Fight Club gets its original ending back in China after all

After being heavily criticized for censorship by the Chinese authorities, “Fight Club” got its original ending back. As early as Monday (February 7), the streaming service Tencent Video began broadcasting the film by star director David Fincher again in full length with the original consumer-critical ending.

Warning: The following lines contain spoilers!

Tencent provided the final scene of the film with a kind of epilogue in which the attack plans of the nameless protagonist can be thwarted by the police.

In the 1999 original, the narrator, played by Edward Norton, kills his imaginary alter ego, played by Brad Pitt, and then walks the streets while several skyscrapers are destroyed by bombs. The interpretation that has prevailed among fans is that the destruction of the high-rise banks will also smash consumer society. In the anarchy there is now room for something new.

Strong state triumphs

In the Chinese version, the epilogue only says that the police figured out the plan quickly and arrested all the criminals. In this version, a strong state triumphs over consumer criticism.

Chinese users were outraged by the clumsy censorship of the streaming service. Tencent had not yet responded to the criticism and had not given any reasons for the censorship. The platform did not comment on the reasons for changing the end of the film again, which only fueled the debate on social networks again.

Chinese authorities are notorious for their strict censorship policies. Only a handful of foreign films manage to get released in China. Often this is accompanied by significant changes in the films. A change in the film ending is still relatively rare.