After 23 years, China decided it was high time to censor the ending to Fight Club, and so it did just that, sparking headlines (and a Ted Cruz take) all over the globe as fans became aware of the alteration to the cult classic David Fincher film starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. In the new version, a title card cuts the movie short and reveals that the police captured Tyler Durden before he can blow up several buildings belonging to major credit card companies. He’s placed in a mental asylum and later discharged in 2012 to live a happy life.
The whole thing was very weird, and apparently, China’s biggest streaming service Tencent Video felt the same away because Fincher’s original version has been quietly restored with “no explanation of the reversal, nor who was responsible for the previous amendment to the 1999 film,” according to Variety, who cites online pressure and the negative coverage across the globe as a potential reason.
While this is an obvious win against censorship, Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk threw a wild curveball during the ordeal by actually praising the Chinese edit for being more faithful to the source material
“The irony is that the way the Chinese have changed it is they’ve aligned the ending almost exactly with the ending of the book, as opposed to [director David] Fincher’s ending, which was the more spectacular visual ending,” Palahniuk told TMZ. “So in a way, the Chinese brought the movie back to the book a little bit.”
(Via Variety)