Poll of the Day > Fight Club has a new ending in China

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment/fight-club-has-a-new-ending-in-china-where-the-authorities-win-1.5754873

'Fight Club' given new ending in China
CNN, Nectar Gan and CNN's Beijing Bureau
5-7 minutes

More than two decades after its release, "Fight Club" has been given a very different ending in China -- and this time, the authorities win.

Chinese fans of David Fincher's cult classic were enraged over the weekend when they noticed a version of the movie available on popular Chinese streaming platform Tencent Video completely removes its iconic ending.

The finale of "Fight Club" shocked audiences when the film hit theatres in 1999. In a massive twist, the narrator, played by Edward Norton, realizes that Brad Pitt's slick-talking Tyler Durden character is his imaginary alter ego, and kills him off.

In the final scene, the narrator stands with his girlfriend, played by Helena Bonham Carter, as they watch explosives blow up a cluster of skyscrapers -- all part of what was originally presented to the audience as Durden's plan to destroy consumerism by erasing bank and debt records.

That amount of anarchy -- and the government's inability to stop it -- doesn't appear to have passed muster with China's notoriously strict censorship rules, though.

In the version available on Tencent Video, which CNN Business was able to view on the platform, the entire scene featuring the explosions has been cut out. Instead, it has been replaced with a caption explaining to audiences that the authorities arrived just in time to save the day.

"Through the clue provided by Tyler, the police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding," the caption reads. "After the trial, Tyler was sent to [a] lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment. He was discharged from the hospital in 2012."

The new ending has infuriated some viewers. It wasn't clear when this version of the film appeared on Tencent Video, but screenshots of the edited film gained traction in China over the weekend, as commenters complained about the drastic alteration.

"This is too ridiculous," wrote one person on Tencent Video's page for the movie. Another called the change "a pillar of shame in cinematic history."

"No one wants to pay money to watch a classic that has been so ruined to such an extent," yet another person wrote on Douban, a movie review site.

Tencent declined to comment about the edit. CNN Business also reached out to the Cyberspace Administration of China, the internet regulator that oversees streaming platforms, as well as the China Film Administration, but neither government agency responded to a request for comment.

While it's unclear how or when the edit was made, it's not uncommon for foreign movies to undergo heavy censorship before finding a legitimate broadcast home in China. And the Chinese companies that hold the rights to international films in the country often self-censor to appease regulators before general releases.

According to the version of the film available on Tencent Video, the Chinese publisher of "Fight Club" is Pacific Audio & Video Co., a company based in the city of Guangzhou. It's affiliated with state-owned Guangdong Radio and Television.

A Pacific Audio & Video employee told CNN Business that she could not comment about the movie's streaming release. She did say, however, that the company no longer owned the rights to the movie's DVD release in the country, which it obtained more than a decade ago.

This isn't the first time Chinese audiences have been able to watch "Fight Club" legitimately in the country. The movie was shown at the Shanghai International Film Festival in 2006 -- an event that Norton and other Hollywood stars even attended -- according to Chinese media reports at the time.

That same festival screened the movie again in 2017. The China Film Archive in Beijing has also held screenings, according to Chinese media.

CNN Business did not attend those events, and so can not verify whether those screenings were edited. However, one Douban commenter who wrote about her experience watching the movie at the Shanghai International Film Festival in 2017 remarked about the "much anticipated ending," including the collapsing buildings.

Film censorship has a long history in China.

Since the early 1990s, authorities have allowed just a few dozen foreign films to be screened in the country each year -- only nine of the 26 Oscar best picture winners were screened publicly in China from 1994 to 2019, for example.

Movies or shows with controversial themes -- such as those that purportedly depict China in a bad light, portray taboo subjects like the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, or feature LGBTQ storylines -- are kept out entirely. And since China lacks a film rating system, any content approved by Chinese regulators is heavily edited to remove certain scenes, such as graphic sex or violence.

When the Oscar-winning Freddie Mercury biopic "Bohemian Rhapsody" was released in China in 2019, for example, any mention of the Queen singer's sexuality -- as well as his AIDS diagnosis -- was edited out.

And the American blockbuster fantasy drama "Game of Thrones," which built its popularity on graphic sex and violence, was censored so heavily on Tencent Video that some viewers complained that it was turned into a staid "medieval European castle documentary."

Chinese media generally will not depict the police or authorities as being in any way incompetent/corrupt, they are made to be hyper competent.

This is surprising though since the film is set in America, I don't think they usually give a shit if Americans are made to look bad, it actually backs up their propaganda.

I'm kind of surprised it ever made it there unedited in the first place.



Blightzkrieg posted...

This is surprising though since the film is set in America, I don't think they usually give a shit if Americans are made to look bad, it actually backs up their propaganda.

Yeah, but you don't want to encourage the idea that people rebelling against authority are heroic, even if the authority they're rebelling against is also seen as corrupt. Obedience has been a major Chinese virtue since looong before the current government, so it's not even as if it's a new mentality to have.

The government wins... but they still flash the dick pic... makes sense

Uh, the Chinese government is dumb trying to stop their citizens from watching the real ending

Who do they think sold me my bootleg copy of Fight Club.

I mean, don't ya'll know the first rule?

david finch actually prefers the new ending because it's closer to what he originally wanted but wasn't allowed to do

https://www.avclub.com/fight-club-china-censor-chuck-palahniuk-david-fincher-1848433608

i guess it was the book author and not the movie guy

CENSOR BYPASS:

Instead, it has been replaced with a caption explaining to audiences that the authorities arrived just in time to save the day.

There's something awesomely cheeky about this. It's just so fucking low effort.

wolfy42 posted...

I mean, don't ya'll know the first rule?

by asking that, you are talking about it

wolfy42 posted...

I mean, don't ya'll know the first rule?

What's the 2nd rule?

Not sure why the ending would be changed since they destroyed banks and nothing government related.

Muscles posted...

What's the 2nd rule?

Nobody knows other then it's shitty.

Revelation34 posted...

Not sure why the ending would be changed since they destroyed banks and nothing government related.

Banks are government owned in China. And so is pretty much everything else. And the police are ridiculously corrupt to the point where they will only arrest someone if conviction is beyond certain, as a result they have like 99% conviction rate. Can't let the people know that.

Zeus posted...

CENSOR BYPASS:

There's something awesomely cheeky about this. It's just so fucking low effort.

Tyler Durden died on the way back to his home planet

Muscles posted...

What's the 2nd rule?

same as the first

Zareth posted...

Tyler Durden died on the way back to his home planet

tbh, my first thought.

Anyone else notice that Fight Club and Goldeneye have basically the same plot?

Are you saying that Bond is Blofeld?

Goldeneye, not Goldfinger :/

I mean more the series in general, Janus (006 Trevelyan) is Bond too, the whole duality of the brothers, but really just a child fractured by the death of his parents and the lengths he went to get revenge and take power, to become the very thing that killed his parents.

The meta continuities of the James Bond narrative are even present in Jason Bourne. Which mirrors Tyler Durden.

Lokarin posted...

Anyone else notice that Fight Club and Goldeneye have basically the same plot?

They don't at all, although both villains kinda want to do something similar for very different reasons. That's not even close to "basically the same plot" because one is a spy thriller and the other is hard to categorize.

CENSOR BYPASS POSTED

I mean more the series in general, Janus (006 Trevelyan) is Bond too, the whole duality of the brothers, but really just a child fractured by the death of his parents and the lengths he went to get revenge and take power, to become the very thing that killed his parents.

The entire MI6 program largely recruits orphans so you're going to see that as a parallel time and time again, not just because of lazy writing but because it's a centerpiece of the program.

So it's like all white guys are really just the same person, which ties thematically to the end of Fight Club