I was excited to see that Fight Club was the first movie being shown for movie night. It is a movie that’s reputation precedes it. It is nearly two decades old, but I’d taken great care to make sure that I went in without any spoilers. I will stick to analyzing a few small aspects of the film since there are literally books written about the film.

After the film Professor Hill discussed some of the cinematography choices in the film. He highlighted how the background will often contrast what is being said in the film. That was something I hadn’t noticed, but I think it is very important to understanding the underlying themes.

The fight scenes were some of my favorite scenes. They were executed very well, and I would disagree that they were gratuitous. I heard a few comments after the film that the violence was over top. I think that is one of the places that Fight Club showed it’s age. Compared to something like Game of Thrones, the fight scenes were downright subdued. Even the most violent scene between Norton and the underlying he is jealous of won’t make a top 10 list for violence in 2016. If a message of the movie depended on the amount of violence depicted, I think that message is a little lost watching it now.

In terms of the plot twist, the split personalities was given away a little too early for my liking. It was fairly obvious in the first few scenes of Marla in the house. Maybe keeping the plot twist a secret wasn’t the point of the movie, but I feel a little more mileage could’ve been gotten of the Pitt and Norton dynamic without the audience knowing they were split personalities.

The actual plot twist for me was the explosions to me. I was expecting for the other members of fight club to be figments of Norton’s imaginations. I am still not convinced that they aren’t. The whole theme of Norton fighting his true desires doesn’t seem to fit with him successfully destroying credit card companies. Norton seems to live in his world yet he is someone how able to successfully execute such a huge plan.

I can’t really go into dissecting the ending more than that since I still am trying to process all the themes from the movie.  The movie is still well worth a watch almost two decades after it initially premiered.