Cutting new endings onto great films is nothing new. For instance, classic 50s science fiction/Cold War paranoia film, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers was originally neutered by its studio. Execs thought that the ending — with the hero standing in traffic, Cassandra-like shouting apparently insane warnings to heedless commuters — was too bleak. So, they grafted on a new ending where square-jawed police and military monologue about how they’ve restored law’n’order and the American Way and beaten them darn pinko spacemen.
But the Communists — the proxy villains of Invasion — have won, after all.
A new version of the 1999 movie Fight Club has sparked a social media controversy in China after the original ending was re-edited with a message explaining the criminals were apprehended by police.
Subscribers to the Chinese video streaming service Tencent Video have mocked the newly-cut version of the film for distorting the message and intent of director David Fincher’s 90’s classic.
Fight Club is far from the only movie to be cut by China’s censors. Django Unchained was pulled, hours from its Chinese premiere, and most of its blood-soaked ending removed. The same motivation — maintaining the polite fiction of a communist “harmonious society” — is behind cutting Fight Club.
Based on Chuck Palahniuk’s book of the same name, Fight Club famously ends with the unnamed narrator, played by Edward Norton, killing off his alter ego Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt, and setting off a series of explosions that destroy all bank and credit records to reset the economy.
But all of that is missing from the new Chinese version, which instead finishes with the film’s Project Mayhem being portrayed as a failed and misguided criminal enterprise.
“Through the clue provided by Tyler, the police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding,” the new Tencent Video version explains.
The new film also includes a twist not present in the original, with a message telling viewers: “After the trial, Tyler was sent to lunatic asylum, receiving psychological treatment.”
It’s all about as convincing as the letter Lisa Simpson received from her pen pal, Anya:
Dear Lisa, as I write this, I am very sad. Our president has been overthrown and [man’s voice continues reading] replaced by the benevolent General Krull. All hail Krull and his glorious new regime! Yours sincerely, Little Girl.
A representative for Tencent Holdings Ltd., declined to comment on the controversy. Vice reported that the film’s rights were held by Pacific Audio & Video Co., an affiliate of the state-run Guangdong TV, and that the re-edited version was given the green light by the Chinese government before being sold on to streaming sites.
But the most telling censorship is Hollywood’s self-censorship. As Rickey Gervais reminded the Oscars audience, for all the blatherskite about human rights, Hollywood will do anything to please a genocidal regime if there’s a buck in it.
The Marvel movies have often been drastically altered from the source material, to remove all references to Tibet, or altering the ethnicity of previously Asian villains.
Often the censorship is of a sort that Hollywood would never tolerate at home. If an exec told them to cut a gay scene, or scrub a black character, they’d be run out of town before you could say “Twitter mob”.
Yet, large segments of Bohemian Rhapsody were cut to remove any hint of homosexuality, as were Star Trek: Beyond, and Alien: Covenant and Prometheus. Promotional images for Star Wars: The Force Awakens were altered so as to all-but disappear black actor John Boyega.
(Just incidentally, it’s rather telling that “LGBT content” could so easily be expunged from so many movies without significantly altering them. It indicates just how much such content is being deliberately and superficially imposed on movies, not for story’s sake, but just to ram home a “message”. Which “LGBT creators” are, as it happens, openly admitting.)
But the cutting of Fight Club is a more significant development, even for the Chinese censors.
It is unusual for entire endings to be changed so significantly. The move is especially rare with older movies where pirated copies have been widely available for years.
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What it indicates is that the Chinese Communists are clamping down harder and more blatantly than ever.
Does it indicate a regime more confident in its unalloyed power? Or one growing more afraid of losing control?