Movie Dominates Book

Fight Club, the movie, was all that I expected and more. It did an excellent job of following the book, and the selection of the cast was masterful. Brad Pitt absolutely captures the essence of Tyler Durden, and Edward Norton plays the narrator exactly as he should, a timid person, constantly getting pushed around and steadily building up his confidence until he ultimately finds himself and becomes his own person. Helena Bonham Carter personifies Marla Singer word for word according to her character in the book, and, more importantly, she carries the same flirtatious, flaunting body language. The book was decent, but I felt that the movie really improved upon the book in many ways. Perhaps my imagination is too dim to create the scenes that the movie portrayed, or perhaps the director just did that good of a job converting the book into such a classic film.
Seeing the characters speak the words that I had read in the book had a much greater effect on me. Quotes such as, “His name is Robert Paulson,” or, “Our great war is a spiritual war, and our depression is our lives!,” or, “On a long enough time frame, the survival rate of everyone drops to zero” really became ingrained in my head, rattling around endlessly, forcing me to think about their meanings. It was far more powerful for me to watch the face of the character as he or she uttered words that burned themselves in my mind. Overall, I would give the book a rating of a six, and the movie a rating of a seven-and-a-half.