I love Fight Club. It’s the only movie that we’re going to watch in this class that I’ve seen before, and it’s not like I’ve seen it once and then forgotten about it. I watch Fight Club maybe around once a year and the jokes still make me laugh and the gruesome scenes are still just right to make me cringe. It’s a seriously great movie.

One of the things I like about the movie the most is that once you’ve seen it, the movie actually becomes more fun to watch. That’s because Fight Club was so good at laying foundation that the narrator was actually Tyler Durden, and it’s so easy to miss and overlook. And I mean, sure there’s the obvious stuff like “hey we have the same briefcase” when they’re on the plane. But there’s also the VERY subtle stuff.

I’ll start with the craziest way they said that Tyler Durden was fake. Remember right after the apartment exploded, and the Narrator called Tyler, but he screens his calls and calls the payphone back? There’s a shot where they zoom in on the phone to show the BWAAHHHH aspect of the phone calling back. The ending of the movie was right there the whole time. See below.

The phone can’t take incoming calls. Clearly this is all in the narrator’s head, and we’ve barely even seen Tyler Durden.

But even BEFORE Tyler shows up, hes’ already in the movie. And you might not even have noticed it. The movie has a few different shots where he shows up for a split second. This video has all of those shots slowed down because they’re literally blink-and-you-miss-it. Even i missed one of those shots watching it on Monday, and I knew where it was going to happen.

Guess what, we’re going to go even earlier in the movie to find the next one. Remember when the narrator was in the hotel room talking about his life, and the commercial for the hotel said “WELCOME!”?

Yep. Tyler Durden. He was there the entire time.

I could write about these subtle hints that Tyler is a figment of the Narrator’s imagination all day. And I will. Let’s keep going with smaller ones:

In the scene where the Narrator fake fights his boss, he says that he was reminded of his first fight with Tyler. Why? Because that fight was just him beating himself up.

When the Narrator and Tyler are discussing fighting different people and get on the bus, the Narrator pays only one fare. You might have thought Tyler was being rebellious and not paying but nope.

In all the scenes where Tyler is driving, and it shows the Narrator getting out of the car, it ALWAYS shows the Narrator getting out of the driver’s side.

It’s little stuff like this that makes it such a good movie. You could keep watching it over and over to catch these small details and it just enhances the enjoyment of the movie. Another Fincher movie that I’d recommend if you enjoyed the mind-blowingness of Fight Club is The Game. When I watched it for the first time, I could not tell you where I thought the story was going because Fincher is that good at laying out details for either side. Would recommend.

Today’s blog’s music was the new Explosions In The Sky record, The Wilderness. Listen to it and love it.