Rule number should rather be: we do not change the end of fight club. Twenty-three years after its release in most countries around the world, David Fincher’s cult film is finally available in China on the Internet. Alas, the epilogue has been changed.
The communist regime only authorizes the broadcasting on this territory of a handful of foreign films each year and the censors do not hesitate to delete the scenes likely to disturb.
This time, it is therefore the film with Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, which has been the victim of a scissor cut.
A modified anarchist and anti-capitalist message
Savvy moviegoers have noticed that the version of the film released by the Tencent Video platform has changed the anarchist and anti-capitalist message of the work.
In the original version, the narrator played by Edward Norton kills his imaginary alter ego played by Brad Pitt and witnesses the explosion of buildings, to the tune of Where Is My Mind? Pixies: the destruction of the modern world dreamed by the hero is underway.
The version broadcast in China, on the other hand, ends with a sort of happy ending.
“They totally change the scenario”
With this “happy ending”, the character played by Brad Pitt is indeed killed, but the images of the end of the world have disappeared. Instead, a message on a black background tells the public that: “The police have foiled the project and arrested all the criminals, preventing the explosion of the bombs”. It is specified that the character played by Edward Norton was interned in “an insane asylum”.
The truncated and rewritten end of the film has caused the amazement of many connoisseurs who have probably seen the original version on pirated copies.
“It’s a scandal,” commented a movie buff on the Tencent Video site. “They are no longer content with censoring scenes, they are completely changing the scenario”, is offended by a user on the Weibo social network.
Tencent had no comment. It was difficult to say if the changes were imposed by the authorities or if they were the result of a decision by the producers of the film.