What Made Fight Club a Classic

July 28, 2009 at 1:41 am

The guy-ness of it

There are very few seriously male-centric movies out there. Sure there are action movies but those are carefully planned so as not to be too off-putting to the chicks that most guys will drag to the theater with them. Fight Club committed a marketing sin in not having any female-friendly sub-plots but became a classic for it.



Chuck Palahniuk’s ethic

The man has carved out a niche for himself among the asocial misfit punk-types. He has articulated an agenda for non-conformist, nihilistic anarchy. David Fincher managed to capture some of the appeal for the non-film-going audience.

Brad Pitt

Here we have a charismatic star, playing a character that is written to be charismatic for a director who knows what he is doing. Fight Club was created to be a perfect storm of Tyler Durden-ness.

The fact that it failed at the box-office

This removed the Harry Potter pop-factor from it. The commercial-failure aspect means that you can still like it and think of yourself as being too raw and edgy for prime-time. If this movie had been a hit nobody would remember it now. It would have been relegated to being a Brad Pitt vehicle and probably be considered extremely dated.

The non-materialism

Make a movie that seriously, thoughtfully encourages people to not do something that people naturally do and people who want to be different from everybody else will flock to it. This movie provides a political identity to people who lack one, which is a brilliant marketing strategy.

The variety

This movie has a ton of little sub-plots and asides and fascinating minor characters. Choke , the sucky little abortion of a movie could have had that going for it but the director lacked the talent and imagination. Fincher made sure there was lots of little short-attention-span stuff that made the movie feel like an epic.

Share this: Twitter

Facebook

Like this: Like Loading... Related

Entry filed under: Uncategorized.