"Fight Club" Is Not One Of David Fincher's Best Films
David Fincher's newest film, "The Killer," is set to be released here pretty soon. I'm very excited about it. When left to his own devices ("Alien 3" doesn't count), David Fincher does not make bad movies. He's responsible for some of the best films ever made. Whenever people bring up the short list of David Fincher masterpieces, "Fight Club" is often one of the first films that's referenced. I thought this way for a long time as well. When I was in middle school and high school, "Fight Club" was one of my favorite movies, but having rewatched it multiple times recently, I have to say, "Fight Club" is not one of David Fincher's best films.
Put down the torches and pitchforks for half a second. "Fight Club" is an iconic movie. If you haven't seen it, what the hell are you doing? Please seek it out as quickly as you can. It's a classic. I think David Fincher's top-tier is "The Social Network," "Se7en" and "Zodiac." Those three films stand above the rest as his finest works. "Fight Club" is at the top of that second tier, but I don't feel like it's aged, as well as some of his other films have. Everything that can be said about "Fight Club" has already been said. The performances are great, it's stylistic as hell, and it has one of the greatest twists in Hollywood history. It's an iconic film; I don't feel like it reaches the heights that some of his other movies reach.
As well-directed as "Fight Club" is, it's so heavily steeped in that late 90s and early 2000s style that if you look really closely, you can see a Mountain Dew logo at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. It doesn't make the movie bad; it just makes it a little bit dated. Every scene has a great flow to it, but ultimately, the message of the film is hollow. From what I gather from the movie, the message is essentially, "If you feel empty in life, just come up with an imaginary friend and commit domestic terrorism, and you'll find fulfillment." I'm not saying that I needed "Fight Club" to have some sort of unique moral to it, but every time it ends, I do feel a little bit let down, in large part, because I do think the ending of something of a cop-out.
As I said earlier, "Fight Club" has one of the greatest twists in Hollywood history. The twist makes complete sense; it doesn't come out of nowhere, and it actually makes the film better upon rewatch. I have zero complaints about the twist, but the very tail end is kind of lame. I know David Fincher criticized the movie "Joker" for being a betrayal of the mentally ill; "Fight Club" essentially ends with a character ridding himself of his mental illness by shooting himself in the mouth and surviving. I can deal with it not being realistic. I'm willing to suspend this belief, but it's not consistent with the rest of the film's tone.
For everything in "Fight Club" that isn't great, it's followed up with something that's remarkable. I don't think the climax of the film works 100%, but it has one of my favorite final lines of any movie. This movie became iconic for being one of those films that every 20-year-old had a poster of in their college dorm room in the 2000s. I understand why. It's a cool movie. You can't go through David Fincher's filmography and claim to be a fan of his work without giving it multiple watches, but it's not as tight from a narrative standpoint as some of his other movies.
I do think "The Social Network" is his best film. I believe as Fincher has gotten older, he's become more subdued with his direction, making him a stronger filmmaker. I'm very excited to see what "The Killer" has in store. Even though I argue that "Fight Club" isn't one of Fincher's best movies, it is still a great film. This blog is more of a recommendation than it is a scathing criticism. At the same time, I'm probably breaking the first two rules just by talking about it.
