Bill Maher zeroed in on China during the latest edition of “Real Time”, targeting the winter Olympics in Beijing during the “New Rules” segment.
07.02.2022 - 15:17 / nme.com
Fight Club‘s original ending has been restored on Chinese streaming service Tencent Video following cuts to its conclusion.Last month, the 1999 film hit headlines after it emerged that its final scenes had been altered on the platform, replacing The Narrator (Edward Norton) killing of imaginary alter ego Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) and watching buildings collapse.Instead, a blank slate reads: “The police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding. After the trial, Tyler was sent to a lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment.”Following a backlash, however, Tencent has now reportedly restored 11 of the 12 minutes cut in its version, only keeping a sex scene between Durden and Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter) out.China has strict rules on censorship, which may have explained the original cut ending, though it is unclear if the backlash has led to the restoration.
NME has reached out to Tencent Video for further comment.The outcry to the altered ending led to a response from Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk, who wrote the original 1996 book the film is based on.“Tyler and the gang were all arrested. He was tried and sentenced to a mental asylum.
How amazing,” Palahniuk wrote sarcastically. “I’d no idea! Justice always wins.
Nothing ever exploded. Fini.”He added: “Have you seen this shit? This is SUPER wonderful! Everyone gets a happy ending in China!” Palahniuk later argued that the changed ending was actually more in line with his novel in a subsequent interview with TMZ.“The irony is that the way the Chinese have changed it, they aligned the ending almost exactly with the ending of the book, as opposed to [David] Fincher’s ending, which was the
.Bill Maher zeroed in on China during the latest edition of “Real Time”, targeting the winter Olympics in Beijing during the “New Rules” segment.
Bill Maher couldn’t hide his contempt for the country hosting the Winter Olympics on his Friday Real Time.
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Fight Club.Back in January, the 1999 film hit headlines after it emerged that its final scenes had been altered on streaming platform Tencent Video, replacing The Narrator (Edward Norton) killing off imaginary alter ego Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) and watching buildings collapse.Instead, a blank slate reads: “The police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding. After the trial, Tyler was sent to a lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment.”Now, in a new interview with Empire, Fincher has spoken out about the edit.“It’s funny to me that the people who wrote the Band-Aid [ending] in China must have read the book, because it adheres pretty closely,” he said, referring to the fact that in Chuck Palahniuk’s novel on which the film is based, ‘Jack’ is in an institution at the end.When asked about the ending, he replied: “Here’s what we know.
original ending of “Fight Club” has been restored on Chinese streamer Tencent Video, director David Fincher is still baffled as to why it was ever changed in the first place.“A company licensed the film from New Regency to show it in China, with a boilerplate [contract]: ‘You have to understand cuts may be made for censorship purposes,'” the director explained in a recent interview with Empire. “No one said, ‘If we don’t like the ending, can we change it?’ So there’s now a discussion being had as to what ‘trims’ means.”Fincher added that it wasn’t so much the trims themselves that bothered him, but why they were made.
A couple of weeks ago, it was revealed that “Fight Club” was added to a Chinese streaming platform recently, but with a brand-new ending. Instead of the ending where buildings are blown up and Project Mayhem wins the day, a new, more government-friendly ending was added, where the film shows a title card explaining how the bad guys lost.
Zack Sharf David Fincher has finally weighed in on China’s “Fight Club” censorship. As reported by Variety last month, Fincher’s “Fight Club” was uploaded to Tencent Video, China’s largest video streamer, with an entirely new ending that was the exact opposite of the director’s finale.
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Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefChina’s giant Tencent Video has begun playing David Fincher’s classic “Fight Club” with its original dystopian ending now intact. The move to restore the final scenes comes barely two weeks after it emerged that the ending of the film as it played on Chinese streaming had been changed so that law and order prevail.There has been no explanation of the reversal, nor who was responsible for the previous amendment to the 1999 film. Online pressure from fans and a chorus of international media commentary highlighting the Chinese government’s penchant for micro-management, may have secured a rare policy reversal.In Fincher’s original film Edward Norton’s narrator character kills off his alter ego Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) before watching buildings burst into flame in apparent confirmation that his plan to destroy modern civilization is being executed.
David Fincher’s “Fight Club” has been restored in China to include the original ending after censorship of the final fight scene by Tencent Video sparked backlash.Before the Chinese streaming service began running the 1999 Brad Pitt classic last month, Ed Norton’s narrator killed off his imaginary alter ego (Pitt) and it was implied that his mission of creating anarchy was playing out.But, to follow strict censorship rules, the ending was completely changed. Replacing the climactic scene was a black screen with the message: “The police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding.
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