soundtrack - But after Tyler’s failure, the book keeps going.
And this is really important. After the bomb malfunctions, there’s an added coda where the
Narrator wakes up in what he believes is heaven… but is actually a psych ward. So why does the film
end on an uplifting note, whereas the novel ends with him arguing with a psychologist he mistakenly
believes is God? It’s because they’re not going for the same theme: the film focuses on a man
discovering his confidence and re-asserting his manhood; whereas the book stresses a man rebelling
against his ‘father’ both in the paternal and religious sense. This is why the film
ends on a triumphant note. Since The Narrator owns his masculinity and triumphs over Tyler, he wins
Marla’s affections. However, the book’s ending reflects a far more ambiguous message. According
to writer Chuck Palaniuk, “The central message of Fight Club was always about the empowerment of the
individual through small, escalating challenges… In a way, it’s like everyone rebelling against
dad, and discovering their own power by killing the father, as the Buddhists would say. Eventually
you have to kill your father and kill your teacher.” The film touches upon this ‘kill
your father’ theme in a moment adapted from the novel. As The Narrator and Tyler discuss who they
wish they could fight most, Tyler reveals he wants to beat up the father who abandoned him.
- (Tyler) I'd fight my Dad. - (Narrator) I don't know my Dad. I mean, I know
him, but he left when I was like six years old, married this other woman, had some other kids.
- (Michael) Both the novel and film then extend this absentee-father figure into a metaphor
for God himself. Just as fathers abandon their unwanted children, God has abandoned this world.
This sentiment is expressed in nearly identical lines, said by
Tyler in the film and The Mechanic in the book:
- (Tyler) Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed,
what does that tell you about God? - (Narrator) No, no I don't, no!
- (Tyler) Listen to me - you have to consider the possibility that God does not like you,
never wanted you. In all probability he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen.
- (Narrator) It isn't? - (Tyler) We don't need him!
- (Michael) However, the novel takes this one step further than the film. When Tyler is first
introduced on the beach, he uses logs of wood to build a makeshift hand in the sand - all so that
for one moment he can sit within the hand of his creation. “Tyler shrugged and showed me how the
five standing logs were wider at the base… What Tyler had created was the shadow of a giant hand…
The giant shadow hand was perfect for one minute, and for one perfect minute, Tyler had sat in the
palm of a perfection he'd created himself.” In this instance, Tyler has forsaken God and
become his own Creator. This moment foreshadows the creation of Fight Club & Project Mayhem,
in which Tyler and the Narrator become “gods” or “fathers" to their followers. “To everybody there,
I am Tyler Durden the Great and Powerful. God and father.” And just as The Narrator’s father
abandoned him, he too ultimately does the same to his own ‘children’ -- turning against the Space
Monkeys and trying to topple their terrorist regime. But it’s not quite that simple. In
the novel’s coda, it’s revealed that many of the orderlies in the psych ward are actually members
of Project Mayhem, waiting for Tyler to return. “Because every once in a while, somebody brings
me my lunch tray and my meds and he has a black eye or his forehead is swollen with stitches,
and he says: "We miss you Mr. Durden." The end of Palaniuk’s novel, unlike the film,
isn’t a perfect triumph for The Narrator. He’s still stuck in his own delusions,
surrounded by his unwanted children. And ironically he’s become the very thing he
was rebelling against in the first place: an absentee-father. But what do you think,
Wisecrack Space Monkeys? Do you have a preferred version of Fight Club? What other differences did
you spot in the two versions? Sound off in the comments, and let us know what you think. Also,
let us know what you think of this new format, and what other books and movies you’d like us to
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