SPOILERS: Fight Club Ending Explained

Kix

SPOILERS: Fight Club Ending Explained

Asked for here http://www.boards.ie/bulletin/Forum12/HTML/000999.html and posted in a new thread 'cos it's more than my lifes worth to have some one stumble over it...

K

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Jack: Edward Norton
Tyler: Brad Pitt

Jack realizes that Tyler and himself are in fact one person, multiple personalities. As Tyler he's been planning to blow up the headquarters of all the major credit card companies and erase the debt record. Sort of an anti-capitalist thing.

Jack tries to disable the bombs but the Tyler part of his mind stops him, causes him to beat the s-h-i-t out of himself. This is not entirely unknown in extreme cases of split personality.

Tyler's got him tied to a chair with a gun on him, waiting for the bombs to go off. But wait: Jack = Tyler and Jack realizes that he not really tied to the chair and that Tyler doesn't really have a gun pointed at him. It's all in his mind and in fact he has the gun.

The only way for Jack to stop the Tyler part of himself is to commit suicide - he sticks the gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. But he doesn't die - he lobotomizes himself* - killing the part of his brain which was Tyler. Tyler's gone, Jack lives.

QED.

* Often practiced in the past as a cure for mental illness. I don't know if it still is used.

CiaranC

Thx for the explanation. A pretty lame ending IMO.

yellum

The ending in the book is better. He doesn't beat himself up. Instead he enters every fight at fightclub. He ends up very very battered. Bit of a tongue missing, jaw so smashed it rips through his cheek.

When pulls the trigger in the end he blows out the other cheek and he has a cheshire cat like grin without opening his mouth.

He also ends up in a Mental home and doesn't want to escape. Meanwhile all the orderlies address him as sir and they all have bruises and cuts. He won't go out for another long while he says.

Panda

I thought it was a great ending! It was cool when Jack realised that they were the one person and the gun just appears in his hand.

Dumbass part: The fact that he didnt die after shooting himself, or at least losing conciousness....

What i cant understand is that someone asked for an explaination of the ending.If you had watched the film at all its very obvious.

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Aka: Sexual Harassment Panda

[This message has been edited by Kento-Shiro (edited 18-08-2001).]

Coyote

He dose not shot him self in the brain.
he is shoting him self mentaly, and killing Tyler in his mind but he shots him self out the side of his mouth if you look you will see it's not his brain that gets shot.

Coyote

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This is my signature, there are many like it, but this one is my own.

Bluehair

I totally loved this movie from start to finish. I was blown away by it in the cinema at the time and have re-watched it countless times on DVD (exceptional use of 5.1 sound imho).

The ending was excellent, had me going the first time I saw it. The moment you realise Tyler and Jack are one and the same is one of my fave movie moments.

Huge thumbs up for this. A lot of depth to it and I actually believe there is a strong underlying message about failing masculine values in modern society.

Brilliant movie

Karl Hungus

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Coyote:
He dose not shot him self in the brain.
he is shoting him self mentaly, and killing Tyler in his mind but he shots him self out the side of his mouth if you look you will see it's not his brain that gets shot.

Coyote

</font>

You know, I got this on my first time watching the movie... And I don't understand how many people didn't get it.

-ADREN-

I got it as well, and coy is right it aint his brain.. its his cheek, making the "tyler" think that he had shot him self dead. hence killing tyler..

K!LL!@N

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Coyote:
He dose not shot him self in the brain.
he is shoting him self mentaly, and killing Tyler in his mind but he shots him self out the side of his mouth if you look you will see it's not his brain that gets shot.

Coyote

</font>

Coyote's got it. In the film you see him shoot out his cheek. He wasn't just lucky, by not blowing his brains out, he was exerting control over Tyler and killing off that part of his personality.

Killian

Kix

Hah. That's really interesting - I did not realise he'd only shot himeself through the cheek. I guess that the lobotomy idea just appealed to me so much that I assumed it was right.

From a supposedly original script:

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">
Jack looks into his eyes for a moment, then reaches up and PULLS THE
TRIGGER. *GO TO SLOW MOTION* AS -- KABLAM! his cheeks INFLATE with gas
from the gun. His eyes bulge, BLOOD flies out backwards from his head.
SMOKE wafts out of his mouth.

RESUME NORMAL SPEED as Tyler gapes at Jack, then reaches behind his
head and feels -- there's a HOLE BLOWN OUT THE BACK. Tyler's eyes
glaze over and he falls backwards, plopping on the floor, DEAD, with a
grin on his face.

A throng of Space Monkeys -- two of whom drag Marla -- RUSHES into the
room. They see Jack, ALONE, holding a gun, bleeding profusely from the
side of his face, where he's SHOT A HOLE through HIS CHEEK. He stares
at the empty floor in front of him with his weird, little smile.
</font>

<edit> The script does not exactly mirror the final cut of the film, which lends it some credibility, IMO. It's here for those who are interested: http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~heather/mustard/text/fcshoot </edit>




[This message has been edited by Kix (edited 20-08-2001).]

Cake Fiend

A nice big C0ck.

[This message has been edited by Sico (edited 20-08-2001).]

Victor

Of course, he should also have major burns to his mouth and throat and shouldn´t be able to speak...

Was on spooky water slide today and all I could think of was "As calm as Hindu cows"

I know this, because Tyler knows this.

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Kill, kill, kill the laser mice.

nesf

I would have thought that it wasn't necessarily that he shot himself, but that he was causing himself injury. Kind of like he was reversing the chemical burn that linked him to his alter-ego?

TwoShedsJackson

I'm with AngelWhore on this one - I don't really see how the ending is open to much confusion.