Fight Club director David Fincher has had his say about the film's controversial new censored ending, and it's fair to say he's not impressed.
Chinese authorities caused a stir last month when it was revealed they'd edited the cult 1999 movie to radically change the ending, with the classic final shot of Durden's bombs exploding replaced by captions announcing the police had 'rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding.'
To say the least, this new conclusion doesn't exactly match up with the vibe of the movie, and now Fight Club's director has spoken out, saying it 'makes no sense' why Chinese distributors would want to release the film in the country if they didn't like the ending.
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Speaking for the first time about the controversy to Empire magazine, Fincher explained that a company had licensed the film from the original production company New Regency to show it in China with a 'boilerplate' contract that explained 'cuts may be made for censorship purposes.'
'No-one said, 'If we don’t like the ending, can we change it?' So there’s now a discussion being had as to what 'trims' means,' he revealed.
Fincher then went on to give his take on the saga, saying, 'If you don’t like this story, why would you license this movie? It makes no sense to me when people go, 'I think it would be good for our service if we had your title on it… we just want it to be a different movie.''
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'The f**ing movie is 20 years old. It’s not like it had a reputation for being super cuddly,' he concluded.
Fincher also pointed out that the new ending actually has more in common with the ending of the book from which Fight Club was adapted, saying 'it’s funny to me that the people who wrote the Band-Aid [ending] in China must have read the book, because it adheres pretty closely.'
Author Chuck Palahniuk has previously spoken about the ironic similarities between his original ending and the censored Chinese film ending, telling TMZ 'they've aligned the ending almost exactly with the ending of the book, as opposed to Fincher's ending, which was the more spectacular visual ending... so in a way, the Chinese brought the movie back to the book a little bit.'
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Topics: Film and TV, China
Hannah Smith