The saga of the censored version of Fight Club streaming on Chinese site Tencent Video only took a few weeks to become a controversy and then disappear, but Fight Club director David Fincher hasn’t weighed in yet and he might as well chime in. For those who missed it, the edited version of Fight Club was largely the same, save for a new ending where on-screen text explains that the terrorist bombings orchestrated by Tyler Durden are foiled by the police and that Edward Norton’s character is taken to a hospital where he gets the psychiatric help he needed.
It was hilarious and—provided you are aware of the original ending and the story behind the new one—secretly way more ironically subversive than blowing up credit card companies ever could’ve been. It was also, as pointed out by Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk, pretty close to what happens in the original book. But, unfortunately, the original ending has been restored, and now viewers in China can see the buildings blow up like everyone who made the film intended. Yawn.
Speaking of everyone who made the film, though, let’s go back to David Fincher: In a conversation with Empire (via Variety), Fincher agreed with us that “it’s funny” that the Chinese edit “adhered pretty closely” to the book, and while that’s gratifying, he did also offer some insight into how the heck this happened. Fincher says production company New Regency licensed Fight Club to be shown in China with a “boilerplate” agreement, which would’ve had general language accounting for the fact that “cuts may be made for censorship purposes.”
That being said, he believes that nobody would’ve specifically asked New Regency if they could totally change the ending, so “there’s now a discussion being had as to what ‘trims’ means”—in other words, it sounds like the people who sign these kinds of agreements are realizing that they might need to be a little more specific when they agree to let films be censored for other markets.
As for the specific Fight Club edits, Fincher also wonders why anyone would bother licensing that particular movie if they didn’t like the ending. “It makes no sense to me,” he says, “when people go ‘I think it would be good for our service if we had your title on it… we just want it to be a different movie.’” He also added, “the fucking movie is 20 years old. It’s not like it had a reputation for being super cuddly.”