The 15th Anniversary to Fight Club: My first reaction

This film really hit me as I was personally and cinematically growing. When I first became a film critic in 2011, I was doing a review for Moneyball and The Tree of Life and analyzed Pitt's performances throughout his career. A major standout for me was Fight Club. Granted, Palahniuk and Fincher helped made the film become as classic as it did, but Pitt's presence as a jack of all trades, actor, producer and media superstar helped bring my attention to this film.

My first reaction to this was the anti-establishment, anti-Western themes of anti-religion, anti-government, anti-law and society. It really blows you away with those themes much like the Matrix did the same year. (I'm really glad my cousins had both DVDs in their house!)

Fight Club established a fraternity among men in the US. Religious men, right wing men, conservative men, manly men, womanly men, Transexual men. Men who are heterosexual, but have lost their sexual appetite because their hormones are up to speed. The rise of Phen-Phen and Viagra. Sports: Wrestling, Boxing, Kickboxing, Mixed Martial Arts, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Other Jiu Jitsu.

The Napoleonic and Anti-Disney Princess uprising of the 1990s.

White leaders trying to transform the minds of white men in times of the Unabomber and Middle Eastern terror threats thanks to United States President and Capitol Hill cohort establishments.

The US foreign policy that got them in trouble in 2001 that led to even more deaths in the Middle East. The narrator also does what Tyler does, but doesn't understand it, nor comprehend it.

Fight Club is also a tale of the mentally ill that run and ruin our lives. Prisoners, such as Tyler Durden getting a pass. (Also not to mention that the Narrator is Tyler Durden's prisoner.) 

"Our fathers were our models to God. If our fathers failed, what does that tell you about God? (Listen to me) You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you, never wanted you. In all probability, he probably hates you. We don't need him. F*** damnation. F*** redemption. We are Gods unwanted children. So be it." "First you gotta know that someday you're going to die. It's only after we lost everything that we're free to do anything." The multiple uses of the narrator and his perception of Tyler Durden as a religious, government and societal Jesus figure, especially through the lye torture, in the middle of his lying. The role of the job in post modern society. The scariness of sanity and religion conflicting in the 1990s, much like religion in There Will Be Blood. Having religious figures work on accidents vs statistics and making those decisions while being in a part of religion. The use of making people feel powerful with power or even counterpower to make oneself feel even more powerful than them.

I had this idea that people never wanted to be themselves, but wanting to be somebody else, like a dictator or a rockstar or a billionaire. That was what the false American dream had turned to be and look at how Tyler Durden and Project Mayhem and turned into, ruining that promise.

And I really did not get the ending, which I think is why producers didn't want to present this film in addition to the bad depictions of credit lenders, Ikea and Starbucks.