Chuck Palahniuk Approves Of China’s Alternated Fight Club Ending

Fight Club is perhaps one of the greatest club movies of all time. Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden has made one of the most charming anti-heroes of all time, though China seems to think that the authorities were the real heroes.

Social media was in deep disarray after the news started circulating that the Chinese version of Fight Club had an alternate ending. The version that was altered before being made available for streaming had a written ending, which said:

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.

The new ending addressed the nameless character of Edward Norton as Tyler. While it is great that he received proper psychiatric treatment, many people thought that the new ending defeated the purpose of the film.

Chuck Palahniuk, the author of the novel which was later adapted into a movie by David Fincher, expressed that Chinese ending of the movie was truer to his vision of the story. In an interview with TMZ, he said that the Chinese helped making the movie closer to the original novel. He also noted the irony that while a lot of Americans were angry at the change, the book is banned in many parts of the U.S.

The irony is that the way the Chinese have changed it is they’ve aligned the ending almost exactly with the ending of the book, as opposed to Fincher’s ending, which was the more spectacular visual ending. So in a way, the Chinese brought the movie back to the book a little bit. What I find really interesting is that my books are heavily banned throughout the U.S. The Texas prison system refuses to carry my books in their libraries. A lot of public schools and most private schools refuse to carry my books. But it’s only an issue once China changes the end of a movie? I’ve been putting up with book banning for a long time.

Palahniuk is considered a very controversial writer. While this sort of alterations and restrictions are not new to him, Fight Club is perhaps his most successful work which has enjoyed global influence.

What’s your take on this story? Sound off in the comments!