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trevanian · 05-19-2008, 02:09 AM

I got to interview Fincher briefly about the vfx end of FIGHT CLUB, and while I admit to being in awe at the time (because Se7en was and still is one of my alltime favorite movies, along with 2001), I do gotta say that the stuff about the ending seems a little conventional. Some of the other guys I spoke with who worked on the fx said Fincher thought blowing up the credit card companies was too good to not have happen, so it sounds like he was indulging in crowd-pleaser mode (sort of like George Lucas blowing off Alan Dean Foster and others about sound-in-space in SW by saying this is an expensive movie and people expect loud noises so I'm giving it to them) rather than being true to what you might call artisitic intent.

FIGHT CLUB, for me, has the classic problem of most good and bad movies ... the second half of act 2 doesn't kick things up, it just drags things out (even though it does advance the story.) I figured out the 'second half of act 2' thing when I was a teenager watching the CBS Thursday night movie ... most of them went to hell from 10pm to 10:30, and it is something I have never ever forgotten.

I watch parts of FIGHT CLUB often ... but I never watch it all the way through (as opposed to SEVEN which I watch all the way through no matter what my mood.) That puts FIGHT CLUB in a category with bad Bond movies (watch the set pieces), which is probably lower than it should be, but indicates my disappointment with Fincher (which got really extreme with PANIC ROOM, in which I thought he succumbed entirely to the Hitchcock technique-is-all mentality, and extends from his serious devotion to previsualization (he says it is for the sake of economy in shooting, but I think it may have gotten beyond that.)

Might be a lot of b.s. on my part, given I only talked to the guy for a half hour, but that's my take for what its worth. I also once talked to Morgan Freeman's producer partner about RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA, which Fincher has long been loosely associated with, and I get the idea from that and other stuff Fincher said that he is the totally wrong choice for that (he wants to mocap the actors all the way through so he can put the heads onto properly zero-gee bodies, which sounds great in theory but will not look right anymore than FINAL FANTASY looked right.)

05-19-2008, 02:09 AM	#20 (permalink)
trevanian Actor Join Date: Feb 2004	I got to interview Fincher briefly about the vfx end of FIGHT CLUB, and while I admit to being in awe at the time (because Se7en was and still is one of my alltime favorite movies, along with 2001), I do gotta say that the stuff about the ending seems a little conventional. Some of the other guys I spoke with who worked on the fx said Fincher thought blowing up the credit card companies was too good to not have happen, so it sounds like he was indulging in crowd-pleaser mode (sort of like George Lucas blowing off Alan Dean Foster and others about sound-in-space in SW by saying this is an expensive movie and people expect loud noises so I'm giving it to them) rather than being true to what you might call artisitic intent. FIGHT CLUB, for me, has the classic problem of most good and bad movies ... the second half of act 2 doesn't kick things up, it just drags things out (even though it does advance the story.) I figured out the 'second half of act 2' thing when I was a teenager watching the CBS Thursday night movie ... most of them went to hell from 10pm to 10:30, and it is something I have never ever forgotten. I watch parts of FIGHT CLUB often ... but I never watch it all the way through (as opposed to SEVEN which I watch all the way through no matter what my mood.) That puts FIGHT CLUB in a category with bad Bond movies (watch the set pieces), which is probably lower than it should be, but indicates my disappointment with Fincher (which got really extreme with PANIC ROOM, in which I thought he succumbed entirely to the Hitchcock technique-is-all mentality, and extends from his serious devotion to previsualization (he says it is for the sake of economy in shooting, but I think it may have gotten beyond that.) Might be a lot of b.s. on my part, given I only talked to the guy for a half hour, but that's my take for what its worth. I also once talked to Morgan Freeman's producer partner about RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA, which Fincher has long been loosely associated with, and I get the idea from that and other stuff Fincher said that he is the totally wrong choice for that (he wants to mocap the actors all the way through so he can put the heads onto properly zero-gee bodies, which sounds great in theory but will not look right anymore than FINAL FANTASY looked right.)