allie

The movie Fight Club and the novel Fight Club are both highly violent, dark but humorous love stories. They are both the story of the relationship between two men, Tyler Durden and the Narrator, and the way underground boxing clubs change their perception of their lives. Both the movie and the book are profound works, with much to say about the state of society today and one’s place in it. The novel Fight Club and the movie of the same name, though similar in theme, dialogue, and character relationships, have distinct differences, such as the character of Tyler, the chronological composition, and the ending, that allow both the movie and book to stand independently as meaningful works.

Both the movie Fight Club and the book Fight Club explore many of the same themes, such as existentialism and anti-materialism. Both the movie and the novel portray Tyler’s doctrine and lifestyle in the house on Paper St. as very existential. Tyler has a monologue in which he explains that if there is a god, it’s entirely possible that he doesn’t care about or like the Narrator, and in that case, nothing the Narrator does matters. In the novel and the movie, Tyler preaches anti-materialism to the Narrator by encouraging him to give up his possessions. Tyler also delivers his anti-materialistic message through the Space Monkeys, a group of bald-headed Tyler-disciples working for Project Mayhem, a guerilla group that fights against the blatant materialism in society through acts of terrorism such as planning the bombing of credit card companies and dropping a piece of corporate art onto a franchise coffee shop.

Just as the themes in both the book and movie are the same, much of the dialogue in the movie is taken straight from the book. There are many lines in the Fight Club movie script taken directly from the novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, such as when the Narrator says “That old saying, how you always kill the one you love, well, look, it works both ways.” The identical dialogue in the movie and book make the two works very similar.

The relationship between Tyler and the Narrator is also the same in the book and movie. In both the movie and book, Tyler and the Narrator turn out to be the split personalities of the same person. The love triangle where Marla wants the Narrator, the Narrator wants Tyler, and Tyler wants Marla also plays out in the movie as well as in the book.

Although the relationship between Tyler and the Narrator is the same in both the book and movie, the character of Tyler differs greatly from the book to the movie. In the book by Chuck Palahniuk, Tyler’s motivation is more fanatical. He comes off as less of a hero, and more as a misguided renegade. In the book, Tyler blows up the credit card companies to destroy the Natural History Museum below, and to make a statement about rejecting responsibility for the mistakes of the generations who came before. In the movie, Tyler ends up appearing to be a hero, crusading against consumerism and fighting for the everyday man. His motivation for bombing the credit card companies in the movie is more anti-materialistic. He wants to destroy all the credit card records and put everyone back at zero. The character of Tyler and his motivation for his actions changes from the book to the movie.

While the book and the movie share common themes and dialogue, the chronological composition is very different. While both start with a flashback, the film medium allowed the director less latitude when it came to chronological order. After the initial flashback, the timeline of the movie is relatively linear, to prevent confusion. The timeline in the novel jumps around. Though it begins with the same flashback as the movie, the book continues to jump from scene to scene, going forward in time and then back. The medium is what allowed Chuck Palahniuk to do this; the division between chapters is the perfect opportunity to jump around. The absence of chapter divisions in the film medium would have made it much more difficult to jump around the timeline the way Palahniuk does in the novel.

One of the biggest differences between the movie Fight Club and the novel is the ending. In the film, the story ends with the destruction of Tyler and the collapse of all the credit card buildings except the one the narrator is in, due to the failure of the paraffin explosives Tyler used. It is implied in the movie that Project Mayhem is destroyed along with Tyler, and the Space Monkeys are lost without a leader. In the novel, the end shows the Narrator in “heaven”, which is apparently some kind of hospital, possibly in the psychiatric ward. Tyler is also destroyed in the novel, but the Narrator is informed that Project Mayhem has become a self-run machine and the Space Monkeys are still out there completing missions. The novel also differs from the movie in that the paraffin explosives fail completely. Tyler fails and none of the credit card company buildings are destroyed.

Overall, there are many similarities between the novel Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk, and the film Fight Club, directed by David Fincher, but the differences are significant enough that both works can stand alone as meaningful, separate stories. The differences in the character of Tyler and the slight plot differences make the film and the novel diverse enough that both can be enjoyed as separate works. While the book and movie are distinct, they’re both highly enjoyable, and can be experienced separately, without comparing the two detracting from either.

Works Cited

Fight Club. Dir. David Fincher. Perf. Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham     Carter. DVD. 2008.

Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1996.