If I had made an honest trailer for Fight Club, it’d probably be about 8 seconds long, consisting mostly of me saying “It’s awesome, right? I mean honestly.” But here’s the ScreenJunkies version, which is three minutes and 48 seconds of light criticism. To each his own, I guess.
“Follow Jack and Tyler as they tear down our society of mindless consumer slaves, by building a society of mindless actual slaves.”
I can’t tell if this is a criticism of the movie or of the audience, because it’s definitely an accurate criticism of the audience.
“…That barely anyone will notice because he’s so hot.”
Like Roger Ebert, who accused Fight Club of being “gleefuly fascist.”
“Fight Club” is the most frankly and cheerfully fascist big-star movie since “Death Wish,” a celebration of violence in which the heroes write themselves a license to drink, smoke, screw and beat one another up.
And that’s… bad? Though if you get into the meat of the review, it seems a lot like Ebert was reviewing the audience as well.
Although sophisticates will be able to rationalize the movie as an argument against the behavior it shows, my guess is that audience will like the behavior but not the argument.
Nail, meet head. Sounds a lot like some of the discussions we’ve been having about Gone Girl, doesn’t it? At this point, I’m pretty sure Fincher is doing it on purpose.