A couple of weeks ago, it was revealed that “Fight Club” was added to a Chinese streaming platform recently, but with a brand-new ending. Instead of the ending where buildings are blown up and Project Mayhem wins the day, a new, more government-friendly ending was added, where the film shows a title card explaining how the bad guys lost. Fans were confused and a little irritated by what was happening (even though the new ending is oddly reminiscent of the source material novel). Well, now we have David Fincher to try to clear things up. A little bit, at least.
READ MORE: China Censors Give ‘Fight Club’ A Totally Different Ending Because Why Not
Speaking to Empire about the recent censoring of “Fight Club” in China, David Fincher talked about how it happened and why he’s confused about why his film was even licensed in China to begin with. (Note: the original ending was restored after the backlash, but it still brings up an interesting point about films being altered in certain countries.)
“It’s funny to me that the people who wrote the Band-Aid [ending] in China must have read the book because it adheres pretty closely,” Fincher said.
For those confused by that comment, the original novel ends very differently than the film. The novel actually ends with the Narrator being locked up in a mental ward, simliar to the censored Chinese ending. Although, there was still a fair bit of mayhem in the book that was removed from the altered finale.
How did this come to be? Well, apparently the studio wasn’t exactly sure what it was getting itself into when the company signed the licensing agreement with the Chinese distributor.
“Here’s what we know,” said the filmmaker. “A company licensed the film from New Regency to show it in China, with a boilerplate [contract]: ‘You have to understand cuts may be made for censorship purposes.’ No one said, ‘If we don’t like the ending, can we change it?’ So there’s now a discussion being had as to what ‘trims’ means.”
He added, “If you don’t like this story, why would you license this movie? It makes no sense to me when people go, ‘I think it would be good for our service if we had your title on it… we just want it to be a different movie.’ The fucking movie is 20 years old. It’s not like it had a reputation for being super cuddly.”
While it appears “Fight Club” has been restored to its original cut in China, you have to wonder what else might happen in the future with other films? Clearly, the studios in China have no qualms for greatly altering films that don’t adhere to their guidelines. We’ll just have to see if another instance strikes a chord like it did with “Fight Club.”