China Gives ‘Fight Club’ a Communist Propaganda Ending

Communist China has censored the ending of the 1999 movie Fight Club wherein the government authorities solve everything and order reigns supreme.

At the end of the acclaimed David Fincher classic, Edward Norton watches the buildings of several major credit card companies collapse underneath a cataclysmic explosion set by his alter-ego Tyler Durden, thereby erasing the debt record and plunging consumer America into chaos … but you wouldn’t know it if watching in China.

According to a report from Vice, the Chinese streaming site Tencent Video completely removed the explosion at the end of the movie and instead has the screen cut to black as a caption informs the audience what “really” happened.

“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 reportedly says. “After the trial, Tyler was sent to lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment. He was discharged from the hospital in 2012.”

Whether the censorship was issued by the Disney-owned 20th Century Fox or by order of the Chinese government remains unknown. A source close to the situation told Vice that it was “edited by the copyright owner and then approved by the government before it was sold to streaming sites for distribution.” Fight Club played in China only at the Shanghai International Film festival and it is not known if the film was censored in the country at the time.

The censorship of Fight Club recalls that of the Tencent Video version of the 2005 Nicolas Cage thriller Lord of War, which was also made over in favor of a more government-friendly happy ending.

“The Tencent Video version, which is about 30 minutes shorter than the original, replaces the ending with a new caption, saying the arms dealer ‘confessed all the crimes officially charged against him in court, and was sentenced to life imprisonment in the end,'” noted Vice.

Movie studios have gone to great lengths to appeal to Chinese audiences by presenting the country as a technologically advanced superpower, as in the cases of The Martian, 2012, Gravity, and Looper. Beyond that, some movies have been subjected to self-censorship, sometimes changing whole plotlines in order to break into the Chinese market.