China: Screens 'Fight Club' in its original form

David Fincher's cult film "Fight Club", the "stubborn" end of which has amazed cinephiles in China in recent weeks, is now being shown in the country in its original form.

The country allows the screening of very few foreign films every year and censors do not hesitate to cut scenes that are considered annoying or subversive. But in "Fight Club," starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, the last scene was rewritten, more than two decades after the first American film premiered in 1999.

Last month, cinephiles were amazed to see that the version of the film aired on the Tencent Video platform was the opposite of the original project. In the film, the narrator played by Edward Norton kills his imaginary "alter ego" played by Brad Pitt, and then watches the explosion of a skyscraper - representing the destruction of the modern world that the main character dreams of.

The version originally broadcast in China ended just before with a black screen and a text that said: "Police thwarted the plan and arrested all the criminals, preventing the bombing." Tencent did not comment on the restoration of the original form of the film. It is difficult to ascertain whether the changes were imposed by the authorities.

In 2019, many scenes of "Bohemian Rhapsody" referring to the homosexuality of Freddie Mercury, the singer of the band Queen, were "cut" from the version shown in China. Hollywood studios sometimes undertake to cut some scenes from movies on their own in the hope that they will be licensed for the Chinese market.