Fight Club Movie Analysis

I have been a fan of Fight Club since the first time I saw it. I feel my understanding of the movie was largely impacted by the fact that I was not born and raised in America, and English is my second language. The first time I watched the movie, I did not even catch most of the social commentary Palahniuk had added in his work. Things like consumerism made sense, but I was ignorant of them, either because of simply being naïve or not quite understanding most of the references. Either way, the movie began to make more sense on subsequent movies as I began to get a better understanding of the American pop culture . The movie made more sense when I viewed it this time as I have a better understanding of American pop culture than I did when I watched the movie the first time. I only just recently learned that the movie is based on a novel of the identical name. Reading the novel was definitely a different experience, since I had already seen the movie on numerous occasions. I was able to visualize the scenes from the movie as they came up in the book. The characters were also easier to relate to, since I knew what they would look like. However, even though I had quite a few visual cues to aide …show more content…
Fight Club, on the other hand, is a rare exception where the movie ends up with a better interpretation of the story line than the source material. The only exception is that the novel did a better job of exploring Marla’s character. Especially, considering the beginning of the novel makes it sound like a love story about the narrator and Marla. I think there was a huge missed opportunity in bringing in Marla’s character only to catalyze certain events. Palahniuk could have added another layer of complexity to his novel by maybe digging into her psyche as well. Although, maybe it was for the better, since it could have made for an even more confusing read than it already