Man, Ted Cruz never learns. When he tweets about TV or movies, it never ends well for him, and he (a lawmaker) should have realized this after completely bungling the meaning of Watchmen while framing “rabid environmentalists” as the real supervillains. He (of course) did not learn, as the noted The Princess Bride superfan proved while feuding with Cary Elwes, and now, Ted’s wading into David Fincher territory.
Yes, the much maligned senator from Texas tweeted about Fight Club. Granted, this didn’t happen out of the blue. The Brad Pitt and Edward Norton-starring picture popped up in the news after China censored the 1999 film and gave it a new ending to counter the story’s radical ideology. (SPOILER ALERT.)
China (after 23 years) decided that the incel-esque, terroristic lead character (and that alter ego) were too much for anyone to handle watching, so Chinese streaming giant Tencent Video whipped out a new outcome, which ends the film before climactic anarchy (explosions and credit-card chaos) in favor of a “happy” title card that sees Norton’s character apprehended and institutionalized.
Chinese censors proves that they are not just good at deleting contents by adding a happy ending to Fight Club.
I wonder whether this violates the copyright of the movie? https://t.co/8rjcBpnjLT pic.twitter.com/ExYnTEY6gC
— Henry Gao (@henrysgao) January 23, 2022
Cruz is now suggesting that 20th Century Fox somehow caved to pressure here. “The second rule of Fight Club,” Ted tweeted, “[I]s ‘we will do and say whatever the Chinese communist censors tell us to do and say.'”
The second rule of Fight Club is “we will do and say whatever the Chinese communist censors tell us to do and say.” https://t.co/aw3A4quybS
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) January 25, 2022
No one (beyond Chinese authorities) is arguing that the film should have been edited this way. It’s right in line with Chinese censors’ usual M.O. (they even recently, as Variety notes, somehow edited Bohemian Rhapsody to eliminate all gay references). The studio appears to have nothing at all to do with this, but Ted’s attempting to twist the situation to fit the far-right agenda on China, when really, it’s China being China with their standards. And Cruz got lit up for tweeting about pop culture again and not proving a point.
Did the Cancun stuff come up? Of course, and so did Ted’s groveling to Tucker Carlson.
Studio sold the streaming rights to a film in China. The Chinese streaming service edited the film. Not really a studio changing their film to meet Chinese standards, but why read when you can pearl clutch?
— Unqualified Opinion (@unqualifiedtake) January 25, 2022
https://twitter.com/scampbellnet/status/1485976021551747072
The first rule of fight club is don't talk about the new infection rate of covid in Texas 🙃
— assybooplassty (@whatsupinvaders) January 25, 2022
Flee, Teddy. Save yourself! #cancuncruz pic.twitter.com/llb38qAhRb
— Roseann Cannon (@roseann_cannon) January 25, 2022
So censorship is bad unless it's crt which isn't even taught in schools ? Son if China banned crt would you be for or against it? 🤔
— Malachi Conway (@mtconway3) January 25, 2022
WOW! You mean almost what Tucker did to you?
— Human☮🇺🇸🇺🇦🇺🇸🌊 (@4HumanUnity) January 25, 2022
Don’t you have something better to do? You are a United States Senator after all.
— Seth Yoder ☮️ (@seth_yoder) January 25, 2022
Oh so it's like your rule with Tucker Carlson, got it.
— Clewtor200 (@clewtor200) January 25, 2022
https://twitter.com/SieberTimothy/status/1485978837179535360
https://twitter.com/scampbellnet/status/1485976021551747072
Just gonna leave this here in parting… again, Ted will never learn.
— AnnaBelleMD (@tayandmae) January 25, 2022