David Fincher's psychological thriller Fight
Club was an enigmatic ride that still leaves audiences scratching their heads upon review. The 1999 pic ended with a twist and a bang
— and undermined everything we thought we saw before the final act. To clear up any lingering confusion about
this modern classic, here's a breakdown of what actually happened at the end of Fight
Club. Will the real Tyler Durden please stand up? Early on in Fight Club, we're introduced to
Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden, a buff, tough, and rough guy who lives and breathes chaos. "How's that working out for you?" He befriends our sleepless Narrator, played
by Edward Norton, and the two cook up a plan to wage war on the ills of capitalism. Only, as we discover in the final act, Tyler
isn't real. He's the human embodiment of a frustrated
corporate drone's desperate yearning to destroy the system that's confined him. If Fight Club were shot from a third-person
perspective, it would be the story of a mentally unbalanced man leading a bizarre double life. By day, he's a bored office worker. By night, he's a charismatic cult leader who
likes to punch things. But thanks to the movie's unreliable first-person
narrative, we see Tyler like the Narrator sees him: as a charming nihilist who gets
the girl. It takes Norton's character a while to figure
everything out, but eventually he starts to realize that he's Tyler … "What'd you just call me? Say my name." "Tyler Durden, Tyler Durden." That's when he confronts Tyler — and discovers
that he created this man in his own image … or at least the image of what he wants
to be. "All the ways you wish you could be, that's
me." "I am free in all the ways that you are not." So, basically, Tyler is a hallucinatory hitman,
hired by the Narrator's subconscious to blow up his life … and a few other things along
the way. All the clues Fight Club doesn't tip its hand much when
it comes to foreshadowing its big twist, but Tyler Durden actually appears on four separate
occasions before we ever really meet him — in the form of single-frame blips on the screen. On re-watch, these moments are meant to be
clues that Tyler isn't a real person. And it's no coincidence that our first glimpses
of Tyler come in the form of subliminal messages, since he liked to add subliminal private parts
to movies in his night job as a projectionist. By the time he makes his grand entrance as
the Narrator's airplane seatmate, you kinda feel like you know him. "Nobody knows that they saw it, but they did." One of Fight Club's niftier tricks is that
despite being the film's two central characters, Tyler and the Narrator almost never interact
with each other in front of anyone else. But one notable exception is a moment that
takes place about two thirds of the way through, when they're in a car crash along with two
other members of Project Mayhem. On first watch, this scene seems like a couple's
spat of sorts between the Narrator and Tyler, with the Mechanic and Steph playing the part
of a bizarre Greek chorus in the background. But if you delete the Narrator's half of the
dialogue, the scene still totally works as an illustration of indoctrination-in-action. "Let go!" After the accident, it's worth noting that
Tyler emerges from the passenger side and pulls the Narrator from the driver's seat,
showing, once again, that Tyler was never really there. We need to talk about Marla As far as the Narrator is concerned, Marla
is a nuisance and an interloper whose noisy sexual relationship with Tyler keeps him awake
all night. But from Marla's point of view, the Narrator
and Tyler are one and the same — which actually goes a long way toward explaining why she
continues to maintain a relationship with him. The Tyler Durden Marla knows is moody, emotionally
unavailable, and kind of a jerk to her. As far as Marla is concerned, though, Tyler
is a perfectly ordinary breed of bad boyfriend — and one who's good enough in bed to be
worth the continued emotional investment. "You met me at a very strange time in my life." After all, they started out as just a couple
of group therapy tourists, so they were equally messed up from the get-go. Is Tyler dead? In the final moments of Fight Club, the Narrator
decides to rid himself of Tyler once and for all — by shooting himself. By doing so, he simultaneously takes and surrenders
control, and is reborn into one whole self. "It's only after we've lost everything that
we're free to do anything." For all intents and purposes, Tyler Durden
as the Narrator knew him is dead, and the real Tyler is free to be whoever he wants
to be. With Marla at his side, he watches calmly
as Project Mayhem reaches its inevitable conclusion. But the point of Project Mayhem was to destroy
all debts so that civilization could start anew without everyone being so beholden to
consumerism. "Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes,
working jobs we hate so we can buy s--- we don't need." And since this was just the first of many
groups going forward with the plan for apocalyptic destruction to dismantle the system, after
the credits roll, Tyler Durden's legacy definitely lives on — for good or for ill. [Gunshot]
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