The reason I'm posting this is because I go on Reddit pretty often. I don't go on a lot of sections, though, and the one I probably browse the most is AskReddit. And every damn time there's a question about a good movie, a "mind fuck" movie, a movie with a great twist ending - Fight Club is always a top answer. And it's actually gotten on my nerves. It doesn't bother me that people like it; it bothers me that people see its ending as a good twist ending...because it's not. By any means.
The twist makes no goddamn sense. The movie tries to sell off having half a frame of Brad Pitt appear early in the movie as good foreshadowing. People will go back knowing Tyler isn't real and will go, "Oh my god, how did I not see that! Wow, what an amazing film!" But the majority of the shit the Narrator / Tyler does is impossible. Both Tyler and the Narrator can be seen interacting with everybody and anybody around them at any given time. Hell, sometimes they're both interacting with other people in the same damn frame. How can that be? (Example: After the Narrator first meets Tyler and they land, Tyler steals a car and drives off, to which other people react and yell at / run after him. While that happens, the Narrator is arguing with an airport security officer about his luggage. Both these things had to have happened.) This applies to scenes where the Narrator is watching Tyler do things: how can this be? How can he have this perspective in those situations when he never would have. And then there's the scenes where Tyler is doing something and the Narrator is doing something completely different at the same time. How could he be having sex with Marla as Tyler and at the same exact time be sitting in his room reading as the Narrator? Being in his room, watching the house shake from the sex that he's having? What? Then there are the scenes where Tyler and the Narrator interact with one another in front of people, like when they're fighting in the car with the two idiots from the fight club in the back. Is the Narrator yelling at himself? Is he driving but also experiencing being in the passenger seat, wrestling himself with the wheel? How can that, in any form of psychosis, be a thing? (Not to mention that he crawls out of the passenger's seat after the car crashes.) Not to mention, on top of all this: he seriously had multiple cross-country flights where he started new fight club after new fight club and had no recollection? That probably took days. Where did he think all that time went?
So why do people think it's such a great twist? Because so many people are unable to predict it. But why are they unable to predict it? Because it's actually impossible to predict. Now, I don't mean nobody has the mental capacity to predict it. Plenty do. But even if the thought crosses your mind that Tyler is actually imaginary, the thought should leave as quickly as it came because you should also think, "Well, half the shit the Narrator and Tyler have done is actually physically impossible if one of them isn't real."
Also, what's up with the very ending? How does shooting himself in the cheek do anything? Shouldn't he have had to shoot himself in the head?
Fight Club's ending shits on films with actual twist endings that are plausible; The Usual Suspects being a prime example.
I don't know why I'm posting this here. Actually I do. It's because I always read AskReddit threads too late for my comments to be seen.