"Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk Review 2

Movie Cover for "Fight Club"

Book Response 2: #25 (G) Compare and contrast the book to the movie version.

I cannot tell you how much I love the movie fight club. After watching it once all the way through it instantly become one of the best movies I have ever seen. I would recommend anyone and everyone to watch it regardless of background, personality, or even age. 

After reading the book, the movie seems like a home-made amateur movie made in a basement somewhere by kids with way too much time on their hands and active imaginations.


I still think it's one of the best movies I've ever seen, but the book gave me an entirely new perspective that the movie could not. In the movie there were many unique concepts for theatrical purposes that I thought were pure genius, such as the repetitive nature of the main characters narration, a certain amount of time line jumping that was just enough of a shock to draw you in more and more each time it happened, while still being able to follow along. It made me think I was watching two movies at once, at the same time watching the same movie from the middle. And this is not entirely attributed to the fact that the book and movie actually start out the narration with the end of the story.


These concepts are amplified ten-fold in the book, switching from the middle to the end to the beginning to descriptive ideas and theories and instructions that aren't based in any time in the book and seem unrelated to the story, yet somehow you feel compelled to read them and soak them in until you understand them completely. It feels like true subliminal messaging to the fullest extent possible in a book that you choose to read. 


What really struck me as the difference between these two mediums telling the same story was the ending. In the movie, it leaves you feeling somewhat inspired and happy-go-lucky, without a magnitude of attachment still clinging. That doesn't mean I think you don't walk away from it without an entirely new perspective or desire to go over it in your head, just without a longing passion for it. 

In the book this couldn't be more opposite. After reaching the last page, I was begging on the inside for more. I ate up the after word like a starving dog, and it still wasn't enough. I was literally crestfallen that this story was at an end and I could not take the ride any farther. At the same a part of me was hoping something about this story was, well, true (as awful as that sounds if you consider all the violence and destruction). I thought to myself, " There has to be something about this that is real, something more. How can something so gripping and hypnotic and intriguing be just a story? And how can it be over?"