Director David Fincher may have avoided revisiting “Fight Club” over the last 20 years, but thousands of fans have done that and more, turning the psychological thriller into a personality trait. In recent years, “Fight Club” — which follows a young man (Edward Norton) forming a relationship with the mysterious Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) — has become associated with various right-wing and extremist movements, which view Durden as a messianic figure of sorts. With so much negativity surrounding the film, it makes sense why Fincher has a sort of aversion to watching it after it’s become a symbolic figure of toxicity.
When asked about how he feels about “Fight Club” emerging as a key text for several controversial groups, Fincher simply stated that it’s not his problem. “I’m not responsible for how people interpret things,” the director recently told The Guardian. He continued by explaining that he didn’t make the film for those groups and communities, suggesting that it’s not his responsibility to spell things out for them. “It’s impossible for me to imagine that people don’t understand that Tyler Durden is a negative influence,” Fincher said. “People who can’t understand that, I don’t know how to respond and I don’t know how to help them.” Seeing as he hasn’t seen the film in decades, it stands to reason that the director really doesn’t feel comfortable engaging with the discourse surrounding the project.
