Release Year: 1999

Genre: Drama

Director: David Fincher

Writer: Jim Uhls, Chuck Palahniuk (novel)

Stars: Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter

Have you ever been in a fight? Been on the receiving end of a black eye or broken nose? Maybe even lost a tooth? No? Well if you ever badmouth The Great Gatsby while we're in earshot, you might find out what it's like… punk. 

But if you want the closest artistic representation to what it's actually like to get the snot (and other fluids) beat out of you, then you're going to want to check out Fight Club. (If you have been in a fight, um, please don't hurt us.)

Produced by Fox 2000 Films, Regency, and the Linson Company, Fight Club hit theaters (not literally) on October 15, 1999. Adapted from the Chuck Palahniuk novel of the same name (Haven't read it? We have), it's about a man fighting through an identity crisis unlike any you've ever seen. And we mean fight literally. What starts as bareknuckle boxing quickly evolves into a battle against capitalist society itself.

Director David Fincher, who was a master of weird by this point with Alien3, Se7en, and a couple other films without weirdly-used numbers in them, sticks close to the source material, translating its fierce frenetic stream-of-consciousness style to the screen with a clever use of narration, flashy special effects, and buckets of fake blood.

Speaking of blood, the brutal drama generated controversy as one of the most violent films produced in years and was missing a couple buckets of blood by the time it crossed the pond to the UK, where some scenes were snipped by censors. 

Main character Tyler Durden, who moonlights as a film projectionist, would not be happy about this.

The film stars Brad Pitt, who had worked with David Fincher on Se7en and was in the middle of his about-to-marry-Jennifer-Aniston hey-day, as Tyler; Edward Norton, fresh off of American History X, as the unnamed Narrator; and Helena Bonham Carter, in one of her biggest Hollywood roles, as Marla Singer. Without Fight Club, we might have seen some other muggle playing Bellatrix Lestrange…and Carter might still have been stuck in period piece limbo. 

Fight Club also features Meat Loaf, who stopped trying to find paradise by the dashboard light and jumped into acting. Mr. Loaf plays Bob, a man with giant breasts, making it one of the most daring roles in the film, especially for a manly rocker like the Loaf. Finally, Jared Leto, who had previously broken hearts on My So-Called Life, breaks faces as the nameless, but beautiful (sigh) Angel Face. There's someone for everyone here, Shmoopers.

Fight Club, with its $63 million budget, was more like Flop Club on the big screen, but it gained steam through word-of-mouth and became a cult hit on DVD. Maybe it wasn't a rousing success because the anarchistic film hits a nerve with disaffected youth, especially young men, the kind who aren't spending their money at the movie theater.

But now you don't have to support the man by spending $37 on a few kernels of popcorn and a small soda. You just have to grab the DVD or stream Fight Club to see what a knockout punch it is. Put in your mouth guard, Shmoopers, and get ready to Fight...Club.

The first rule of Fight Club is: you do talk about Fight Club.

In fact, the second, third, fourth, and millionth rule of Fight Club is: you do talk about Fight Club. Because there is tons of material to discuss.

Our lives are more saturated than ever with corporate advertising, and Fight Club is both a movie that employs product placement to the extreme (with enough Starbucks cups to keep you caffeinated 'til 2186) and skewers it with its anarchistic message of bringing down consumer culture and returning to a more hunter-gatherer state of life. And we don't mean hunting for deals on Black Friday.

Fight Club is also about angry young men. Project Mayhem, like silly old Gamergate, is populated with dudes who are seeing red because they're denied a power they feel entitled to. Fight Club is basically what would happen if men's right's activists actually got up from their keyboards and did something with their anger. The results wouldn't be pretty.

So if you want to get into a verbal altercation instead of a physical fight, watch Fight Club.

We're willing to bet you a few cases of highest-quality luxury soap that you'll get riled up about something: be it rampant consumerism, the logistics of anarchism, whether or not Project Mayhem is fascist, why everyone in this movie litters so much, and whether or not to be nervous that a Marla Singer-style thief will jack your clean laundry the next time you go to the laundromat.