One of the most surprising stories of 2022 so far has been the discovery that a new Chinese cut of Fight Club ends with considerably less mayhem than the version seen everywhere else in the world. David Fincher’s satire of toxic masculinity and capitalism recently came to streaming service Tencent Video, where it ended not with collapsing city blocks to the strains of Pixies classic ‘Where Is My Mind?’, but with the following text card: “Through the clue provided by Tyler, the police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding. After the trial, Tyler was sent to [a] lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment. He was discharged from the hospital in 2012.” It’s not far off ‘Poochie died on the way back to his home planet’ for abrupt text-based closers – and now, Fincher himself has spoken out about the edit.
“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,” the director tells Empire, noting the similarities to the final pages of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, where ‘Jack’ is in an institution at the end. What happened with this Chinese ending, then? “Here’s what we know,” he says. “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 censhorship 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.”
While the ‘trims’ are more significant than that word implies, Fincher is less frustrated, more bemused by the whole situation. “If you don’t like this story, why would you license this movie?” he asks. “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.” We are Jack’s hastily-slapped-on happy ending.
Read Empire’s full news story investigating the, er, alternative ending of Fight Club in the Moon Knight issue, on sale Thursday 17 February and available to pre-order online here.