Towards the end of the movie, you see the head of ‘Fight Club’ (Tyler I think they called him) in an interrogation room talking to police officers. When the senior cop leaves the room, it turns out that the other cops are part of ‘Fight Club’ (or at least Project Mayhem), and for reasons, which I can not decipher, they want to kill Tyler?
Can someone explain this to me? I am sure it is obvious, but I have only seen the movie once, so I probably missed something.
Why did they want to kill him?
Remember when the police chief pledged to root out the gang responsible for all the vandalism, and they attacked him in the men’s room? Tyler threatened to castrate him if he pursued the issue.
Apparently (had to hit “mute” for a few minutes during this episode), Tyler told his henchmen that anyone who exposed Fight Club should have his balls cut off. He also told them that if he snitched, he would tell them that he was rescinding the order, and not to listen to him.
[hijack]
http://www.theonion.com/onion3621/quilting_society.html
“You are loyal and trusted members of the sisterhood. Your furrowed brows are intent upon sewing, and the lust for bare-knuckled hand-stitching action pumps through your veins.”
I had to share this–one of the funnier things I’ve read lately. All hail The Onion!
[/hijack]
They weren’t trying to kill him. They were going to castrate him.
Remember that Tyler and Edward Norton’s character were the same person. As Tyler, he knew about his other personality, but the other personality (EN) didn’t know about Tyler and thought he was a separate person completely. AerynSun left that part of it out. So when Tyler gave the order to castrate anyone who tried to stop project mayhem, he knew that as Ed Norton he might try to stop it himself, in which case he would figure that EN would finally figure out the truth and try to stop them by rescinding the order. Tyler was psycho and felt it was important enough to cut his own balls off for it, and the other project mayhem members thought he was great for making that sacrifice of himself for the project.
Phew, and I only saw the movie once. I gotta watch it again.
I’m impressed, one-time viewers. Anyone have a theory as to why shooting himself through the mouth killed his Tyler personality? I can only assume it was some sort of Phineas Gage thing.
Everything that can and will be discussed about Fight Club has been done to death here. Try doing a search.
I am Jack’s IAMAM.
Well I did a search for “fight club” and nothing turned up. I found several movie related threads, but none specifically for fight club. I don’t feel like searching through all those threads to see if this was already covered.
As to jumblemind’s question: He tricked his mind into thinking that he shot (and killed) Tyler. In order for that to work, he had to shoot himself. I think when he actually shot himself he planned on killing himself, but fucked up and managed to live. Since the intent was there, and he believed he was going to die (and subsequently believed that he killed himself), the Tyler part of his brain died from the gunshot wound, while the original was still alive since he only shot himself through his cheek. Weird, but I guess it kind of makes sense, since in his mind he was shooting Tyler, not himself.
Click here for search results.
Cheers, c_goat, to the search criticism. That function is completely useless for specific questions (ie, most every time it is suggested to me).
I’d never thought of the “tricking himeself” angle, but it does kind of make sense. I think he actually shot himself all the way through the head (hence Tyler’s wound) but was so used to living with physical afflictions that it didn’t kill him like it should’ve.
I did a search and found a bunch of threads.
Here are the ones with the most replies.
Fight Club ( warning spoiler)
Somebody please explain Fight Club to me…
Some one tell me how “Fight Club” ends, Please
You beat me to it Montfort.
My apologies to Montfort then…
Apparently I never noticed the time criteria, and I left it to 5 days ago.
I’ll consider myself “up shutted”.
I don’t. Where the hell did you get those threads? I did a bunch of different searches, by title, by post, by everything for the past 30 days (max allowed in a search) and neither of those other two threads appeared.
Ok, rescinded, as well. I still don’t have the patience for that crap.
It’s my belief that Jack/Narrator/Tyler shooting himself is a point in the film that is left for the viewer to interpret in his own manner. What I got from it was that Jack/Narrator/Tyler shot himself and that this is his “death rattle”: finally knowing peace. His last breath of life is his grasp at a perfect ending, but notice the fact that the film warps and and blurs just as when Tyler rants, and then you get a big ole’ dick. He can’t force Tyler from his mind, because he and Tyler are one, in life and in death.
That’s how I wish to interpret it, so your mileage may vary.
BTW the book has a completely different ending, and to me it sort of lessons the impact of the entire story, but that’s a whole 'nother kettle of fish.
I thought the “big ole’ dick” was just to be funny since earlier in the movie when Tyler is working at the movie theater he does that to a family movie. I never thought of it as the narrator creating the movie in his head… hmmm…
jumblemind…the max time for a search is “Any Date”. It shows up just above “Since Yesterday” in my pull down menu.
As far as why shooting himself worked to rid himself of the Tyler Durden persona:
[mucho paraphrasing] during the movie, one of the characters, or the narrator, suggests that self improvement is masturbation, while self destruction is the path to freedom[/mucho paraphrasing]
Not necessarily physical self destruction, (though there was plenty of that), but rather destruction of the idea of what one’s self was or should be. When he got to the point of shooting himself, Edward Nortons character had finally got to the point where all his fears were gone, where death was accepted and no longer avoided. Using the extreme method of shooting himself, he crossed the threshold to where he could finally be totally alive and fearless. He attained the fearlessness that he had previously assigned in a vicarious fashion to the Tyler Durden persona.
And it was a damn good special effect as well.