In China, the 1999 U.S. film ‘Fight Club’ gets released, but — spoiler alert — the audience never sees the original ending. Wait until you hear how the censored version climaxes.
Video above hosted at Rumble.
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8 replies on “Cut! You Do Not Talk About ‘Fight Club’ Climax in China”
It makes me sad how crappy the movie industry is today. When I was a kid my dad too me and my brother to a movie almost every weekend and now I only when to a couple movies recently because I was given a Fandango gift card for Christmas.
I have known for quite a while that H’wood is not making movies for my demographic. Mrs. Ron and I used to go to the movies twice a month. We got out of that habit more than 10 years ago, not just due to lifestyle and life situation, but when you see a couple of bad ones in a row, and none of the trailers look interesting, you don’t go to the next one.
I honestly don’t remember the last movie we went to see. (I did a quick search of box office for 2017 and 2018, it looks like we saw 1 in 2017 and 2 in 2018. They were “the Greatest Showman” “Christopher Robin” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” )
So, current H’wood is definitely not making movies for middle America and now they are editing older movies to satisfy their new masters.
I guess they hope the alligator eats them last.
The only time I go to see movies now are on a long haul (12 hour) transatlantic flight and its still hard to find really great ones from among the fairly vast selection…
Frankly that movie is so revolutionary and deep that just tagging a title card at the end does not change the whole story.
This weakness reminds me of Barry O’s presidency and how thin skinned he was. Remember that rodeo clown who had the audacity to mock a dope? he got harassed by the government, fired from his job, and sent to a re-education camp. Even when Saturday Night Live had the nerve to mildly poke fun at Barry, one of his PR flaks from The Washington Post was immediately dispatched the next morning to the Sunday talk shows
Weak systems of any sort cannot tolerate opposition, dissent, criticism constructive or otherwise, skepticism or open mockery of any type. This is because the weakness in such systems is obvious and the more those weaknesses are highlighted the more dangerous to the system they become. The weak system must vigorously suppress any perceived or real opposition because that opposition is a genuine existential threat to that system.
Strong systems can tolerate and even thrive in the same environment. This is because the strength inherent in such systems is the obvious nature of the benefits of that system. A strength of strong systems is being capable of recognizing error and correcting it. In doing so the strong system improves steadily. Strong systems can answer and overcome errors of this nature by simply adapting and adopting improvements.
Another way to look at it is —
Evil cannot tolerate opposition and will always try to crush it. In an increasingly morally ambiguous world this is a means of recognizing evil when it creeps in and before it corrupts the entire system to evil ends. A weak system will be much more easily destroyed by opposition than will a strong system. It has more flaws to point out and failures to cover up. The more evil the system, the greater incidence of this.
Good can tolerate opposition and does not need to crush it because it can overcome it. In overcoming that opposition the strong system becomes stronger.
A prime and obvious example of this is the political system known as Islam. Make no mistake, Islam is not simply another religion, the religious aspects of Islam are just the beard on the face of the prophet. Islam is a system for controlling human beings from birth to grave. That is a political government above and beyond the veil of religion.
It’s a weak system. If you in any way disparage their Prophet Muhammed they will kill you if they can. If you live where Islam is not only a freely practiced religion but also the government, they can kill you pretty easily. If you live in the West it’s not so easy but it happens anyway.
If they can’t kill you they will whine about you insulting Muhammed and their religion. Whining is always a symptom of a weak system in a position of impotence.
A good example of that is the Roman Catholic Church. Rome used to deny any but clergy and the highly educated wealthy access to the Bible and only allowed it to be published in a dead language. The Vatican knew that if people read the Bible for themselves that there would have to be unavoidable changes.
This was one of the objections Martin Luther published, he was not looking to destroy the Catholic Church, only to convert it from a weak to a strong system. Martin Luther’s intent was constructive criticism, something the Roman Catholic Church too often views as anathema. As it turned out, the Roman Catholic Church refused to contemplate that constructive criticism and we wound up with the Reformation. Strangely enough in order to survive and keep some of its influence the Roman Catholic Church adopted many of Luther’s points over time anyway. It’s important to understand the context, Rome only rejected 41 of the 95 Theses of Luther. Luther’s chief complaint, the practice of issuing indulgences as a “get out of Hell free” card for the wealthy, was revamped and hardened against abuse at the Council of Trent 46 years later. Which proves Luther was right in objecting to it. This proves that there were problems with the dogma of indulgences that the Roman Catholic Church needed to address. If that weak system hadn’t tried to crush dissent the Reformation would never have happened.
Catholicism used to kill heretics on a steady basis. It was a weak system devised and corrupted by men with the excuse that they had a divine right to what they were doing. If you didn’t like that, you’d best keep it to yourself as far as Rome was concerned. If you didn’t like that and made enough noise, Rome would kill you. Horribly.
They can no longer do that so they take umbrage and whine about any criticism at all. Now they wont even publicly censure by open condemnation prominent individuals who advocate the slaughter of babies. A few centuries back the Roman Catholic Church would denounce and likely burn someone who advocated what amounts to the sacrifice of babies. Now the Vatican can barely bestir itself to speak out against specific powerful people who do that while claiming to be “good Catholics”.
This allows such people to set their own example of what a “good Catholic” is and spreads their influence under the guise of religion. If Joe Biden can advocate the wholesale slaughter of babies and the Vatican won’t even condemn him personally, and use the huge influence of the Catholic Church against such abominations … So can every other Catholic in the world. While the Vatican stands by and allows that to happen by virtue of silence and a broad policy that it won’t itself even speak out against in any but the most general, generic, impersonal terms.
In short — The Vatican will condemn abortion but it won’t point to the most powerful man, the leader of the Free World, and say “He’s wrong and he cannot do that while wearing the sheep’s clothing of a “good Catholic”.
This is a problem for Catholicism in America. A large group of Catholic Bishops want to openly condemn Joe Biden for his stance on abortion. They want a strong, consistent system. The Vatican has told them they may not do that and to STFU. This dissent in the Catholic Church is proceeding apace with American Bishoprics pressing their objections to both Biden claiming to be a ‘good Catholic’ and Rome’s forbiddance of doing so. Therefor this constructive criticism is not limited to me or non-Catholics. It is not a bias against Catholicism, it an objection to an evil wrong shared by Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
To be fair, the American Bishops in opposition want to deny Holy Communion to people like Joe Biden. The Vatican disagrees on the grounds that communion “is not the reward of saints, but the bread of sinners.” The Vatican has a point there.
I think they should leave communion out of it. There is no reason why the Vatican should not openly and loudly condemn Joe Biden and his sort but stop short of excommunication, which is what denial of communion is. However …
This situation is creating an open rift between the Vatican and a significant segment of the American Catholic Church. In effect these American Catholic Bishops are doing what Martin Luther did by pointing out a problem that needs to be corrected. They are objecting on moral, Biblical grounds to a matter of Faith and conscience. Just as Luther didn’t intend to create a permanent schism, neither do these American Bishops. But they might do so as unintentionally as Luther did.
The Vatican’s argument is that the fear is “discord at the price of unity”. It’s absurd to demand “unity” and follow a system that is trying to perpetuate what amounts to human sacrifice. Abortion is not solely a political issue by any means. It is an issue of conscience for everyone who opposes it, not everyone who opposes it does so on political or religious grounds. The wrongness of abortion is obvious to anyone of good conscience. Too, not everyone who opposes abortion is outside the Democrat Party. Those people need to see that their Church, be it Catholic or otherwise, support them in their struggle for what is right. If it does not do so, it is wrong and un-Biblical.
Thus the Vatican’s position is “Do what we say because we say so.” not “Do what we say because it’s right.” Unity be damned, were I a Catholic I would not support unity at the cost of my conscience and right policies.
If you’re a Catholic, what I’m saying is rightly viewed as constructive criticism because if you whine about me saying that then see above. I am not and will not argue current dogma, you are welcome to your Catholic Faith as far as I’m concerned. It is constructively criticizing to point out where the Vatican’s dogma is not practiced by itself or those under its considerable influence. This applies to Catholicism as much as any other system.
If you cannot tolerate constructive criticism then as far as I’m concerned you’re whining in support of a weak system.
Personally I wish that the Catholic Church had just cleaned up its act and would continue to act on constructive, valid criticism. That would have been better both for the Catholic Church and the Christian Faith in general. Martin Luther had no desire to cause a permanent schism in Christianity. Nor do I desire to lambast every Catholic in the world. If that’s what you think I’m doing, you’re wrong and I’ve made that very clear.
That’s on you, not on me.
The American Constitution was created by good men of high morals and sincere religious principles. It is a strong system. It is self correcting. It is able to tolerate constructive criticism and improved thereby. It has mechanisms that provide for that sort of improvement. It has provided a level of temporal benefit combined with spiritual freedom never before seen by mankind. It would do so to a far greater degree if it were honored and practiced in whole as the Founders intended.
The Chinese Communist Party that is the de facto government of mainland China was created by evil men of low morals and anti-theistic principles. It is a weak system. It has to use the tools of a weak system to crush opposition to prop itself up because it is always on the point of failure and cannot withstand deviation or criticism.
Any system, be it strong and good or weak and evil, will contain errors. The weak and evil will attempt to maintain a status quo and demand lockstepped subjects. The strong and good will always attempt to correct errors when they are discovered and they are discovered by constructive criticism more than by any other means.
Note that I’m saying the system is inherently weak or strong. A weak system can still have strong enforcement powers. In fact, for a weak system to dominate its society it has to have strong enforcement powers. Whether that enforcement takes the form of slaughtering those who slight Muhammed, crushing people with tanks in Tiananmen Square and demanding compliant film endings or telling Bishops to deny their consciences and fall in line with what they know to be wrong.
It’s all the same thing and it is the mark of a weak system.
The similarities I’ve seen between the Catholic church, various eastern (primarily) emperors and Islam at various times is the idea of taking a human and elevating him to godhood, along with the omniscience and what comes with it. The Pope, the chinese emperor, the japanese one for a while, and some others, are supposed to be infallible due to being closer to God (the Pope) or one of the gods, to be listened to by all and obeyed. The concept tries to strip away their humanity but never actually makes them godly.
When the inevitable mistakes are made they must be covered up or the whole system is questioned. No one must question the Prophet or someone might wonder which bits he really heard from Allah and which he made up. The Pope is supposed to listen to God, but it seems a few were hard of hearing. If the Emperor is a god, but an idiot, are all the rest of the gods also idiots and not worthy of worship or just some of them?
These weak systems, as you call them, try to put their strength in fallible individuals. As you point out, the Constitution is a system, but it puts no dependence on any individual part. It expects that the people that fill in its systems and hang on its structure will be fallible, will fail, or may be completely corrupt and has plans for those eventualities.
No one asks “what happens when the godly are not god-like?”
Precisely. No one man is infallible no matter what the system that supports him claims. This applies to even those kings who though they did not claim divinity claimed to rule by “divine right”. So any action at all contrary to the wishes of a king were de facto actions against God Almighty.
This is merely a mechanism for a man to enforce his will on other men.
No matter how pious that man may claim to be. He wields absolute power supposedly derived from an Omnipotent God or gods, depending on the society and time frame in question.
It is also a very ancient ‘trick’ of a Monarch so it’s not surprising that the Roman Catholic Church would try to use it. It was a way to force compliance from the people in the early Church, it was a common practice back then which by citing the Authority of God has managed to survive to modern times.
Even today many Catholics (not all by any stretch) see submission to the Roman Catholic Church as the means of Salvation. It’s not, that’s not what the Bible says and Rome very neatly managed to keep that a secret for centuries by not allowing those who didn’t wield power to read the Bible. Only the wealthy and educated, who were wealthy and educated by means of the existent power structure, were able to read Latin and even then the Roman Catholic Church Hierarchy claimed supremacy in interpretation. Something it still claims to this day.
Basically the Roman Empire through the auspices of the Emperor Constantine morphed from a political body to a religious one. The temporal political authority claimed by the Roman Catholic Church was originated in a forgery by the Catholic Church, a fabrication from thin air of the “Donation of Constantine” (look it up if you’re not familiar). Eventually the Roman Emperor in effect if not in name became the Roman Pope. The Catholic claim to an “unbroken line of Popes” dates to that event also, prior to the 8th Century a Pope then was not at all like the Pope we know now. In this change of form from political to spiritual Rome has maintained an influence over global affairs ever since.
Pretty neat trick, I have to admire it even if I don’t particularly agree with it.