Fight Club: How Tyler Durden Changed - Book vs. Film

this episode is brought to you by ridge wallet [Music] what's up wisecrack michael here welcome to the first episode of our new series book vs film where we'll size up the differences between our favorite films and shows and the novels mangas and comics they're adapted from i guess it should be called film slash television show vs novel slash comic slash other source material but well whatever and rest assured this ain't no listicle in classic wisecrack fashion we'll ask the eternal question what does it all mean our first case study chuck pollinik's 1996 novel fight club and its transformation into the 1999 david fincher film of the same name on the surface the movie seems like a near-carbon copy of the book with a few minor details changed but what if those minor details actually change the message of the film let's find out and obviously spoilers ahead for the book and novel for starters let's see what the film and novel have in common the basic story beats are pretty much the same in both we open on a guy with a gun in his mouth before jumping back to the events that brought him there a fake native cancer support group with another phony named marla meeting a guy named tyler durden who convinces them to start a fight club that fight club escalating into a terrorist faction called project mayhem and the big surprise reveal tyler is the narrator's alter ego we end back at the beginning the narrator with the gun in his mouth killing off tyler durden so basically the same story right even some of the most memorable speeches in the film are taken practically word for word from the novel and you buy furniture tell yourself that's it that's the last sofa i'm gonna need whatever else happens got that sofa problem handle but don't call the film a carbon cappy just yet let's take a look at the minor but meaningful differences between the two now before we compare and contrast i want to give a shout out to someone who helps us keep the studio lights on this week's sponsor 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the movie justified or not can be understood through this line advertising has us chasing cars and clothes working jobs we hate so we can buy we don't need now before you fight club stance throw your books at me in protest yes this line is taken from a very similar one in the novel but strangely enough in the book it's said by one of tyler's henchmen the mechanic so what impact does this difference make well director david fincher spelled it out in an interview explaining that the real act of sedition would be to spend a ton of money on a film and to put movie stars in it and get people to go and talk about the anti-consumerist rantings of a schizophrenic madmen having brad pitt a bonafide a-lister give these anti-consumerist speeches legitimizes the argument and it worked people still emulate tyler to this day if you search tyler durden jacket on amazon well you can take your pick that's not the only difference to make sure people invested in tyler and his message the film softened many of his rougher edges for instance in the novel tyler eventually becomes homicidal killing the narrator's boss and the mayor's special envoy on recycling let's uh go to the book and see about this one marla yells you shot the mayor's special envoy on recycling tyler shot the mayor's special envoy on whatever however the film goes out of its way to show that tyler has no intention of harming anyone we're not killing anyone man we're setting them free so there's the whole blowing up the credit card build instead but movie tyler makes a point that the buildings are empty and even when he threatens a convenience store clerk at gunpoint it's revealed the gun has no bullets getting rid of tyler's darker characteristics makes his ideology all the more enticing it's easy to dismiss the words of a homicidal madman but it's much harder to do so if that person technically isn't hurting anyone so clearly tyler durden takes on vastly different meanings as a character when you compare the film to the novel but that's not all difference 2 the meeting the way the narrator first meets tyler is also dramatically different in the film here the narrator first encounters tyler on an airplane during a business trip but in the novel he meets his other half while he's lounging on a nude beach why this change see there are two facets to the narrator and tyler's relationship the mentor mentee aspect and the more carnal side the book's meat cute is pretty homoerotic the film's airplane scene however primarily presents tyler as a mentor introducing the narrator to unsettling new ideas you know why they put oxygen masks on planes so you can breathe oxygen gets you high in a catastrophic emergency you're taking giant panic breaths suddenly you become euphoric docile you accept your fate this speech mirrors the narrator's status quo he's a corporate drone moving through life without any agency just like the people on the plane he's accepted his fate he will work his dead-end nine-to-five job in perpetuity tyler however jolts the narrator out of this comfort zone how's it working out for you what being clever this is the central tenet to their dynamic in the film a mentorship where tyler forces the narrator to examine his life choices and break free from his self-imposed shackles however in the novel when the narrator first meets tyler he's buck ass naked in the sand and what's the very first thing the narrator notices about tyler his body how i met tyler was i went to a nude beach tyler was naked and sweating gritty with sand his hair wet and stringy hanging in his face just one second now to be fair the film definitely plays into their homo eroticism with bath breaks petty jealousies and all but it also blurs the line between the narrator's jealousy of tyler's hyper masculinity and his straight up sexual desire for the guy in contrast the novel by having the meet at the beach really centers the plot on the whole i want to be and maybe want to bang this man thing but it's not just the central relationship of the story that changed which brings us to marla difference number three marla's backstory the film explicitly frames marla as an unfulfilled object of the narrator's desire and also is this kind of mere image just as he fakes having diseases to get a good cry so does marla and this infuriates him you big tourist i need this now get out but this paired down version of marla necessarily excises much of her backstory this in turn makes her a far less sympathetic character than she is in the novel in the film marla doesn't really have a reason to go to the cancer support groups when asked about it she simply says it's cheaper than a movie in this free coffee but in the novel marla tells the narrator that she goes to these groups to feel more alive let's go to the book to check this one out all her life marla never saw a dead person there was no real sense of life because she had nothing to contrast it with now that she knows where we're all going marla feels every moment of her life later on in the film marla asked the narrator to check her breast for lumps i need you to check and see if there's a lump in my breast the narrator checks doesn't feel any lumps and then immediately asks to leave however in the novel the narrator actually does feel a lump and what's more this isn't the first time it's happened to marla turns out her first breast cancer scare is what prompted her to go to the support groups in the first place so yes the narrator's description of marla is identical in the film and the novel marla's philosophy of life is that she might die at any moment the tragedy she said was that she didn't but it takes on an entirely different context in each version in the film the line comes across as a little edgelordy or even ironic since marla isn't sick however in the book it's a tragic declaration marla might actually be dying she goes to a clinic to see but leaves after deciding she'd rather not know if she is dying she doesn't want her life to end in a drawn-out process of being sick in a hospital but her tragedy is that she won't die unexpectedly saving her from the prolonged ritual of dying from cancer or anything else as a result everything marla does including her suicide attempt has extra weight in the novel but in the film marla becomes merely a goal for the narrator and a means to expose his own self-loathing he believes that if he can become more of a man he will be deserving of her affection this isn't a mutual reciprocated love story it's all one-sided with an emasculated man puffing up his own ego so that he can be macho enough to ask a girl out so basically marla gets a short shaft difference number four the credit card building but we haven't dealt with arguably the most action-packed part of the story the whole terrorist turn now in the film tyler plans to blow up buildings housing credit card companies in the novel he has a very different target why is this interesting because it further changes how we view him in the film tyler's plan is to destroy any records housed by credit card companies giving everyone a clean slate without these windows we will view the collapse of financial history one step closer to economic equilibrium however in the novel he's far more self-motivated viewing himself as a messianic figure his ultimate plan isn't to destroy a bunch of credit card companies instead he wants to blow up the tallest skyscraper which will topple onto a national museum taking himself out in the explosion as a martyr his ultimate goal to prop himself up as a legend and become immortal let's check this part out in the book this isn't really death we'll be legend we won't grow old whereas tyler's plan in the novel is presented as purely self-aggrandizing destruction the film adds a selfless political angle something that audiences would in fact even root for this was very much intentional as producer ross grayson bell recalled i said what if they blow up the credit card companies and everybody woke up one day and they didn't have to pay their bills we needed something where the audience members would cheer the destruction of the world the film ends with bombs exploding as marla and the narrator watch holding hands even if we know on some level that tyler dying is justice served we can't help but sympathize with him in his cause at least a little bit however in the novel the bombs never go off tyler's plans are thwarted by his own incompetence and this kind of makes him the punchline not the hero nothing explodes i say tyler you mixed the nitro with paraffin didn't you paraffin never works here tyler's failure serves as a refutation of everything he's espoused and stood for this change affects how the audience ultimately views the character in the novel we laugh at tyler yet in the film we cheer him difference number five the lost ending okay so the movie ends with buildings collapsing and a pixie soundtrack but after tyler's failure the book keeps going and this is really important after the bomb malfunctions there's an added code where the narrator wakes up and what he believes is heaven but is actually a psych ward so why does the film end on an uplifting note whereas the novel ends with him arguing with a psychologist he mistakenly believes is god it's because they're not going for the same theme the film focuses on a man discovering his confidence and reasserting his manhood whereas the book stresses a man rebelling against his father both in the paternal and religious sense this is why the film ends on a triumphant note since the narrator owns his masculinity and triumphs over tyler he wins marla's affections however the book's ending reflects a far more ambiguous message according to writer chuck pollinik the central message of fight club was always about the empowerment of the individual through small escalating challenges in a way it's like everyone rebelling against dad and discovering their own power by killing the father as the buddhist would say eventually you have to kill your father and kill your teacher the film touches upon this kill your father theme in a moment adapted from the novel as the narrator and tyler discuss who they wish they could fight most tyler reveals he wants to beat up the father who abandoned him i found my dad i don't know my dad i mean i know him but he left when i was like six years old married this other woman had some other kids both the novel and the film then extend this absentee father figure into a metaphor for god himself just as fathers abandon their unwanted children god has abandoned this world this sentiment is expressed in nearly identical lines said by tyler in the film and the mechanic in the book our fathers were our models for god if our fathers bailed what does that tell you about god listen to me i have to consider the possibility that god does not like you never wanted you in all probability he hates you this is not the worst thing that can happen we don't need him however the novel takes this one step further than the film when tyler is first introduced on the beach he uses logs of wood to build a makeshift hand in the sand also that for one moment he can sit within the hand of his creation tyler shrugged and showed me how the five standing logs were wider at the base what tyler had created was the shadow of a giant hand the giant shadow hand was perfect for one minute and for one perfect minute tyler had sat in the palm of a perfection he'd created himself in this instance tyler has forsaken god and become his own creator this moment foreshadows the creation of fight club and project mayhem in which tyler and the narrator become gods or fathers to their followers to everybody there i am tyler durden the great and powerful god and father and just as the narrator's father abandoned him he too ultimately does the same thing to his own children turning against the space monkeys and trying to topple their terrorist regime but it's not quite that simple in the novels coda it's revealed that many of the orderlies in the psych ward are actually members of project mayhem waiting for tyler to return because every once in a while somebody brings me my lunch tray in my meds and he has a black eye or his forehead is swollen with stitches and he says we miss you mr durden the end of polynyk's novel unlike the film isn't a perfect triumph for the narrator he's still stuck in his own delusions surrounded by his unwanted children and ironically he's become the very thing he was rebelling against in the first place an absentee father but what do you think wisecrack space monkeys do you have a preferred version of fight club what other differences did you spot in the two versions sound off in the comments and let us know what you think also let us know what you think of this new format and what other books and movies you'd like us to break down hit that subscribe button like it's your hotter alter ego's nose and be sure to ring that bell huge thanks to our patrons for all your support and as always thanks for watching later [Music]

Channel: Wisecrack

Views: 249,244

Keywords: fight club, brad pitt, tyler durden, chuck palahniuk, chuck palahniuk interview, david fincher, fight club (book), edward norton, fight club (film), literature, fight club book vs movie, marla singer, helena bonham carter, film analysis, video essay, film vs book, book vs film, fight club explained, wisecrack michael burns, david fincher interview, philosophy, deep or dumb, what went wrong, brad pitt fight club, fight club book, wisecrack fight club, fight club wisecrack

Id: OpDhXDprKh0

Length: 16min 2sec (962 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020