Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk has praised China for the new ending it created for the movie after it was censored for its streaming release in the country. The question is, will they take it with the sarcastic tone that his comments were clearly intended to have? Originally released in 1999, Fight Club was not enjoyed by all critics but built a huge cult following. The film is a satire of several subjects, including the disruption of corporate America, and ends with the demolition of part of a city where many records of debt are held, which resets society for the future. The new version now streaming in China felt that this ending could not be shown, so they replaced it with something they felt more appropriate for their audiences to see.

When it comes to the release of Hollywood movies in China, there are many things seen as going against what the Chinese censors want to be put in front of audiences. While there are issues surrounding the use of Tibet in movies such as Doctor Strange, with Fight Club, the ending has been deemed too disruptive to be released and has therefore been changed to remove the city destruction from the story and instead replaced the finale with a screen of text that reads, “Through the clue provided by Tyler, 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 lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment. He was discharged from the hospital in 2012.”

Palahniuk shared his own site on his Twitter account. It shows a post he wrote on the back of his tribute to rock singer Meat Loaf, who appears in the movie as Bob and passed away last week, in which he “praised” China’s “happy ending.”

Fight Club’s Ending Was Always Going to Be Problematic for the Strict Chinese Sensors

The Chinese film market has always been a tricky place to negate for Hollywood movies, with the government unwilling to allow movies that show high levels of anarchy or disrespect for authority. The original ending of Fight Club, which sees Project Mayhem attempting to fight against the higher powers of America’s cities by destroying the information they use as a hold on the public, was never going to make it through the Chinese sensors in one piece, but the abruptness of the way they end the movie, and the “happy” ending it creates was something that was immediately jumped on by fans as being somewhat ironic considering the subject of the movie.

Chinese censors have never been averse to imposing an outright ban on movies it believes to be harmful for audiences to see, but recently it has not just been the content of the films that have led to issues but the people behind them. Marvel has had a rough time with the Chinese censors, having continually bent to ensure that they aren’t excluded from the huge Asian market, however, due to comments and opinions shared about the country by Shang-Chi star Simu Liu and Eternals director Chloe Zhao, neither movie has yet been released in the country, and it doesn’t look like they will be making their way there anytime soon.

It is unlikely that there will be any change coming to the strict requirements for movies being released in China anytime soon, and the real question is not which films will be subject to Fight Club’s kind of change, but more a question of how drastic the changes will be when they do come.