it’s crazy how much success one can achieve by pandering to bottom-of-the-barrel, juvenile masculinity. it’s fun to think about what this film from 1999 presages, and how the unquestionably real tendency within modern, alienated man that it depicts cohered into something much more lame than project mayhem (alt right MRA shit). would love to see this movie, but communist. when the narrative gets around to depicting tyler as a figment of the narrator’s imagination, it verges into a deeply sickening male power fantasy resting on an unbelievably immature contrivance…but that gets me back to how much success one can achieve be catering to the stupidest people who walk the earth, stooping to their level and feeding their most unhealthy fantasies. i don’t think fincher et al are stupid (palahniuk might be): the film is clearly a highly calculated, and very well executed commercial endeavour. so much of the dialogue is rendered in the form of perfectly quotable one-liners, the depiction of revolutionary desire is perfectly negated by being essentially apolitical, etc etc. still, after seeing this movie probably in the area of 10 times over my life, it’s still pleasantly slick, although simultaneously sickening, so it gets the heart. the most effective moment for me on this viewing was towards the third act when ed norton tells HBC “tyler isn’t here anymore!”