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CULT CLASSIC ‘FIGHT CLUB’ GETS A VERY DIFFERENT ENDING IN CHINA


Someone tried very hard to please Chinese movie censors.
VZ
by Viola Zhou
January 24, 2022, 11:04am
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In China, ‘Fight Club’ ends with a victory of the police. Photo: Fight Club

Fight Club is getting an entirely different ending in a new online release in
China, where imported films are often altered to show that the law enforcement,
on the side of justice, always trumps the villain. 

The 1999 film by David Fincher originally ends with the Narrator (Edward Norton)
killing his split personality Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). With the female lead
Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), he then watches all the buildings explode
outside the window and collapse, suggesting Tyler’s anarchist plan to destroy
consumerism is in the works. 

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The exact opposite happens in the edit of the same film released in China. In
the version on the Chinese streaming site Tencent Video, the explosion scene has
been removed. Instead, viewers are told that the state successfully busted
Tyler’s plan to destroy the world. 

“Through the clue provided by Tyler, the police rapidly figured out the whole
plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from
exploding,” a caption said. “After the trial, Tyler was sent to lunatic asylum
receiving psychological treatment. He was discharged from the hospital in 2012.”

The ending of Fight Club's Chinese version suggests the police has cracked down
on the cult. Photo: Tencent Video

It’s unclear if the ending was altered out of self-censorship or by government
order. Tencent Video declined to comment. A source familiar with the matter said
the film was edited by the copyright owner and then approved by the government
before it was sold to streaming sites for distribution. The Chinese publisher of
the film, Pacific Audio & Video Co., is an affiliate of the state-owned
Guangdong TV. 

Disney, which owns the film’s production company 20th Century Fox, did not
immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Fight Club was only shown in Chinese cinemas during the Shanghai International
Film Festival, although most Chinese fans have likely watched pirated versions
of it. It is unclear whether the Chinese cinema version was altered. The film
has received more than 740,000 reviews and a high rating of 9 out of 10 on film
review site Douban.

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11.29.21


Screenshots of the new ending went viral on Chinese social media over the
weekend and offended many Fight Club fans who have praised the original ending
as a cinematic classic. Some say the censorship is why Chinese viewers have
preferred bootleg copies of foreign films. 

“There is no point watching this film without that scene,” a person commented on
the microblogging site Weibo. 

“Probably Ocean’s 11 would have all been arrested. The Godfather’s entire family
would end up in jail,” another person said in ridicule. 

China has a stringent censorship system to ensure all TV programs, dramas and
films released to the public reflect what the Communist Party deems correct
aesthetics, morality, and ideology.

Domestic films would carefully design their plots, dialogue, and casting to
avoid anything that would trigger censorship. And foreign films that get
approved often suffer from substantial cuts because some scenes are deemed too
violent, sexually explicit, or subversive.

The Chinese version of ‘Lord of War’ ends with the arms leader jailed for life.
Photo: Tencent Video

In some cases, films get a completely different storyline or ending when they
are screened in China.

The American crime film Lord of War ends with its protagonist, an arms dealer
played by Nicolas Cage, evading jail time and returning to arms trafficking. It
also states that the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council,
including the U.S. and China, are the biggest arms suppliers.

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But the Tencent Video version, which is about 30 minutes shorter than the
original, replaces the ending with a new caption, saying the arms dealer
“confessed all the crimes officially charged against him in court, and was
sentenced to life imprisonment in the end.” 

Viewers have protested against the censorship in the Chinese version of ‘Lord of
War.’ Photo: Tencent Video

Producers from Hong Kong, which has made some of the most influential
Chinese-language films, sometimes create a more censorship-friendly version of a
film just for the mainland Chinese market. Besides leaving out nudity and gore,
the mainland versions often show gangsters being rounded up or ugly crimes
taking place when Hong Kong was still a British colony.

When the 2003 Hong Kong film Naked Ambition was released in the mainland, for
example, the original story about the rise of poor porn stars was edited into
one about how Hong Kong and Chinese police worked together to crack down on the
porn industry.

Follow Viola Zhou on Twitter.

Tagged:cinemaFIGHT CLUBchinaworldnews


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