Fight Club and Secret Window

 

Fight Club is 1999 movie that has entered the zeitgeist. More than two decades after its release it is still being talked about and quoted. I had never watched this movie so I decided to give it a watch and I was intrigued for most of the movie. I wondered what would happen next. Then it all fell apart for me as it was revealed that Tyler Durden didn't even exist. What a cop out by the writer! You have led the viewer on a wild goose chase only to reveal that the goose doesn't even exist. Finding out the unnamed narrator was just seeing things and talking to himself made me lose interest in the movie. Thereafter I lost any connection with Edward Norton character.

Fight Club to me is just about a westerner who has everything whining about how life has no meaning. There are people in the third world starving to death and Fight Club is about a man who is suffering from boredom. And perhaps that is what is wrong with the western world. The rich have everything and have to invent alter egos and a struggle to keep themselves alive. I could only hope one day to have all the material possessions and to be bored and unfulfilled. Boredom beats starvation and poverty in my book. Perhaps the western man requires mandatory military service to keep him alive and motivated and to give him a reason to struggle.

I do believe making Tyler Durden was the wrong move in the movie. The writer took the coward's way out instead of bringing about a proper resolution. If I was the writer I would have kept Tyler Durden as a real character and not a figment of imagination. How would the story end if Tyler Durden is a real person?

Secret Window starring Johnny Depp as a crazy writer is another movie that leads the viewer on and gives a silly plot twist when it is revealed the antagonist is just a figment of the main character's imagination. I was invested in the plot until it is revealed there is no antagonist and the writer Morty Rainey is just a mad man. What a let down! Perhaps Steven King or the screenwriter did not know how to end the movie and decided to just make the antagonist an apparition. 

Secret Window was a moderate success and got 46% on Rotten Tomatoes and rightfully so. There is no real plot once it is revealed there is no antagonist. How would I have ended Secret Window? I would have had Morty kill Shooter and bury him in the yard and then proceed to kill the wife and her lover too and bury them there. But I would have ended it with Morty getting arrested and spending the rest of his life in jail or a psychiatric ward seeing the ghosts of the people he murdered.

In conclusion, as a writer I am not a fan of the imaginary character. It is not a good plot twist and seems like a cowardly way to conclude a story.