Fight Club has become one of the defining movies of our generation. The line “the first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club” has been commandeered and repurposed for all sorts of things. And sometimes, people don’t even know what it’s from, because the movie happened in 1999. But that’s engrained in the culture now. That’s a part of the American lexicon. And it came from a movie. This movie. And you’d be surprised how many people don’t know it.
Fight Club wasn’t very popular when it first came out. There were a lot of critics that thought it would inspire copycat fight clubs across the country. But the director, David Fincher, tried to make sure that the fighting wasn’t the core concept of the movie. That sounds hypocritical, of course, because the movie is called Fight Club. But when you watch it, it’s actually a philosophical movie about psychology and consumerism. That’s probably the reason it wasn’t so popular in the beginning, and then became the defining cult movie of, well, ever. Because people saw it at first and didn’t see it that way. But then, by word of mouth, more and more people got to see it over time. And just like in the movie, the concept spread.
The demographic this movie was geared towards was the disenfranchised gen-xers in their mid to late 20s at the end of the 1990s. The people who were IN this movie. The people this movie was talking about. Young men who were resonating with the main character because of their own personal situations in life. I think that’s another reason that the critics didn’t like it. Critics didn’t have that kind of view. They were movie critics. They had a purpose. But the guys who were out there pumping gas and waiting tables. They saw things differently.
There’s so many scenes in this movie that have become iconic over the years. Recognizable to the point that you can make memes out of them and people will recognize them without even having the context of what it is. Like the scene where Tyler says “I want you to punch me as hard as you can”. Most people know that line. Most people know that it’s a quote from something. But half the time, they can’t tell you what it’s from. Which I just find amazing.
So, yeah. Go and see Fight Club. Not only is it a great movie, it has an 81% on RottenTomatoes.com. But it’s also one of most notable movies in the last several decades. With themes and topics that might be as relevant today as they were when the movie first appeared almost 30 years ago. And as always, keep on watching, with a smile on your face…
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