David Fincher's psychological thriller Fight Club was an enigmatic ride that still leaves
audiences scratching their heads upon review.
The 1999 pic ended with a twist and a bang — and undermined everything we thought we
saw before the final act.
To clear up any lingering confusion about this modern classic, here's a breakdown of
what actually happened at the end of Fight Club.
Will the real Tyler Durden please stand up?
Early on in Fight Club, we're introduced to Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden, a buff, tough,
and rough guy who lives and breathes chaos.
"How's that working out for you?"
He befriends our sleepless Narrator, played by Edward Norton, and the two cook up a plan
to wage war on the ills of capitalism.
Only, as we discover in the final act, Tyler isn't real.
He's the human embodiment of a frustrated corporate drone's desperate yearning to destroy
the system that's confined him.
If Fight Club were shot from a third-person perspective, it would be the story of a mentally
unbalanced man leading a bizarre double life.
By day, he's a bored office worker.
By night, he's a charismatic cult leader who likes to punch things.
But thanks to the movie's unreliable first-person narrative, we see Tyler like the Narrator
sees him: as a charming nihilist who gets the girl.
It takes Norton's character a while to figure everything out, but eventually he starts to
realize that he's Tyler …
"What'd you just call me?
Say my name."
"Tyler Durden, Tyler Durden."
That's when he confronts Tyler — and discovers that he created this man in his own image
… or at least the image of what he wants to be.
"All the ways you wish you could be, that's me."
"I am free in all the ways that you are not."
So, basically, Tyler is a hallucinatory hitman, hired by the Narrator's subconscious to blow
up his life … and a few other things along the way.
All the clues
Fight Club doesn't tip its hand much when it comes to foreshadowing its big twist, but
Tyler Durden actually appears on four separate occasions before we ever really meet him — in
the form of single-frame blips on the screen.
On re-watch, these moments are meant to be clues that Tyler isn't a real person.
And it's no coincidence that our first glimpses of Tyler come in the form of subliminal messages,
since he liked to add subliminal private parts to movies in his night job as a projectionist.
By the time he makes his grand entrance as the Narrator's airplane seatmate, you kinda
feel like you know him.
"Nobody knows that they saw it, but they did."
One of Fight Club's niftier tricks is that despite being the film's two central characters,
Tyler and the Narrator almost never interact with each other in front of anyone else.
But one notable exception is a moment that takes place about two thirds of the way through,
when they're in a car crash along with two other members of Project Mayhem.
On first watch, this scene seems like a couple's spat of sorts between the Narrator and Tyler,
with the Mechanic and Steph playing the part of a bizarre Greek chorus in the background.
But if you delete the Narrator's half of the dialogue, the scene still totally works as
an illustration of indoctrination-in-action.
"Let go!"
After the accident, it's worth noting that Tyler emerges from the passenger side and
pulls the Narrator from the driver's seat, showing, once again, that Tyler was never
really there.
We need to talk about Marla
As far as the Narrator is concerned, Marla is a nuisance and an interloper whose noisy
sexual relationship with Tyler keeps him awake all night.
But from Marla's point of view, the Narrator and Tyler are one and the same — which actually
goes a long way toward explaining why she continues to maintain a relationship with
him.
The Tyler Durden Marla knows is moody, emotionally unavailable, and kind of a jerk to her.
As far as Marla is concerned, though, Tyler is a perfectly ordinary breed of bad boyfriend
— and one who's good enough in bed to be worth the continued emotional investment.
"You met me at a very strange time in my life."
After all, they started out as just a couple of group therapy tourists, so they were equally
messed up from the get-go.
Is Tyler dead?
In the final moments of Fight Club, the Narrator decides to rid himself of Tyler once and for
all — by shooting himself.
By doing so, he simultaneously takes and surrenders control, and is reborn into one whole self.
"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything."
For all intents and purposes, Tyler Durden as the Narrator knew him is dead, and the
real Tyler is free to be whoever he wants to be.
With Marla at his side, he watches calmly as Project Mayhem reaches its inevitable conclusion.
But the point of Project Mayhem was to destroy all debts so that civilization could start
anew without everyone being so beholden to consumerism.
"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy s--- we
don't need."
And since this was just the first of many groups going forward with the plan for apocalyptic
destruction to dismantle the system, after the credits roll, Tyler Durden's legacy definitely
lives on — for good or for ill.
[Gunshot] "Whoa!
Whoa!"
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