Ten Reasons Why Fight Club and Office Space are Virtually the Same Movie

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Caution: Major spoilers ahead.

I've written before about how the year 1999 produced a bumper crop of very influential movies in the horror genre--and in other film genres as well.

Two of those non-horror, landmark films that debuted in 1999 were David Fincher's Fight Club and Mike Judge's Office Space. Actually, they could probably be called horror films of a sort, as they highlighted the stark, souless existence of the modern office's cubicle-dweller in very pointed ways.

Fight Club is based on a Chuck Palahniuk novel. It's darkly funny, but it's not a comedy; it contains a rich vein of biting social commentary that stays with the viewer long after the film is done playing. Office Space, written as well as directed by Judge, is very definitely meant to be a comedy, but it contains almost as much important social commentary as Fight Club.

The Fincher film was a big-budget production with major stars--Edward Norton was very hot in the late 90s, and Brad Pitt was of course already a superstar. The Judge film was a tiny, low-budget effort made with mostly character actors and only one big name: Jennifer Anniston (Pitt's fiance at the time!), who wasn't quite that big of a name in those days as she would later go on to become.

Fight Club created buzz from the moment it hit the big screen; Office Space did not become well-known until the age of the DVD player had supplanted VCRs. (Gary Cole, who played the hated boss Lumbergh in Office Space, said he didn't know that the film was a hit until two or three years after it was released, when people who had seen it on DVD kept coming up to him and repeating back lines from it.)

Both of these films have entered the popular lexicon in a major way over the past 19 years. Quotes and terms from the two films are common in casual conversations. "The first rule about Fight Club. . . and "Looks like somebody has a bad case of the Mondays. . .", to name just a couple. Everybody has a "Lumbergh" boss in their work history. And everybody wants to be a zero-fucks-given character like Tyler Durden, at least for a short time.

But what's often overlooked is the way that Fight Club and Office Space resemble each other so much, despite vastly different style and tone, that they could virtually be the same movie.

Consider my Top Ten ways in which the two films are almost identical:

1.) Both Peter (the main character in Office Space, played by Ron Livingston), and The Narrator (played by Edward Norton) from Fight Club, are young, single, disaffected, corporate cubicle-dwellers. They both try to fill the emptiness of their lives with obsessive behavior. The Narrator shops frequently from the Ikea catalogue, trying to plug the empty space with hipster consumer goods. Later, when the Ikea catalogue's attraction wanes, The Narrator begins to attend "12-step"-type support groups just to have meaningful human interaction. Peter, for his part, constantly watches reruns of the 70s Kung Fu TV series.

2.) Both characters become "different people" through mental adjustments. Peter assumes a more "alpha" personality as the result of a botched hypnotism session. The Narrator suffers a bout of mental disassociation, and unconciously adopts a split persona he names "Tyler Durden," a bad boy who lives life on the edge and gets away with numerous criminal acts.

3.) Both characters meet and woo unconventional women who validate their rebellious behavior: Joanna for Peter, and Marla for The Narrator. Joanna is a waitress at a cheesy chain restaurant, who hates her job as much as Peter hates his. Marla is a neurotic who, like The Narrator, attends "12-step" support groups just to feel alive.

4.) Both Peter and The Narrator find salvation from their hated corporate lives in blue collar work: Peter as a hard-hat construction worker, and The Narrator as a soap maker/film projectionist.

5.) Both Peter and The Narrator construct elaborate schemes to rip-off/destroy the corporate culture they consider inhumane. Peter and his office mates write and activate a computer program that automatically steals money from a corporate account, a penny at a time. The Narrator enacts "Project Mayhem" to destroy corporate symbols and public corporate art.

6.) Both Peter and The Narrator organize friends and supporters to help with their rebellious, criminal schemes, and are adulated for doing so. The Two Bobs in Office Space, hired as management consultants, become more and more enamored of Peter the more anti-social he behaves. The followers of "Fight Club" and "Project Mayhem" worship The Narrator/Tyler Durden as a cult figure.

7.) Both Peter and The Narrator organize acts of violence to destroy symbols of modernity and corporate culture. With Peter, it's the dysfunctional fax machine, which he and his two office mates, Samir and Michael, end up beating to death with a baseball bat. With The Narrator, there's a whole string of vandalistic acts, most prominently the destruction of a hideous piece of public corporate art that is literally nothing but a giant, monolithic concrete ball.

8.) Both Peter and The Narrator experience anxiety and disgust when they think that the women they love are having sex with men they despise. Peter is haunted by dreams of Joanna in bed with his hated boss, Lumbergh. The Narrator is utterly disgusted by Marla's frantic couplings with Tyler, unaware that he is actually Tyler.

9.) Peter and The Narrator both get revenge on their hated bosses. Peter humiliates Lumbergh by befriending the Two Bobs and getting a promotion to management, thereby threatening Lumbergh's position. The Narrator blackmails his boss and gets to keep his paycheck, and a whole lot of company equipment, while doing no work.

10.) Both films effectively end with the destruction of office buildings. In Office Space, a disgruntled worker named Milton sets Peter's building on fire. In Fight Club, The Narrator/Tyler has engineered the bombings of numerous corporate skyscrapers, which go off as he watches from another skyscraper with Marla.