I'm not a fan of many things that re-purpose Bill Watterson's endlessly wonderful comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. The comic is just too pure and beautiful to mess with. But I can't ignore the entertainment value of the theory that says Fight Club is really about a grown Calvin, with Tyler Durden standing in as the adult version of Hobbes. (And those who don't like this idea at all could always apply one line from the movie: "I wanted to destroy something beautiful.")
Now, as a way to illustrate the old theory, someone has cut original panels from the strip to the soundtrack of the Fight Club trailer. It works quite well. See that after the break, along with a minor note about the long-rumored Fight Club musical.
The trailer comes via The High Definite. Read the original essay linking Fight Club to Calvin and Hobbes over at Metaphilm.
Most of the time this sort of thing might just be cutesy nonsense, but buried in this theory is a reasonable way to look at the film. There's a lot of talk about the basic split between the Ed Norton's 'Jack' and Tyler Durden, but theorizing about how 'Jack' got to be who his is — if we don't just accept him as a sort of alienated millennial everyman — might add a little color to the narrative.
And then, on the other side of the fence, is the long-rumored musical version of Fight Club.
David Fincher mentioned this many years ago, possibly as a joke, as a means to celebrate the film's tenth anniversary. That date has come and gone, but now the director is mentioning it again. After a recent screening of The Social Network for SAG, the director said that he'd talked to Trent Reznor about doing the music. Appropriately, Trent Reznor had independently expressed interest in doing the music for such a project a couple years back. Now that the two guys are actively working together, this almost seems like something that we might one day see. And the structure of Fight Club is perfect for a musical — there's so much room there to explore the story in a new form. [Badass Digest]
- Trent Reznor Scoring David Fincher's Version of 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo'
- 'The Social Network' Wins Boston, Los Angeles, New York Film Critics Awards and More
- 'The Social Network' Easter Eggs: 'Fight Club' and Natalie Portman
- Trent Reznor Releases Five Free Tracks From His Score For 'The Social Network'
- David Fincher's The Social Network Website Launched, Reveals 46 New Photos and Trent Reznor's Score?
- Exclusive Interview With Ren Klyce, Sound Designer of Fight Club and Where the Wild Things Are
Posts
