Review #1 - Fight Club

Everyone's seen the film adaption of "Fight Club". It's easily one of the most recognizable novel-to-film adaptions and represents, to directors, what they need to accomplish to successfully transform a novel into a movie. Several scenes and lines in the film are regarded as some of the most well-done sequences in film making, but there was more than a few scenes from the novel that didn't make the cut.

One of these scenes is when the narrator is originally introduced to Tyler. In the film, they meet on a plane after the narrator has slept, which was done because of the link between Tyler's character and sleep. In the novel, we're introduced to Tyler on a nude beach, where the narrator sits alone and watches Tyler as he arranges a series of logs to create a sculptor. The narrator asks Tyler if he's an artist, after denying this he explains that what he's created was a replica of a giant mechanical hand, and that for one minute the angle of the shadow was absolutely perfectly aligned while he sat in the palm of it. While the scene may have been difficult to do right, I think it would've gone down in history as one of the best sequences in the history of film.

Another scene revolves around an important interaction between Marla and the Narrator. Until Tyler's cast of workers has built up, it's never really explained where he obtains all of the fat to make his soap. In the novel, there's a long scene where it's revealed that Marla's mother is a frequent patient of liposuction, and ships the left-over fat to her daughter so that she can buy collagen injections that will last longer than animal fat. She eventually finds out that Tyler has been stealing the fat to make soap. A long fight ensues, and more depth is poured into Marla's character as a result; we seldom see such a materialistic side of her, and it's refreshing when it does come out.

--Spoiler warning--

Finally, the ending. The one complaint I had with the entire movie. Tyler is a part of the Narrator. I've never been able to understand how the Narrator was able to kill Tyler without killing himself to, especially in the context that it occurred in the movie. The novel had a much more fitting ending where it wasn't required to suspend your disbelief-- the Narrator survives the shot, which only tears open his cheek, and is transported to a mental hospital. Tyler never died, because Tyler can't be killed unless the Narrator is killed as well. If they wanted to defy the ending of the novel, then I would have at least liked to see Tyler survive if the Narrator would as well.