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Was Fight Club based on Calvin and Hobbes?

1 minute 13 comments

Back in 2001, Metaphilm theorized that the movie Fight Club was just a grown up version of Calvin and Hobbes.

In the film Fight Club, the real name of the protagonist (Ed Norton’s character) is never revealed. Many believe the reason behind this anonymity is to give “Jack” more of an everyman quality. Do not be deceived. “Jack” is really Calvin from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. It’s true. Norton portrays the grown-up version of Calvin, while Brad Pitt plays his imaginary pal, Hobbes, reincarnated as Tyler Durden.

It’s quite the essay. This week High Definite created a visual of the Metaphilm’s essay and posted it on YouTube.

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Comments 13

  1. Maybe someone should ask the book’s author, Chuck Palahniuk.

  2. Rule no. 1: never talk about Calvin and Hobbes.

  3. I always thought Fight Club was based on the Brothers Karamazov.

  4. Rule #2: Don’t talk about Calvin and Hobbes! 🙂

  5. Calvin and Hobbes soap sales would’ve been HUGE…

  6. That’s a huge stretch. Palahniuk has said in interviews that the story is a revision of The Great Gatsby.

    The actual Fight Club idea came from about people’s responses to him after he was jumped during a camping trip – his face was all beat up, yet no one bothered to ask him why.

  7. The Great Gatsby was obviously influenced by Calvin and Hobbes, too. Or was it Mutt and Jeff?

  8. Rule no 3: Never talk to Bill Waterson about ripping off Fight Club to create Calvin and Hobbes…he might beat you up…:-)

  9. That explains the decal of Ed Norton urinating I saw on the back of someone’s pickup truck..

  10. Ah, so Project Mayhem was an updated version of G.R.O.S.S.

    Does that make Marla Susie Derkins? Kind of puts a really wrong twist on the line ‘I haven’t been fucked like that since grade school’

    …especially if Tyler Durden is Hobbes and WHY CAN’T I STOP THINKING?!?!

  11. I’m just throwing this out here… I always thought Watterson got the idea for calvin and hobbes from the old movie little lord fauntleroy any insight on this?

  12. A better argument might be C&H was based on Snoopy’s WWI flying ace fantasy.

    Which was probably based on James Thurber’s ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’.

    Which was probably based on something I’m unaware of.

    Good ideas aren’t necessarily always original. Good execution is.

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