Film Adaptations

In adapting Fight Club to the big screen, a filmmaker would have obvious difficulties with the dialogue between the narrator and whoever he is communicating with. In the novel, the narrator is basically all reflecting and when he is reflecting upon what was said, he goes from the actual quote of the person he is talking to back to “then I said...” but not in quotations. Bringing that dialogue to life can be done, and it was some well in the modern movie depiction of the book, it is just not as easy as a cut and paste type script. Looking at the plot, since the whole book is a reflection, the plot basically goes from big even to big event and skips around. I think that would be hard to recreate because the actors would actually have to transition whereas the book can just skip around.

Three scenes that would be essential to keep for the movie adaptation would be the scene with Tyler and the lye on the narrator’s hand, the narrator beating himself up and making it look like his boss did it, and the soap factory/the fight club members living in the house with Tyler and the narrator. The scene with the lye was important because it permanently scarred the narrator and then that symbol started showing up on all the members of fight club or project mayhem. The beating himself up scene is important because it shows the narrator’s transformation as a person and how his personality is getting closer and closer to that of Tyler’s. Finally, the soap factory scene is important because it shows how large the group has grown and how it tore those men away from their lives. It shows how drastically fight club was impacting the whole world they lived in.

Two scenes that could be cut from the adaptation would be the scenes with the waiters and the narrator working in the fancy hotel and the ending scene where the narrator is in a mental hospital or dead. The hotel and waiters scenes were funny in the book, but were not present in the actual film adaptation and I thought the movie still did a fine job depicting the book without those scenes. The ending scene was very confusing and would have been really hard to recreate for the movie so it also could have been left out.

Since I have finished the book and there is already a film adaptation of Fight Club, I would venture to say that the adaptation fits the book really well. The actors chosen do a great job of depicting the characters like I would have imagined and the jumpy qualities of the book translated well onto the big screen. I would recommend that someone read the book or watch the movie. I watched the movie first and I don’t think it ruined any elements of the book, so whatever order someone experienced them wouldn’t matter in my opinion.