| Actually, no.
Fight Club was, and remains a remarkably positive movie, especially in light of the book it came from, which it must be said, was much darker in almost every possible way.
Although I admit there is much hyprocrisy and hyperbole surrounding the phenomenon of the movie, the reason for such a fuss isn't really anything to do with it's 'message' as such, because I don't think it really had any message at all. At least, not in the traditional holywood sense, and it's authority as a message is kind of taken away when one realizes that the main character is quite quite insane.
No. The beauty of the movie is from what is overcome. Tyler overcomes his own stale existence by re-inventing himself, and throwing away the caged, rote lifestyle to which he cannot in any way feel connected. He then proceeds to re-connect himself with his fellow man, learns to re-identify with his analytical capabilities, and then his leadership and organisational capabilities, and then takes active steps to revenge himself not only upon the society that created his painful original situation, but also upon his mind, which represents the divided, disconnected way in which he is forced to experience life in order to gain any pleasure.
In every single case he is growing, changing, becoming happier, and connecting with himself. This all comes to a stop when he realizes that his other self, his created Tyler, is not real. At this point he has to accept responsibility for himself, and his own actions, and this arguably, is where things start to go wrong.
At first he finds himself as in the start of the movie, alone. Then he begins to piece together the fragments of his real life, and can't face the consequences, can't believe in his own fundamental goodness not to hurt other people (it is notable that in the entire movie, the only person who dies is killed by the police in an unplanned death). Then he abdicates responsibility as usual (by turning himself in), only to realise that this way leads to his own demise (his other self won't allow him to go to jail) and so he escapes, accepts responsibility, confronts himself, and in the traditional american showdown after having his ass truly kicked, finally wins. Cue the applauding crowd in the form of his followers, who accept his leadership again, and of course the girl.
The destroyed buildings were a nice touch though, I thought.
He overcomes.
That's the point of the entire movie, it's not violence, it's not hate, or even the whole fashionable machismo anarcho nihilistic crap, and it's not a message. It's that you can find new ways to touch other people, you can battle and outwit the impersonal corpuses of society, that you can make a difference. Just because a bunch of teenagers didn't get it doesn't mean the rest of us didn't.
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