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All right, I'm WELL aware I'm going to be in the minority here, and I'm also aware this is an unpopular opinion. All I ask is that you read what I have to say COMPLETELY (I know it's a long post, sorry) and not just my thesis. Which is:

"Fight Club" has no artistic merit.

First, you really need to read the book, if you haven't already, to understand just how drastically David Fincher altered it and to understand why those alterations came not out of artistic choice but cowardice. Fincher didn't trust his audience and was too afraid of rejection by them. I'll explain in just a few paragraphs why I don't like David Fincher, and why I feel his artistic choices were mistakes, but first we need to deal with the novel.
"Fight Club", the novel, is inarguably one of the best-written novels in a VERY long time. In both subject matter and structure, it's progressive and an impressive display of skill, not to mention entertaining. It's everything the modern novel should aspire to and I think it will gain currency with time.

That very structure, however, can be a problem if you want to make into a movie that's easily digestible for the masses. You see, everything in the novel ties into everything else. What a character says early on in the story will gain resonance and further explain the mindset of another character later in the story. You can't just yank out anything you want and put something else in.

Which is EXACTLY what Jim Uhls and David Fincher do. The complete list of differences between novel and movie and how they're completely different from each other wouldn't be a post; it'd be a dissertation, and a lot of these changes don't seem to have been done for any other reason than they could. I'll confine myself to just one area; the ending/beginning.
The novel and the movie have cosmetically similar endings; Tyler pushing a gun into the protagonist's mouth while a bomb is below them. But damn near everything ELSE about this area is different.
In the movie, there's a defused bomb underneath a credit-card company building. Tyler is pretty much just waiting around for the other credit card companies to blow up, and then he's going to cap our hero.
In the novel, Tyler is actively keeping the narrator from defusing the bomb with the gun in his mouth. Furthermore, the building isn't even Tyler's target; he's blowing it up so that the flaming debris will completely destroy the museum that's right next door. Tyler says "This is our world now, and all those people are dead."
Already, you can see the character of Tyler Durden has VERY different motivations and where the movie plays him as some sort of charismatic hero, the novel shows him to be an out-and-out revolutionary, and I don't mean that in a positive way. Who wouldn't want to blow up a credit card company, especially late at night when it won't kill anybody? And who WOULD want to destroy a museum?
The theme of the sons resenting paying for the sins of their fathers is one of the many things the movie lost (intentionally, I suspect, can't bash those baby boomers!) in the translation. Our narrator is a lot less of a nice guy too, but one of the first clues we have that he might be closer to Tyler than we think is his rant about how he's sick and tired of having to flatten his soup cans and recycle. It's not his problem. He didn't do it. Why does HE have to pay?
The very ending is probably one of the more drastic changes. In the book, Tyler fails; the bomb doesn't work. The narrator is left alone, on the roof of the building, with Marla and the cancer support group trying to talk him down (he still has the gun in his mouth, after all.)
The narrator pulls the trigger in both versions. But in the movie, Tyler is killed somehow while the narrator isn't, and the bombs go off. There's happy music as the credit card companies collapse and our hero takes his love in hand, perfect Hollywood ending, while the Space Monkeys wander around confused.

The book ends with the protagonist in an insane asylum, coming to a realization that materialism doesn't work, and neither does a rejection of material so complete you reject yourself. He actually changes, something the hero in the film doesn't.
But in the book, the Space Monkeys aren't confused. They are chillingly aware of their chosen purpose, and they still venerate their leader. And they are still trying to bring Tyler's ideals into reality.

Leaving aside the fact that Fincher endorses conformity where the novel doesn't, one really basic thing about this ending bugs the hell out of me. The Space Monkeys, with their shaven heads, fanatic zeal, black clothing and terrorist tactics are obviously fascists. Chuck Palahniuk has publicly said the book is a parody of fascists in particular and fanaticism in general well before the movie entered production.
So why did Fincher okay an ending where fascists WIN? There's no reason for it, unless he's going for cheap shock value (which he probably was.) In the movie, Tyler doesn't fail, he's actively foiled by the hero. I just don't see a reason for this change; it's pointless and it's stupid. Whether you find it offensive is up to you.

Now, for the motive: Fincher is your typical Hollywood director, nothing more or less. What was on his mind was not artistic achievement but the gross, nothing more. He doesn't trust his audience to be mature adults but treats them like five-year-olds. That's why he went for lurid shock value and cheap laughs (rolling a big ball into a Starbucks, hyuk hyuk, whatta riot) instead of adapting the novel, which does have its share of laughs (there's one farcical scene that you both want to laugh and barf at in the book that I won't ruin.) Ultimately, this movie isn't a sign of life in Hollywood, it's just another SoCal swindle.

I could go on, but I suspect my point has been made and you can understand my opinion on this end of things. As I said, there's a HELL of a lot more, and if you want me to go further at length, I will, I'm always up for a good discussion.

Now, to the visual end of things. Visually, I basically have the same objection: it's cheap shock value, nothing else.
Tyler and Marla having sex is a computer effect. Why?
There are lots of subliminal Brad Pitts. Sure, it's foreshadowing, but it doesn't add much to the movie. Why the whole conversation about the duvet? The novel dealt with the same issues a lot more economically and even Fincher himself does so with one of the few good uses of special effects, the scene where the hero's apartment turns into a catalogue.
Also, Fincher has never been good with the whole "show, don't tell" thing and all the places where he should be visually creative, he isn't. The key plot twist is just basically panning over and there's Brad Pitt, in a chair he wasn't in before. Ooooooh, creative, Dave. The explosion in the narrator's apartment is prime for both good images and plain old humor value. Instead he just pans up and shows us a burning window. Later, we get to zoom in on his refridgerator's compressor, in one of many pointless computer-generated extreme close-ups.

All right, enough, I've gone on for far too long. I do like the acting, I think it's quite good especially considering their limitations. The cast is faultless and clearly having fun. I just think the movie over all is bad. I'll look forward to a good discussion.