Fight Club: 10th Anniversary – Blu-ray Review
The Film:
People are always asking me if I know Tyler Durden.
It seems so odd we’re celebrating a 10 year anniversary of the film Fight Club in the middle of epic Recession. The film is filled to the brim with anti-consumerist attitudes and acts, its nihilism only created by a nation so consumed with materialistic obsessions. In the last ten years, it feels like we are living in a world that is secretly being mocked by Project Mayhem. The film denouement was echoed on 9/11/01, an eerie sign. But let’s get real: Fight Club has become my generation’s Easy Rider.
You are not special.
The way I discovered Fight Club seems fitting only in hindsight, something Tyler himself would have appreciated. There I was, a new adult into the world, young, lost, and bored. After graduating high school, I was left with a shrug of the shoulders and a question. I asked my dad: “what do I do now?” He replied, “Why don’t you go to school?” So I did. What next? I was lost, unaware, and like I said bored. This was my life, and it was ending one minute at a time. One day around this time in late 1999/2000, I was browsing magazines at a Barnes & Nobles, looking through them with their advertisements of shit I didn’t need, but was compelled to own, celebrity faces plastered on the covers, and I put those magazines back, unaware that I was about to have a near-life experience.
I was moving along the rows of books in the fiction section, not really paying attention, when a man interrupted my static mind state, and said something that would change my life forever: I know I shouldn’t talk about it, but have you heard about ‘Fight Club’? I said, “no.” My single serving friend would go on to explain this Fight Club for awhile, and all the while it felt like something I should know. We parted ways, never exchanging names, but somehow this little moment we had, changed us.
When someone brings up Fight Club and another person’s first response is how they didn’t know Tyler Durden was Jack, then they just didn’t get this picture. It is more than the twist ending, it’s philosophy for the middle children of history. We never had it so good, yet here we are bored out of our minds, listening to what people should tell us to wear, think, do. The recession we have been hit with, feels like a Project Mayhem joke on a country so metro sexual and complacent, that it had it coming. You are not your bank account. With mounting bills, debt, and money issues, we’re so close to hitting rock bottom, that a personal revolution is one less product placement ad away from happening.
I made a bold claim that Fight Club is my generation’s Easy Rider, and it is true, the film has that cultural impact on the audience like it did for my dad in the late ’60s. That film was a counterculture experience in a time of social issues, with characters seeking freedom. The film would go on to change Hollywood, yet have an enduring mark on people forever. Fight Club is no different. If my above stories didn’t tell you about our culture and how Fight Club had seeped into it, then you must subscribe to the bi-products of a lifestyle obsession. See, you are not your fucking khakis. Fight Club was the name of something that was right there in our faces. It was what we needed, in a time of limbo. We have no Great War. We have no Great Depression. Our great war’s a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives.
The film has taking on newer meanings since 1999, and yet still has stayed as potently powerful as it did when Chuck Palahniuk wrote the novel, and as Fincher visualized it. Did it change film making like Easy Rider did? No, although Fincher’s style is widely used and misinterpeted. Did it change our lives, yes.
The things you own, end up owning you.
The Blu-ray:
Audio/Video: The film distinct visual style is hard one to accurately judge on HD. It can be slick at times, and other times rough. Grain will be present, but none of this dampers its first appearance on Blu-ray. The Fox 2-disc Special Edition was a superb DVD at the time, and while the Blu-ray won’t blow away people like a newer film would on this format, it nonetheless, is a great transfer. Sharp, detailed, colorful, this is a solid transfer and worth the upgrade.
The DTS audio track is pound-for-pound a sonic assault. I guess I never paid too much attention to the audio before on DVD, but I remembered it being really good. Here on Blu-ray, it so well designed and crafted, from rear speaker activity to pounding bass, Fight Club’s audio will kick your teeth in.
Most of the extras here are ported over from that nice 2-disc Special Edition, but there are a few new extras here. They are:
I am Jack’s Search Index: This is a navigation feature that has two functions. One is to scroll through all of the names mentioned in the film, and their corresponding special feature. It’s okay, but the best option is the “commentary guide” feature that will allow to see in a pop-up style the commentary participants talking to each other.
A Hit in the Ear: Ren Klyce and the Sound Design of Fight Club: In HD, this has four section with Sound Designer Ren Klyce, talking about the way sound was built specifically for the film. With your 5.1 home theater they allow you to tinker with the sound mixes as well, in a pretty cool feature that highlights sound mixing. I found this to be pretty cool if standard, but kudos for a cool feature, Fox.
Flogging Fight Club: This funny bit appeared on the Spike TV’s 2009 Guys Choice Awards, where Mel Gibson, in his Braveheart makeup, giving the film the award,w ith David Fincher, Brad Pitt, and Ed Norton bashing the critics you bashed the film.
The rest of the extras are ported over, like I mentioned before, and all really good. Four commentary tracks, ranging from all facets of the production, each one just as interesting as the others, that make it worth it seating through the film again and again. Behind the Scenes is broken up into 16 parts, as quick little featurettes, that again, cover all areas of the film. Small, short, but good information.
Deleted Scenes, including Marla’s alternative bit about how good sex was makes for interesting alternate scenes to watch, the always fun Publicity Material for Fight Club offers some highly ingenius internet spots and trailers, that lead to the underground support fans gave the film, and rounding it all out are Trailers and the HD res of Stills.
Conclusion: Fight Club is a milestone of a generation; a marvelous film. The Blu-ray is equally superb, with great extras-new and old. A must have.
The Film: Rating: 
The Blu-ray: Rating: 
