In this film, Edward Norton plays the role of a frustrated insomniac who longs to fight other men. He meets soap salesman Tyler Durden, a fellow insomniac, and the two form a club where they fight other bored guys. The two seem to be the perfect partners, but their chemistry soon deteriorates when Marla enters the fray.
The Mechanic
While Fight Club was a risky anti-establishment film, its production was still within the Hollywood studio system. In fact, Fight Club’s director, Bill Mechanic, was already the head of Fox Studios when Titanic and Independence Day were released. Yet he left the company after a couple of flops and a few bad reviews. Whether he was fired or not is not clear, but rumors suggest that Rupert Murdoch disapproved of the film.
Though Fight Club received negative reviews from critics, the film itself became a commercial success. Although the film flopped domestically, it did well in Europe and in home media, selling over 13 million DVDs and nearly 25 million books worldwide. However, Rupert Murdoch was a hater of the film and slammed it in the press. In addition, he fired Mechanic over the controversy.
Marla
Marla fights for her self-respect in the novel Fight Club. Although Marla has been portrayed as a destructive force, she is ultimately true to herself. As she goes about her day, she tries to draw closer to the Narrator, but she is ultimately not one to fit in anywhere.
Marla works at a bar, and she is a frequent visitor. When she gets in trouble, she calls a friend who helps her. The narrator ignores her when she cries out for help, but he saves her from her own machinations. In return, Tyler saves Marla, and warns the Narrator not to tell her about him. In the process, the Narrator begins blackmailing Tyler’s boss for the assets of his company.
While Marla was an apathetic narcissist when first introduced, her character grows and becomes vulnerable to love. She eventually becomes a warpath for another character, and her growth can be seen as a triumph of courage. Marla’s character is more complex than the other characters in the movie, and she made Fight Club a better movie.
Tyler Durden
The central antagonist of David Fincher’s cult film Fight Club is a man named Tyler Durden, an off-the-grid soap salesman. He organizes an underground fight club for men and turns it into an organization with terrorist tendencies, called Project Mayhem. While Tyler Durden is only a projection of the Narrator’s imagination, his character plays an important role in the movie and contributes to the character development of other characters.
Tyler is a good looking, confident guy with a flair for shaking things up. Men are drawn to the idea of pummeling each other, and Fight Club quickly takes off. As more men want to pummel faces, Tyler becomes a god-like figure. His sexy, yet ruthless personality allows him to achieve functional immortality.
The Narrator
The Narrator of Fight Club describes a character who loses his testicles and grows breasts as his body attempts to balance its hormones. Ultimately, the narrator finds comfort in Bob’s arms. Yet Bob represents the concretization of modern civilization – it’s removed his ‘balls’, and made him soft as a result.
The novel portrays the struggle of the main characters to break free of the barriers that culture has built for them. Tyler Durden, who was raised in a broken family, rebels against authority and influences struggling males. Like Don Quixote, Tyler Durden’s idealistic viewpoint filters everything he does.
The Narrator of Fight Club never gives his name, so we’re left to guess his identity. The narrator, played by Edward Norton, introduces himself as a man who has been shattered by the consumerist machine. Despite all of the consumer goods he consumes, he is hollow inside despite all of his efforts to fill it. When his body no longer has energy to function, he spirals into hell.
The Commandments of Fight Club
The Commandments of Fight Club are a set of rules that must be followed to succeed in this exclusive club. The first of these is that no one will ever ask another member any questions. The other two are that nobody will ever talk about Fight Club, and they should only fight with two other men. In the film, the first night fighters are forced to fight.
Tyler’s goal is to get people to talk about the film and tell their friends and family about Fight Club, and the idea of an exclusive club makes the movie seem more enticing. Tyler also makes a point of dressing in vintage clothes to create a cool detachment from modern society. He wears everything from 1970s-style leather jackets to a kitsch bathrobe.
