Fight Club vs American Psycho - which is best?

American Psycho because it's funnier and features "True Faith." Christian Bale and Brad Pitt belong in the Overrated Cutie club, though, but I'll still take Bale.

'american psycho' is 1,000,000x better than its source novel.

agreed!

FC and it isn't close

Fight Club is better until that fucking twist ending, but goes meh after that. American Psycho is good throughout.

I like both of these movies but I had to go with the one that features Jared Leto catching an axe with his face.

'american psycho' Fight Club is 1,000,000x better than its source novel.

Fixed for rongness.

jared leto in both

that fucking twist ending (sic) is the whole fucking point.

Isn't Jared Leto also in Requiem for a Dream? So that's three overrated, "dark" fanboy favourite movies in 2 years. Quite impressive.

i bet you like that 'howls moving castle' shit don't you.

yeah his agent did good work for him

psycho

We're talking films here people, if it was books I'd pick Bret Easton Ellis over Palahniuk any day. But I have that kind of issue and a fierce grudge against Palahniuk.

http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m254/essymarie/AMERICAN20PSYCHO-784885.jpg

what's yr idea of "dark," Tuomas, besides your Seasonal Affective Disorder?

that fucking twist ending (sic) is the whole fucking point.

Nah, to me the point was the dissection of modern consumer society and charismatic leadership leading to fascism. The point that they were the same person was interesting, but it was done in a way too direct manner. We're expected to believe that a guy who punches himself and talks to himself is able to get all those followers? If I would've done the movie, I would've merely hinted that they might two sides of the same coin, and not done it in such a silly, in-your-face style. And because the last part of the movie dealt mostly with this "identity crisis" of his, the more interesting themes were dropped off.

hahaha

facebook avatar time

xpost

what's yr idea of "dark," Tuomas

January in Turku.

OH MY GOD tuomas to direct 'fight club' remake MUST HAPPEN

Are we really supposed to believe that Jimmy Stewart is best mates with a 6 foot rabbit?

Are we really expected to believe that it's a Pred ship?

Are we really supposed to believe that Jimmy Stewart is best mates with a 6 foot rabbit?

The people in that movie didn't.

But they were RONG

But really, the twist ending in itself didn't bother me as much as how much weight was put onto it, as if that was the most interesting thing in the whole movie.

i think 'fight club' pulls off the twist amazingly effectively. norton doesn't actually talk to pitt that much when they're in company. hardly at all. he only beats himself up i think twice, once pre-fight club, once in his boss's office, not in front of his followers.

who says it's the most interesting thing in the movie though?

kinda suprised at folks repping for fight club. i've always bracketed it with american beauty which ilx famously despises. at the time they seemed to be saying similar things albeit in rather different ways.

enrique with a stout defence. when i stated that FC was a far cleverer film than many people made out, the level of derisory shit that came my way simply demonstrated how set many people had become against anything that dared to be both entertaining and innovative.

i now have 6 days to watch american psycho...

p.s. prevalent anti-FC hivemind on ILX is the very reason for my claim.

It's not really "about" consumerism, tho. Somebody on ILE wrote about it as a satire of Therapy culture, which is much closer to the mark. Also Fight Club is fun, whereas American Beauty has a big pompous stick up its arse.

I like fight club because I guiltily like david fincher's penchant for set design that goes two steps beyond realistic into being highly stylized, and the fact that its main fanbase understands the "twist" but many of them fail to pick up on the fact that it's more a parody of people indicting consumer culture than it is a send-up of consumer culture.

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And yeah, it's all about self-help groups.

Wait, that last bit was a response to Noodle.

i've always bracketed it with american beauty which ilx famously despises. at the time they seemed to be saying similar things albeit in rather different ways.

yes, FC says it in a way that is funny and doesn't suck.

i hate that martha stewart line in fight club

don't let brad pitt improvise, please

Fight Club is first and foremost a thrilling, audacious comedy, with a few elements of therapy culture satire (entertainment can be bought or even obtained but at what price etc), and quite a few absolutely sparkling lines of dialogue. Plus, it looks fantastic (as mh points out).

also, brad pitt's abs inspired a generation

kinda suprised at folks repping for fight club. i've always bracketed it with american beauty which ilx famously despises. at the time they seemed to be saying similar things albeit in rather different ways.

-- acrobat, Wednesday, July 11, 2007 2:50 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

NO NO NO NO NO

Tuomas, based on your analysis of "Fight Club" I am thoroughly convinced that you didn't understand it.

And all this is why Fight Club should win here, easy. It takes its one-idea source material and turns it into something ambiguous and funny and beautiful. AP takes one idea from its infinitely richer source novel and flogs it to death, excuse pun.

Meatloaf, people!

Noodle, based on your analysis of "American Psycho" I am thoroughly convinced that you didn't understand it.

It takes its one-idea source material and turns it into something ambiguous and funny and beautiful. AP takes one idea from its infinitely richer source novel and flogs it to death, excuse pun.

Did you want more eviscerations and Whitney Houston monologues?

"infinitely richer source novel" = way more brand names dropped, I guess

oh man... tough choice... but christian bale was superb as patrick bateman. and how bout the business card scene? priceless.

i loved the book. it almost made me physically ill, but the guy's got a fucked up imagination. i was reading it during a road trip with an old boyfriend, and i kept gasping and shit, so the boy was all like "read me a passage". i read him the scene about the rat (you know the one) and he went green and had to pull the car over to the side of the road for 20mins. awesome reaction. fucking softcock.

yo henry k i was 16 when they came out. i remember Empire said something along the lines of American Beauty being the "life affirming flipside to Fight Club" or some such.

xp
Feed me a stray cat and call me a cash machine but AP wins this. I like FC but the scene with the business cards is one of My Top 10 Movie Scenes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoIvd3zzu4Y

Fight Club is about a man with a mental disorder who visits self-help groups for people dealing with cancer and life threatening diseases and then tries to use his experience to lend the same gravity to a self-help group for people who hate their day jobs.

Wait, I might be inherently biased against American Psycho because an ex was really obsessed with the stray cat / cash machine thing.

The Deepak Chopra Story, starring Robert Englund.

(xpost)

it's "cute quirky and british", a lethal combination

hi dere

You are one of those things.

"and"

i hate the fact that boondock saints has this ridiculous cult following.

Top movies for the University of Nottingham:

1 Anchorman
2 Shawshank Redemption
3 Pulp Fiction
4 Fight Club
5 Gladiator
6 City Of God
7 Snatch
8 Lord Of The Rings
9 Crash
10 Dirty Dancing

Badness abounds.

I don't like either of these films, but nor do I particularly hate them. I quite enjoyed the 'feed me a dead cat' bit in AP.

yes, john, i am the lethal combination

Hard to argue with you there.

Still rules out "cute" and "quirky" and "British" though.

"AND"

you're lethal, alright Louis

wow, one british movie on that list

surprised old school isnt on there

I feel like Fight Club is a college movie, too.

I saw the Big Lebowski on opening night with a date. Afterwards he said he didn't understand the movie and that it was weird. We never went out again.

I actually saw Fight Club 4 times in a week at the 2nd run theater in town. I was so surprised it had bombed too. I think the first half of it is almost perfect.

I suffered through a HUGE Lebowski phase that one of my former roommates went through. It got so bad that I tried to be all into it too, in hopes of reverso-change-o-ing his actions if he was just doing it to fuck with me. He wasn't. He got even more into it. Bathrobes, caucasians, endless, non sequitur quotes dropped in all possible places.

This, of course, is the same dude who bought a Miles Daves poster because he wanted to look cool.

In retrospect, he wanted to still be in college.

wow, one british movie on that list

-- cutty, Thursday, July 12, 2007 1:00 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Link

british people hate british films. students used to love 'withnail and i' but perhaps that's faded a little. fuck 'snatch' though, jesus.

300 answers! don't have time right now to read them all. voted american psycho, which i love love love.

students used to love 'withnail and i' but perhaps that's faded a little.

not amongst the students i know! just start saying "i mean to have you..." and they'll finish it off.

british people hate british films

'Twas ever thus: in my mum's day, "British film" was euphemism for "Quick, let's get out the cinema before this rubbish starts"

literally ever thus, since about 1916!

'local hero' is a british film that needs more love

Also, "Fight Club" and "American Psycho" are both crap but Edward Norton is in "Fight Club" so that makes it worse

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

interesting. i voted AP but i really thought FC would win. obv a lot of quiet AP fans on ilx.

i voted for AP as well. christian bale was really great in that. fight club? all it's about is how boys are dumb!

<I>ugh the car battery scene
I never actually read that entire book solely because I read that specific excerpt.</I>

i haven't read the book for this very reason. my housemate's copy is sitting on the bookshelf next to me, i am kind of curious about what i'd think of the writing style now, but.. i just can't take it. ugh

..... weird.

shock

well, i didn't vote, for a start

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_leuxe6pWge1qbn1vmo1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=0RYTHV9YYQ4W5Q3HQMG2&Expires=1294846344&Signature=ombXNwlcgVlRrVcY75rbrwrl6sg%3D

Uh:

Nowadays, Tyler is telling the story, lurking inside Jack, and ready to launch a come-back. Jack is oblivious. Marla is bored. Their marriage has run aground on the rocky coastline of middle-aged suburban boredom. It’s only when their little boy disappears, kidnapped by Tyler, that Jack is dragged back into the world of Mayhem.

the AP musical is Broadway ready...

http://www.theatermania.com/broadway/news/benjamin-walker-in-american-psycho-on-broadway_73630.html

When he first talked to Fincher about Fight Club, Norton says, “I said, ‘You’re going to do this as a comedy, right?’” And he was like, ‘Oh, yeah—that’s the whole point.’ ”

https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/3/26/18281406/fight-club-davis-fincher-making-of-brad-pitt-edward-norton

Misread this title as Fight Club vs American Beauty - which is best? and had a momentary jaw-drop when I clicked in to see Fight Club not in first place.

Throughout their conversations, all four contributed ideas to a long spiel they dubbed “a Mamet rant”—“as if to aspire to the greatness of David Mamet,” says Walker. “It was stuff like ‘You’re not the contents of your wallet.’ ” Some of their Nerf session conversations were incorporated into a long anti–pep talk Tyler gives the narrator early on. “Fuck off with your sofa units and green stripe patterns,” he tells him. “I say: Never be complete. I say: Stop being perfect.”

this is a v embarrassing story

meh

i never knew that the 20th Century Fox HQ blows up in the last shot of the film.

...or... does it??

https://i.imgur.com/YAOgPqK.jpg

i mean that is kinda closer to the book's ending i guess...

LOL, this thread ...

FIGHT CLUB is a story of men breaking out of the longhouse no matter the loss of blood, reputation, and sanity. It shows how the grimy floor of a parking lot can be more satisfying and honest than an air conditioned cubicle. The arc of civilization bends towards men snapping pic.twitter.com/WP9OTqE0hI

— Jash Dholani (@oldbooksguy) February 21, 2023

Is death not an option?

RIP Morbs

Fight Club was one of the first - and is still the best - critique of consooomerism.

good lord that thread

did someone tell ChatGPT to summarize the movie wrong

lmao thank you for this needed this laugh

Why is everyone talking about Fight Club? Isn’t there supposed to be a rule?

— Matt Scott (@MattScottMusic) February 21, 2023

Wish I didn’t read that. Thanks eric

Wish I didn’t read that. Thanks eric

'american psycho' is 1,000,000x better than its source novel.

it's a good film but this is silly. they're both very good.