New Delhi, (Samajweekly) More than two decades after its release, cult film ‘Fight Club’ has been given a very different ending in China — and this time, the authorities win, CNN reported.
Chinese fans of David Fincher’s cult classic were enraged over the weekend when they noticed a version of the movie available on popular Chinese streaming platform Tencent Video completely removing its iconic ending, the report said.
The finale of ‘Fight Club’ had shocked audiences when the film hit theatres in 1999. In a massive twist, the narrator, played by Edward Norton, realises that Brad Pitt’s slick-talking Tyler Durden character is his imaginary alter ego, and kills him off.
In the final scene, the narrator stands with his girlfriend, played by Helena Bonham Carter, as they watch explosives blow up a cluster of skyscrapers — all part of what was originally presented to the audience as Durden’s plan to destroy consumerism by erasing bank and debt records, the report said.
CNN reported that the amount of anarchy — and the government’s inability to stop it — doesn’t appear to have passed muster with China’s notoriously strict censorship rules, though.
In the version available on Tencent Video, which CNN Business was able to view on the platform, the entire scene featuring the explosions has been cut out. Instead, it has been replaced with a caption explaining to audiences that the authorities arrived just in time to save the day.
“Through the clue provided by Tyler, the police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all the criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding,” the caption read, adding: “After the trial, Tyler was sent to [a] lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment. He was discharged from the hospital in 2012.”
