WARNING MAJOR FIGHT CLUB SPOILERS

A few nights ago I decided to watch Fight Club. For a while, I had put watching Fight Club off because of all the hype, I had heard a lot about it and I didn’t really understand why there was so much fuss over a movie about people who fight each other. However, whilst watching a Netflix Special about cliches in movies, and the bomb scene from Fight Club was featured. I was a little confused having scene that since I couldn’t really connect people fighting with a bomb scene that looked like it was from Mission Impossible, but I was intrigued.

The movie begins with a slow burn. The first few scenes just introduce the main character, he’s really nothing special just a slightly nerdy white guy with mundane life and a mundane job. So mundane in fact that he begins to develop a major insomnia problem. As it gets worse, he begins to attend various support groups as it helps him cry and therefore actually get some sleep. At this point, I’m thinking to myself How the hell does this turn into a bunch of guys fighting. When his support group sessions get invaded by another faker, he quits. Instead, he takes up random one-time interactions on the plane as a form of therapy. On one of these flights, he meets Tyler, a young, attractive, charismatic, and interesting guy who makes soap for a living.

Although Tyler clearly is more interesting than the main character, they both share the same problem: their lives are extremely boring. They start the Fight Club, as the Fight Club grows, it gains massive traction, Tyler spreads it from city to city and basically becomes the god of people with mundane lives. His influence over them becomes so strong in fact, that he convinces them to become terrorists. They burn a smiley face into a building and even blow up multiple financial headquarters to erase people’s debt. The main character freaks out. He had no involvement in the terrorism, just the Fight Club but he knew that Tyler had dragged him into committing one of the most serious crimes.

In a final confrontation with Tyler, the main character begins to realize that he has been Tyler this whole time. Tyler was a figment of his imagination created by his insurmountable insomnia that represented everything he wanted to be in life. He was Tyler and even was so delusional that he sometimes pictured himself watching what Tyler was doing. I had begun to suspect that the main character’s insomnia had something to do with it because the plot was getting so bizarre that some of this had to be hallucinated. However, I kind of believe that this was one of those Usual Suspects type movies in which the viewers are meant to catch on earlier than the characters but still feel uncertain because of how off the rails the movie was before.

These types of movies are my absolute favorites. Much like No Country For Old Men or Momento, for most of the movie, I could not figure where this movie was going, and as the movie progressed, the plot spiraled further and further into its own insanity, and by the end, you don’t really know what to feel because you’re still trying to figure out what the hell you just watched. I’m still thinking about a lot of what happened in that movie, and some of it still perplexes me a little, but I am certain that it was one of the best movies I’ve seen in months, and it’s definitely about a little more than just guys who fight each other.