Round 1: Fight Club vs. 12 Angry Men

[The 1-2-3 Killam]

Round 1 Match: Fight Club vs. 12 Angry Men

The polls will close for this match on Friday, October 19 at 12:00pm.

The first rule of Fight Club is: you don't face 12 Angry Men in the first round of the movie tournament! This should be a tough match, as David Fincher's well-received thriller/social commentary goes head-to-head with Henry Fonda and the #6 overall film on the IMDb Top 250! To be fair, Fight Club is also #10... You have to ask yourself: how many angry men does it take to bring down Project Mayhem?

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[Gelgarin]

Like it or hate it, (personally I'm completely indifferent to it) calling Fight Club an elite piece of cinema is a direct insult to the artistry of cinema. Someone has to write movies; nobody had to write Fight Club, they just copied text from the novel word for word and then bunked off for an early lunch. On a basic script level Fight Club may be one of the most half arsed movies ever made. We're talking entire conversations, entire monologues, fuck, entire scenes are simply lifted verbatim from the source text.

The only aspect of Fight Club that required on iota of independent thought is the ending, which the film changed. Given that even fans of the movie concede that the ending is a steaming pile of horse excrement, this does not bode well.

What bodes similarly unwell for Fight Club is that it's been drawn against one of the few legitimately timeless films that managed to make it into this contest. 12 Angry Men is just as watchable today as it was the day Rose first penned it. It doesn't rely on gimmicks, explosions or moronic deus-ex-machina fueled plot twists, and unlike Fight Club it actually manages to be about something ("Consumerism, Waaaa!" does not count as being about something).

12 Angry Men sports a cast of well defined and believable characters thrown into a believable situation and acting in a believable way. Fight Club contains exactly no characters who function like human beings, takes place in a society that consistently fails to mirror our own despite its obvious intent in that direction and achieves nothing with its screen time.

12 Angry Men manages to be far more relevant to the audience despite being produced forty years prior to its opposition. It's better written, better acted, considerably better directed, has had a great cultural and historical impact, it received greater critical acclaim and most importantly, it isn't really fuckin' stupid.

 

[Shotaro]

I uh, I never thought I'd say this, especially since I enjoy bickering with Gelgarin so much but he is absolutely correct.

Fight Club is a fun movie, but that's all it is. I was ready to defend it against most films (after all personal preference is how I've voted for Scott Pilgrim over Alien!) but against a legitimate classic such as 12 angry men?

It's no contest. 12 Angry Men to progress.

 

[Loveless]

12 Angry Men is, put simply, the definition of a classic film. It's just about as flawless a piece of cinema as you'll ever see. 12 Jurors go into a room to decide the fate of a kid accused of murder, 11 are sure of his guilt (or dont care) and it's left to 1 man in white to challenge them. The simplicity is brilliant, the characters are iconic and complex, the style quite fantastic and it's one of those rare films that'll leave you with something to talk about and questions to ask once it's finished.

Fight Club is little more than a violent wank-fantasy of repressed men, wishing to get away from civilization and engage their inner moron. It's regressive, nihilistic, insidious and actually has some potential in terms of ideas but fails to offer any real kind of examination. Which brings me to it's major failing, the ending, one of the stupidest endings you'll ever see if you actually give it any thought. The sight of Ed Norton fighting himself on the CCTV is a scene so rampantly idiotic that you might think what what you're actually watching is a Dallasesque dream sequence in the mind of a headcase, unfortunately you're not so lucky. The notion that this group of of knuckledragging fuckwits could bring down the whole system, without any authority stopping them, is the absurd fantasy of a complete bellend. It makes the Dallas Dream idea look credible by comparison.

 

[shattered dreams]

I am actually not quite as enamored with 12 Angry Men as many people are and I might be willing to admit that there may or may not have been a brief period of time when I considered Fight Club one of the best movies. Even further I have a bee in my bonnet to make a crack about how old Gelgarin is although I imagine I forfeited some of my street cred already with that choice of phraseology. Anyway, in spite of all of that I will probably vote 12 Angry Men. Mostly because the best argument for Fight Club revolves around how people felt about it when it was first out, opposed to after they over analyzed it and jumped off the bandwagon in reverse nonconformity conformity. The problem is that while Fight Club can make claims in that regard to a specific subgroup that I happened to be a part of, 12 Angry Men can make that type of claim for a lot more people. The only thing that gives me hesitation is that I enjoyed Fight Club more when comparing the first viewing of the films although this was highly circumstantial. I will say though that Fight Club isn't terrible and anyone that votes for it is not an idiot.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

I liked both of these movies. Fight Club is still seen as this cool, kind of underground movie that has a few surprising twists that'll catch you by surprise if you're not really paying attention. It's probably my favorite movie featuring Brad Pitt. I'm not a big fan of Pitt, the guy can act but I think a lot of his success can be attributed more to his handsome features more so than his talent.

When it comes to 12 Angry Men, it's just all around great acting in a minimalist setting. It's all about these 12 ordinary men put into what can be an extraordinary situation: deciding whether or not to send someone to the electric chair. As a corrections officer, this movie spoke to me the first time I saw it, which was only a few years back. I caught it on TCM one night. I've seen lots of people convicted by juries for numbers of reasons: some did it as a means of venting frustrations on something in their own lives towards the defendant, some are there that don't want to be there & just want it to be done as quickly as possible, some are able to vent their own prejudices, etc. All of these reasons are explored to some degree in the movie. The movie never explicitly shows whether or not the young man is truly 100% innocent or guilty as it's really impossible to know, something that's actually brought up by Henry Fonda at one point. But the movie focuses on looking deeper than just beyond what you see & hear in a courtroom. The actual truth, or what you feel is as close to the truth as you'll ever be able to know, lies deeper than just what's on the surface.

Both movies are good but, for me, I went with 12 Angry Men. It's almost as low budget as it gets. No big fight scenes, no special effects, no shoot outs, no nudity, no sex, no over the top violence. Just a simple, real life setting that tells a great story that features great acting. At it's heart, it's what storytelling in movies is all about at its purest.

 

[The 1-2-3 Killam]

Two of my absolute favorite films, so I'm glad to see the battle between them come so close. I will admit that I still love Fight Club. Despite a lot of respected people on the forum really not enjoying it, pointing out its plot holes, etc., I still love that movie. Edward Norton and Brad Pitt are fantastic together, and regardless of the final scene the nearly two hours leading up to it are a fun, bloody, at times surreal journey. Norton's scenes with Zach Grenier (the douchebag boss) are some of my favorites. I also can't criticize the film for being nearly identical in writing to its source; that doesn't lessen David Fincher's job any. If anything, berate Jim Uhls for doing a shitty job at converting a screenplay. Fincher is still a masterful director in my opinion.

I also don't know why people are all up-in-arms over the obvious socio-political concepts being beaten over the head. The story centered around a radical group of brainwashed anarchists, led by a schizophrenia wack-job sick of his every day corporate America grind. I really didn't feel like Palahniuk was trying to beat you over the head with his personal "CORPORATIONS ARE BAD!" angle. He was probably just telling a story whose character fit into that concept.

ALL THAT BEING SAID, I still voted for 12 Angry Men. It's a better movie; I just wanted to make sure Fight Club got some necessary defense in the even to a tie.