The final scene, where the narrator attends the destruction of skyscraper symbolizing the modern world, had been removed under pressure from Chinese censorship.
Le Monde with AFP.
David Fincher Fight Club’s worship, including a truncated version, in China, has generated in recent weeks the stupor of cinephiles, is now distributed in the country in its original version, have we learned on Monday February 7th.
Communist power does not allow the diffusion of a handful of foreign films each year and the censors do not hesitate to remove the scenes considered disturbing or subversive.
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The fate of Fight Club, with Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, was special: his final scene had been rewritten, more than two decades after the release of the American film, in 1999. last month, Cinephiles had moved that the version broadcast on the Tencent Video platform either to the antipodes of the original work.
In the movie, the narrator played by Edward Norton kills his imaginary alter ego played by Brad Pitt, then attends the explosion of skyscraper – the destruction of the modern world dreamed by the hero.
The version initially broadcast in China ended just before by a black screen and a text saying: “The police has foiled the project and stopped all the criminals, preventing the explosion of the bombs.” The text stated that the character played By Brad Pitt had been interned in “a crazy asylum”. Tencent did not comment on the restoration of the original version.
It was difficult to say whether the changes were imposed by the authorities. In 2019, several scenes from Bohemian Rhapsody referring to the sexuality of Freddie Mercury, the Queen group singer, had been gummed from the version broadcast in China.
Hollywood studios sometimes take on them to cut some movie scenes hoping to get an authorization for the Chinese market. According to the Wall Street Journal , Disney had relayed the new Mulan script to the Chinese authorities, to make sure to diffuse the film in the country. In 1998, the first version of the work, in cartoon form, had been banned in China, in retaliation at the exit of Kundun movie, Martin Scorsese, on the life of Dalai Lama.
