#1 Fight Club (1999)
Review of Fight Club Movie and Poster
The Fight Club Movie Poster
In 1999 the popular Chuck Palahniuk novel Fight Club was made into a motion picture by the 20th Century Fox movie studio. The film was directed by David Fincher and featured a cast of heavy hitting stars including super-hunk Brad Pitt, art house darling Helena Bonham Carter, and starred two-time Academy Award nominee Edward Norton. Viewers may also be surprised to see 70s rock music icon Meat Loaf in a major role. Casting was apparently and ordeal and it is said that Russell Crow, Sean Penn, and Reese Witherspoon were all considered for roles but for various reasons were passed on.
The movie tells the story of an isolated young professional (Norton) that seeks an escape from his mundane existence and cure for in insomnia by fraudulently attending support group meetings for people with cancer and similar serious disorders. He finds that other people’s misery helps relieve his insomnia and improves his love life. He meets a woman (Carter) also haunting the support group circuit for reasons other than emotional support. Eventually he begins to hang out with a soap salesman (Pitt) similarly dissatisfied with society, the role of men in it, and with life generally. His new friend emboldens the protagonist to change his life. They cope with their hostility towards the shallow values of modern life by forming underground fight clubs. That is secret societies of bare-knuckle fistfights and anti-establishment pranks. Needless to say things get out of hand and cataclysm ensues.
A good deal of ingenuity was applied to marketing of Fight Club including an abandoned idea to manufacture pink bars of soap marked with the distinctive Fight Club logo. The soap was considered tasteless by studio executives for some reason but the posters featuring either the shirtless battered Brad Pitt or the afore mentioned pink soap were eye catching and remain beautiful examples of graphic design and movie poster art. Advertising posters for Fight Club are still among the best selling of all movie posters nearly ten years after its release.
Despite star power, brilliant poster art, and the many fans of Chuck Palahniuk the film was not a huge success during its theatrical run. In its initial release Fight Club made back only a little more than half of its $63 million production costs.
Studio executives who had paid Brad Pitt a gigantic salary to bring his box office power to the movie feared they would never see their investment turn a profit. Pitt’s huge draw also explains his prevalence on the movie poster despite Edward Norton portraying the main character.
Critical attention to Fight Club was a mixed bag of writers hailing it as a masterpiece of modern filmmaking that smashed the false world of advertising and consumerism and those calling it depressing, confusing, and dull. Reviewers often seemed confused as to whether Fight Club was a comedy, drama, or somewhere in between.
Fight Club’s success did not hit full stride until it was released on DVD. Sales topped $55 million and Fight Club’s reputation as a cult classic was established. Controversy has surrounded the formation of numerous amateur fight clubs by groups as disparate as bored Arlington, Texas teens, Princeton undergraduates, and Silicon Valley technology workers.