China quietly changes the ending to famous movie
More than two decades after its release, the 1999 hit film Fight Club has had its ending revamped for Chinese audiences.
Fans of the movie in China were enraged when they noticed a different version was available to watch on the popular Chinese streaming service Tencent Video, which removed the film’s iconic ending.
In the final scene of the movie, the narrator, played by Edward Norton, stands with his girlfriend, played by Helena Bonham Carter, as they watch explosives blow up a cluster of skyscrapers.
The buildings are all part of a larger plot in the movie to destroy the notion of consumerism by erasing bank and debt records.
The film’s amount of unbridled anarchy, along with the government’s inability to stop it, has not sat well with China’s censorship rules.
In the edited version for the region, the entire scene featuring the explosions has been cut out.
According to CNN Business, the ending has been replaced with a caption explaining to audiences that the authorities arrived just in time to stop the destruction.
“Through the clue provided by Tyler, the police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding,” the caption reads.
“After the trial, Tyler was sent to [a] lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment. He was discharged from the hospital in 2012.”
The new ending has infuriated some viewers, with one film fan writing on the streaming service that the change was “a pillar of shame in cinematic history”.
“No one wants to pay money to watch a classic that has been so ruined to such an extent,” another person wrote on a movie review site.
Fight Club is just the latest victim of Chinese censorship laws, with countless films undergoing a strict editing process to appease regulators before being released to general audiences.
Image credits: Fight Club - Fox 2000 Pictures