Fight Club

Fight Club is a 1999 American film directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter. It is based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk. Norton plays the unnamed narrator, who is discontented with his white-collar job. He forms a "fight club" with soap salesman Tyler Durden (Pitt), and becomes embroiled in a relationship with a mysterious woman, Marla Singer (Bonham Carter).

Palahniuk's novel was optioned by Fox 2000 Pictures producer Laura Ziskin, who hired Jim Uhls to write the film adaptation. Fincher was selected because of his enthusiasm for the story. He developed the script with Uhls and sought screenwriting advice from the cast and others in the film industry. It was filmed in and around Los Angeles from July to December 1998. He and the cast compared the film to Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and The Graduate (1967), with a theme of conflict between Generation X and the value system of advertising.

Studio executives did not like the film, and they restructured Fincher's intended marketing campaign to try to reduce anticipated losses. Fight Club failed to meet the studio's expectations at the box office, and received polarized reactions from critics. It was ranked as one of the most controversial and talked-about films of the 1990s. The film later found commercial success with its home video release, establishing Fight Club as a cult classic and causing media to revisit the film. In 2009, on the tenth anniversary of the film's release, The New York Times dubbed it the "defining cult movie of our time."

## Plot

The unnamed Narrator, an insomniac dissatisfied with his job and lifestyle, fakes illnesses to attend support groups for therapy. His relief is disrupted when another impostor, Marla Singer, joins the same groups. Viewing her as a mirror to his own deceit, he arranges for them to attend different sessions, to which she reluctantly agrees.

On a return flight from work, the Narrator meets soap salesman Tyler Durden, who critiques his consumerist lifestyle. After an explosion destroys his apartment, he moves in with Tyler and they start Fight Club, a secret fistfighting group, in a bar basement. Meanwhile, Tyler saves Marla from an overdose, initiating a sexual relationship between them, while the Narrator remains cold to her.

The Narrator quits his job, blackmails his boss for funds, and grows Fight Club, attracting new members including his cancer support group friend, Bob. Tyler morphs the club into Project Mayhem, committing acts of vandalism intended to disrupt the social order. Feeling sidelined, the Narrator confronts Tyler, who admits to orchestrating the explosion in the Narrator's apartment, and then goes missing. When Bob is killed during a mission, the Narrator tries to dismantle Project Mayhem. Discovering its nationwide reach, and being called Tyler Durden by Marla and members, he realizes he and Tyler are split personalities.

Learning Tyler plans to erase debt by blowing up buildings with credit records, the Narrator unsuccessfully warns Marla and goes to the police, who are also Project Mayhem members. He attempts to disarm the explosives, but Tyler attacks him. Accepting that he himself is Tyler, he shoots himself in the head, "killing" Tyler, while the bullet nonfatally passes through the Narrator's cheek. Marla arrives, and the two hold hands as they watch as the targeted buildings collapse.

## Cast

- Edward Norton as the Narrator. He adopts a number of aliases while attending support groups.
- Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden
- Helena Bonham Carter as Marla Singer
- Meat Loaf as Robert Paulson
- Jared Leto as Angel Face, a young Fight Club recruit and member of Project Mayhem.
- Holt McCallany as the Mechanic
- Zach Grenier as Richard Chesler, the Narrator's boss.
- Eion Bailey as Ricky
- Peter Iacangelo as Lou
- Thom Gossom Jr. as Detective Stern

## Themes

Fincher said Fight Club was a coming of age film, like the 1967 film The Graduate but for people in their 30s. Fincher described the narrator as an "everyman"; the character is identified in the script as "Jack", but left unnamed in the film. Fincher outlined the Narrator's background: "He's tried to do everything he was taught to do, tried to fit into the world by becoming the thing he isn't." He cannot find happiness, so he travels on a path to enlightenment in which he must "kill" his parents, god, and teacher. By the start of the film, he has "killed off" his parents. With Tyler Durden, he kills his god by doing things they are not supposed to do. To complete the process of maturing, the Narrator has to kill his teacher, Tyler Durden.

The character is a 1990s inverse of the Graduate archetype: "a guy who does not have a world of possibilities in front of him, he has no possibilities, he literally cannot imagine a way to change his life." He is confused and angry, so he responds to his environment by creating Tyler Durden, a Nietzschean Übermensch, in his mind. While Tyler is who the Narrator wants to be, he is not empathetic and does not help the Narrator face decisions in his life "that are complicated and have moral and ethical implications". Fincher explained: "[Tyler] can deal with the concepts of our lives in an idealistic fashion, but it doesn't have anything to do with the compromises of real life as modern man knows it. Which is: you're not really necessary to a lot of what's going on. It's built, it just needs to run now." While studio executives worried that Fight Club was going to be "sinister and seditious", Fincher sought to make it "funny and seditious" by including humor to temper the sinister element.

Screenwriter Jim Uhls described the film as a romantic comedy, explaining: "It has to do with the characters' attitudes toward a healthy relationship, which is a lot of behavior which seems unhealthy and harsh to each other, but in fact does work for them—because both characters are out on the edge psychologically." The Narrator seeks intimacy, but avoids it with Marla Singer, seeing too much of himself in her. While Marla is a seductive and negativist prospect for the Narrator, he embraces the novelty and excitement that comes with befriending Tyler. The Narrator is comfortable being personally connected to Tyler, but becomes jealous when Tyler becomes sexually involved with Marla. When the Narrator argues with Tyler about their friendship, Tyler tells him that being friends is secondary to pursuing the philosophy they have been exploring. When Tyler implies that Marla is a risk they should remove, the Narrator realizes he should have focused on her and begins to diverge from Tyler's path.

The Narrator, an unreliable narrator, is not immediately aware that he is mentally projecting Tyler. He also mistakenly promotes the fight clubs as a way to feel powerful, though the Narrator's physical condition worsens while Tyler Durden's appearance improves. While Tyler desires "real experiences" of actual fights like the Narrator at first, he manifests a nihilistic attitude of rejecting and destroying institutions and value systems. His impulsive nature, representing the id, is seductive and liberating to the Narrator and the members of Project Mayhem. Tyler's initiatives and methods become dehumanizing; he orders around the members of Project Mayhem with a megaphone similar to camp directors at Chinese re-education camps. The Narrator pulls back from Tyler and arrives at a middle ground between his conflicting selves.

Fight Club examines Generation X angst as "the middle children of history". Norton said it examines the value conflicts of Generation X as the first generation raised on television: this generation had "its value system largely dictated to it by advertising culture", and was told one could achieve "spiritual happiness through home furnishing". His character walks through his apartment while visual effects identify his many IKEA possessions. Fincher described the Narrator's immersion: "It was just the idea of living in this fraudulent idea of happiness." Pitt said, "Fight Club is a metaphor for the need to push through the walls we put around ourselves and just go for it, so for the first time we can experience the pain."

Fight Club also parallels the 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause; both probe the frustrations of the people in the system. The characters, having undergone societal emasculation, are reduced to "a generation of spectators". A culture of advertising defines society's "external signifiers of happiness", causing an unnecessary chase for material goods that replaces the more essential pursuit of spiritual happiness. The film references consumer products such as Gucci, Calvin Klein, and the Volkswagen New Beetle. Norton said of the Beetle, "We smash it ... because it seemed like the classic example of a Baby Boomer generation marketing plan that sold culture back to us." Pitt explained the dissonance: "I think there's a self-defense mechanism that keeps my generation from having any real honest connection or commitment with our true feelings. We're rooting for ball teams, but we're not getting in there to play. We're so concerned with failure and success—like these two things are all that's going to sum you up at the end."

The violence of the fight clubs serves not to promote or glorify combat, but for participants to experience feeling in a society where they are otherwise numb. The fights represent a resistance to the impulse to be "cocooned" in society. Norton believed the fighting strips away the "fear of pain" and "the reliance on material signifiers of their self-worth", leaving them to experience something valuable. When the fights evolve into revolutionary violence, the film only half-accepts the revolutionary dialectic by Tyler Durden; the Narrator pulls back and rejects Durden's ideas. Fight Club purposely shapes an ambiguous message whose interpretation is left to the audience. Fincher said: "I love this idea that you can have fascism without offering any direction or solution. Isn't the point of fascism to say, 'This is the way we should be going'? But this movie couldn't be further from offering any kind of solution."

## Production

### Development

The novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk was published in 1996. Before its publication, a Fox Searchlight Pictures book scout sent a galley proof of the novel to creative executive Kevin McCormick. The executive assigned a studio reader to review the proof as a candidate for a film adaptation, but the reader discouraged it. McCormick then forwarded the proof to producers Lawrence Bender and Art Linson, who also rejected it. Producers Josh Donen and Ross Bell saw potential and expressed interest. They arranged unpaid screen readings with actors to determine the script's length, and an initial reading lasted six hours. The producers cut out sections to reduce the running time, and they used the shorter script to record its dialogue. Bell sent the recording to Laura Ziskin, head of the division Fox 2000, who listened to the tape and purchased the rights to Fight Club from Palahniuk for \$10,000.

Ziskin initially considered hiring Buck Henry to write the adaptation, finding Fight Club similar to the 1967 film The Graduate, which Henry had adapted. When a new screenwriter, Jim Uhls, lobbied Donen and Bell for the job, the producers chose him over Henry. Bell contacted four directors to direct the film. He considered Peter Jackson the best choice, but Jackson was too busy filming the 1996 film The Frighteners in New Zealand. Bryan Singer received the book but did not read it. Danny Boyle met with Bell and read the book, but he pursued another film. The book was also sent to David O. Russell, but he couldn't understand it. David Fincher, who had read Fight Club and had tried to buy the rights himself, talked with Ziskin about directing the film. He hesitated to accept the assignment with 20th Century Fox at first because he had an unpleasant experience directing the 1992 film Alien 3 for the studio. To repair his relationship with the studio, he met with Ziskin and studio head Bill Mechanic. In August 1997, 20th Century Fox announced that Fincher would direct the film adaptation of Fight Club.

### Casting

Producer Ross Bell met with actor Russell Crowe to discuss his candidacy for the role of Tyler Durden. Producer Art Linson, who joined the project late, met with Pitt regarding the same role. Linson was the senior producer of the two, so the studio sought to cast Pitt instead of Crowe. Pitt was looking for a new film after the domestic failure of his 1998 film Meet Joe Black, and the studio believed Fight Club would be more commercially successful with a major star. The studio signed Pitt for US\$17.5 million.

For the role of the unnamed Narrator, the studio desired a "sexier marquee name" such as Matt Damon to increase the film's commercial prospects; it also considered Sean Penn. Fincher instead considered Norton based on his performance in the 1996 film The People vs. Larry Flynt. Other studios were approaching Norton for leading roles in developing films like The Talented Mr. Ripley and Man on the Moon. He was cast in Runaway Jury, but the film did not reach production. 20th Century Fox offered Norton \$2.5 million for Fight Club. He could not accept the offer immediately because he still owed Paramount Pictures a film; he had signed a contractual obligation with Paramount to appear in one of the studio's future films for a smaller salary. Norton later satisfied the obligation with his role in the 2003 film The Italian Job.

In January 1998, 20th Century Fox announced that Pitt and Norton had been cast. The actors prepared by taking lessons in boxing, taekwondo, grappling, and soapmaking. Pitt voluntarily visited a dentist to have pieces of his front teeth chipped off so his character would not have perfect teeth. The pieces were restored after filming concluded.

Fincher's first choice for the role of Marla Singer was Janeane Garofalo. While Fincher initially stated that she turned it down because she objected to the film's sexual content, in an interview in 2020, Garofalo revealed she did accept the role but was dropped because Norton believed she was poorly suited to it. The filmmakers considered Courtney Love and Winona Ryder as early candidates. Love claimed that she was cast as Marla Singer, but was fired after she rejected Pitt's pitch for a film about her late husband, Kurt Cobain. The studio wanted to cast Reese Witherspoon, but Fincher felt she was too young. Finally, Fincher chose to cast Bonham Carter based on her performance in the 1997 film The Wings of the Dove.

### Writing

Uhls started working on a draft of the adapted screenplay, which excluded a voice-over because the industry perceived the technique as "hackneyed and trite" at the time. When Fincher joined the film, he thought that the film should have a voice-over, believing that the film's humor came from the Narrator's voice. He described the film without a voice-over as seemingly "sad and pathetic". Fincher and Uhls revised the script for six to seven months and by 1997 had a third draft that reordered the story and left out several major elements. When Pitt was cast, he was concerned that his character, Tyler Durden, was too one-dimensional. Fincher sought the advice of writer-director Cameron Crowe, who suggested giving the character more ambiguity. Fincher also hired screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker for assistance. He invited Pitt and Norton to help revise the script, and the group drafted five revisions in the course of a year.

Palahniuk praised the faithful film adaptation of his novel and applauded how the film's plot was more streamlined than the book's. Palahniuk recalled how the writers debated if film audiences would believe the plot twist from the novel. Fincher supported including the twist, arguing, "If they accept everything up to this point, they'll accept the plot twist. If they're still in the theater, they'll stay with it." Palahniuk's novel also contained homoerotic overtones, which Fincher included in the film to make audiences uncomfortable and accentuate the surprise of the twists. The bathroom scene where Tyler Durden bathes next to the Narrator is an example of the overtones; the line, "I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer we need," was meant to suggest personal responsibility rather than homosexuality. Another example is the scene at the beginning of the film in which Tyler Durden puts a gun barrel down the Narrator's mouth.

The Narrator finds redemption at the end of the film by rejecting Tyler Durden's dialectic, a path that diverged from the novel's ending in which the Narrator is placed in a mental institution. Norton drew parallels between redemption in the film and redemption in The Graduate, indicating that the protagonists of both films find a middle ground between two divisions of self. Fincher considered the novel too infatuated with Tyler Durden and changed the ending to move away from him: "I wanted people to love Tyler, but I also wanted them to be OK with his vanquishing."

### Filming

Studio executives Mechanic and Ziskin planned an initial budget of US\$23 million to finance the film, but by the start of production, the budget was increased to \$50 million. Half was paid by New Regency, but during filming, the projected budget escalated to US\$67 million. New Regency's head and Fight Club executive producer Arnon Milchan petitioned Fincher to reduce costs by at least US\$5 million. Fincher refused, so Milchan threatened Mechanic that New Regency would withdraw financing. Mechanic sought to restore Milchan's support by sending him tapes of dailies from Fight Club. After seeing three weeks of filming, Milchan reinstated New Regency's financial backing. The final production budget was \$63–65 million.

The fight scenes were heavily choreographed, but the actors were required to "go full out" to capture realistic effects such as having the wind knocked out of them. Makeup artist Julie Pearce, who had worked for Fincher on the 1997 film The Game, studied mixed martial arts and pay-per-view boxing to portray the fighters accurately. She designed an extra's ear to have cartilage missing, inspired by the boxing match in which Mike Tyson bit off part of Evander Holyfield's ear. Makeup artists devised two methods to create sweat on cue: spraying mineral water over a coat of Vaseline, and using the unadulterated water for "wet sweat". Meat Loaf, who plays a fight club member who has "bitch tits", wore a 90-pound (40 kg) fat harness that gave him large breasts. He also wore eight-inch (20 cm) lifts in his scenes with Norton to be taller than him.

Filming lasted 138 days from July to December 1998, during which Fincher shot more than 1,500 rolls of film, three times the average for a Hollywood film. The locations were in and around Los Angeles and on sets built at the studio in Century City. Production designer Alex McDowell constructed more than 70 sets. The exterior of Tyler Durden's house was built in Wilmington, California, while the interior was built on a sound stage at the studio's location. The interior was given a decayed look to illustrate the deconstructed world of the characters. Marla Singer's apartment was based on photographs of apartments in downtown LA. Overall, production included 300 scenes, 200 locations, and complex special effects. Fincher compared Fight Club to his subsequent, less complex film Panic Room: "I felt like I was spending all my time watching trucks being loaded and unloaded so I could shoot three lines of dialogue. There was far too much transportation going on."

### Cinematography

Fincher used the Super 35 format to film Fight Club since it gave him maximum flexibility to compose shots. He hired Jeff Cronenweth as cinematographer; Cronenweth's father Jordan Cronenweth had been cinematographer for Fincher's 1992 film Alien 3, but left midway through production due to Parkinson's disease. Fincher explored visual styles in his previous films Seven and The Game, and he and Cronenweth drew elements from these styles for Fight Club.

Fincher and Cronenweth applied a lurid style, choosing to make people "sort of shiny". The appearance of the Narrator's scenes without Tyler were bland and realistic. The scenes with Tyler were described by Fincher as "more hyper-real in a torn-down, deconstructed sense—a visual metaphor of what [the Narrator is] heading into". The filmmakers used heavily desaturated colors in the costuming, makeup, and art direction. Bonham Carter wore opalescent makeup to portray her romantic nihilistic character with a "smack-fiend patina". Fincher and Cronenweth drew influences from the 1973 film American Graffiti, which applied a mundane look to nighttime exteriors while simultaneously including a variety of colors.

The crew took advantage of both natural and practical light. Fincher sought various approaches to the lighting setups; for example, he chose several urban locations for the city lights' effects on the shots' backgrounds. The crew also embraced fluorescent lighting at other practical locations to maintain an element of reality and to light the prostheses depicting the characters' injuries. On the other hand, Fincher also ensured that scenes were not so strongly lit so the characters' eyes were less visible, citing cinematographer Gordon Willis' technique as the influence.

Fight Club was filmed mostly at night, and Fincher filmed the daytime shots in shadowed locations. The crew equipped the bar's basement with inexpensive work lamps to create a background glow. Fincher avoided stylish camerawork when filming early fight scenes in the basement and instead placed the camera in a fixed position. In later fight scenes, Fincher moved the camera from the viewpoint of a distant observer to that of the fighter.

The scenes with Tyler were staged to conceal that the character was a mental projection of the unnamed Narrator. Tyler was not filmed in two shots with a group of people, nor was he shown in any over-the-shoulder shots in scenes where Tyler gives the Narrator specific ideas to manipulate him. In scenes before the Narrator meets Tyler, the filmmakers inserted Tyler's presence in single frames for subliminal effect. Tyler appears in the background and out of focus, like a "little devil on the shoulder". Fincher explained the subliminal frames: "Our hero is creating Tyler Durden in his own mind, so at this point he exists only on the periphery of the Narrator's consciousness."

While Cronenweth generally rated and exposed the Kodak film stock normally on Fight Club, several other techniques were applied to change its appearance. Flashing was implemented on much of the exterior night photography, the contrast was stretched to be purposely ugly, the print was adjusted to be underexposed, Technicolor's ENR silver retention was used on a select number of prints to increase the density of the blacks, and high-contrast print stocks were chosen to create a "stepped-on" look on the print with a dirty patina.

### Visual effects

Fincher hired visual effects supervisor Kevin Tod Haug, who worked for him on The Game, to create visual effects for Fight Club. Haug assigned the visual effects artists and experts to different facilities that each addressed different types of visual effects: CG modeling, animation, compositing, and scanning. Haug explained, "We selected the best people for each aspect of the effects work, then coordinated their efforts. In this way, we never had to play to a facility's weakness." Fincher visualized the Narrator's perspective through a "mind's eye" view and structured a myopic framework for the film audiences. Fincher also used previsualized footage of challenging main-unit and visual effects shots as a problem-solving tool to avoid making mistakes during the actual filming.

The film's title sequence is a 90-second visual effects composition that depicts the inside of the Narrator's brain at a microscopic level; the camera pulls back to the outside, starting at his fear center and following the thought processes initiated by his fear impulse. The sequence, designed in part by Fincher, was budgeted separately from the rest of the film at first, but the sequence was awarded by the studio in January 1999. Fincher hired Digital Domain and its visual effects supervisor Kevin Mack, who won an Academy Award for Visual Effects for the 1998 film What Dreams May Come, for the sequence. The company mapped the computer-generated brain using an L-system, and the design was detailed using renderings by medical illustrator Katherine Jones. The pullback sequence from within the brain to the outside of the skull included neurons, action potentials, and a hair follicle. Haug explained the artistic license that Fincher took with the shot, "While he wanted to keep the brain passage looking like electron microscope photography, that look had to be coupled with the feel of a night dive—wet, scary, and with a low depth of field." The shallow depth of field was accomplished with the ray tracing process.

Other visual effects include an early scene in which the camera flashes past city streets to survey Project Mayhem's destructive equipment lying in underground parking lots; the sequence was a three-dimensional composition of nearly 100 photographs of Los Angeles and Century City by photographer Michael Douglas Middleton. The final scene of the demolition of the credit card office buildings was designed by Richard Baily of Image Savant; Baily worked on the scene for over fourteen months.

Midway through the film, Tyler Durden points out the cue mark—nicknamed "cigarette burn" in the film—to the audience. The scene represents a turning point that foreshadows the coming rupture and inversion of the "fairly subjective reality" that existed earlier in the film. Fincher explained: "Suddenly it's as though the projectionist missed the changeover, the viewers have to start looking at the movie in a whole new way."

### Score

Fincher was concerned that bands experienced in writing film scores would be unable to tie the themes together, so he sought a band which had never recorded for film. He pursued Radiohead, but the singer, Thom Yorke, declined as he was recovering from the stress of promoting their 1997 album OK Computer. Fincher instead commissioned the breakbeat producing duo Dust Brothers, who created a post-modern score encompassing drum loops, electronic scratches, and computerized samples. Dust Brothers performer Michael Simpson explained the setup: "Fincher wanted to break new ground with everything about the movie, and a nontraditional score helped achieve that." The climax and end credits feature the song "Where Is My Mind?" by Pixies.

## Release

### Marketing

Filming concluded in December 1998, and Fincher edited the footage in early 1999 to prepare Fight Club for a screening with senior executives. They did not receive the film positively and were concerned that there would not be an audience for the film. Executive producer Art Linson, who supported the film, recalled the response: "So many incidences of Fight Club were alarming, no group of executives could narrow them down." Nevertheless, Fight Club was originally slated to be released in July 1999 but was later changed to August 6, 1999. The studio further delayed the film's release, this time to autumn, citing a crowded summer schedule and a hurried post-production process. Outsiders attributed the delays to the Columbine High School massacre earlier in the year.

Marketing executives at Fox Searchlight Pictures faced difficulties in marketing Fight Club and at one point considered marketing it as an art film. They considered that the film was primarily geared toward male audiences because of its violence and believed that not even Pitt would attract female filmgoers. Research testing showed that the film appealed to teenagers. Fincher refused to let the posters and trailers focus on Pitt and encouraged the studio to hire the advertising firm Wieden+Kennedy to devise a marketing plan. The firm proposed a bar of pink soap with the title "Fight Club" embossed on it as the film's main marketing image; the proposal was considered "a bad joke" by Fox executives. Fincher also released two early trailers in the form of fake public service announcements presented by Pitt and Norton; the studio did not think the trailers marketed the film appropriately. Instead, the studio financed a \$20 million large-scale campaign to provide a press junket, posters, billboards, and trailers for TV that highlighted the film's fight scenes. The studio advertised Fight Club on cable during World Wrestling Federation broadcasts, which Fincher protested, believing that the placement created the wrong context for the film. Linson believed that the "ill-conceived one-dimensional" marketing by marketing executive Robert Harper largely contributed to Fight Club's lukewarm box office performance in the United States.

### Theatrical run

The studio held Fight Club's world premiere at the 56th Venice International Film Festival on September 10, 1999. For the American theatrical release, the studio hired the National Research Group to test screen the film; the group predicted the film would gross between US\$13 million and US\$15 million in its opening weekend. Fight Club opened commercially in the United States and Canada on October 15, 1999 and earned US\$11 million in 1,963 theaters over the opening weekend. The film ranked first at the weekend box office, beating Double Jeopardy and The Story of Us, a fellow weekend opener. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale. The gender mix of audiences for Fight Club, argued to be "the ultimate anti-date flick", was 61% male and 39% female; 58% of audiences were below the age of 21. Despite the film's top placement, its opening gross fell short of the studio's expectations. Over the second weekend, Fight Club dropped 42.6% in revenue, earning US\$6.3 million. In its original theatrical run, the film grossed US\$37 million in the United States and Canada, and US\$63.8 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of US\$100.9 million. (With subsequent re-releases, the film's worldwide gross increased to \$101.2 million.) The underwhelming North American performance of Fight Club soured the relationship between 20th Century Fox's studio head Bill Mechanic and media executive Rupert Murdoch, which contributed to Mechanic's resignation in June 2000.

The British Board of Film Classification reviewed Fight Club for its November 12, 1999 release in the United Kingdom and removed two scenes involving "an indulgence in the excitement of beating a (defenseless) man's face into a pulp". The board assigned the film an 18 certificate, limiting the release to adult-only audiences in the UK. The BBFC did not censor any further, considering and dismissing claims that Fight Club contained "dangerously instructive information" and could "encourage anti-social (behavior)". The board decided, "The film as a whole is—quite clearly—critical and sharply parodic of the amateur fascism which in part it portrays. Its central theme of male machismo (and the anti-social behaviour that flows from it) is emphatically rejected by the central character in the concluding reels." The scenes were restored in a two-disc DVD edition released in the UK in March 2007.

### Home media

Fincher supervised the composition of the DVD packaging and was one of the first directors to participate in a film's transition to home media. The film was released on DVD on June 6, 2000, in both one and two-disc editions. The movie disc included four commentary tracks, while the bonus disc contained behind-the-scenes clips, deleted scenes, trailers, theater safety PSAs, the promotional music video "This is Your Life", Internet spots, still galleries, cast biographies, storyboards, and publicity materials. Fincher worked on the DVD as a way to finish his vision for the film. Julie Markell, 20th Century Fox's senior vice president of creative development, said the DVD packaging complemented Fincher's vision: "The film is meant to make you question. The package, by extension, tries to reflect an experience that you must experience for yourself. The more you look at it, the more you'll get out of it." The studio developed the packaging for two months. The two-disc special edition DVD was packaged to look covered in brown cardboard wrapper. The title "Fight Club" was labeled diagonally across the front, and packaging appeared tied with twine. Markell said, "We wanted the package to be simple on the outside, so that there would be a dichotomy between the simplicity of brown paper wrapping and the intensity and chaos of what's inside." Deborah Mitchell, 20th Century Fox's vice president of marketing, described the design: "From a retail standpoint, [the DVD case] has incredible shelf-presence." It was the first DVD release to feature the THX Optimode.

Fight Club won the 2000 Online Film Critics Society Awards for Best DVD, Best DVD Commentary, and Best DVD Special Features. Entertainment Weekly ranked the film's two-disc edition in first place on its 2001 list of "The 50 Essential DVDs", giving top ratings to the DVD's content and technical picture-and-audio quality. When the two-disc edition went out of print, the studio re-released it in 2004 because of fans' requests. The film sold more than 6 million copies on DVD and video within the first ten years, making it one of the largest-selling home media items in the studio's history, in addition to grossing over \$55 million in video and DVD rentals. With a weak box office performance in the United States and Canada, a better performance in other territories, and the highly successful DVD release, Fight Club generated a US\$10 million profit for the studio.

The Laserdisc edition was only released in Japan on May 26, 2000 and features a different cover art, as well as one of the very few Dolby Digital Surround EX soundtracks released on LD. The VHS edition was released on October 31, 2000, as a part of 20th Century Fox's "Premiere Series" line. It includes a featurette after the film, "Behind the Brawl".

Fight Club was released in the Blu-ray Disc format in the United States on November 17, 2009. Five graffiti artists were commissioned to create 30 pieces of art for the packaging, encompassing urban aesthetics found on the East Coast and West Coast of the United States as well as influences from European street art. The Blu-ray edition opens with a menu screen for the romantic comedy Never Been Kissed starring Drew Barrymore before leading into the Fight Club menu screen. Fincher got permission from Barrymore to include the fake menu screen.

An online release in China from Tencent censored the bomb blasts at the end and replaced the ending with a message that Project Mayhem was thwarted, with Tyler Durden being arrested by law enforcement and placed in an insane asylum until 2012, adapting the ending of the original Fight Club novel. Weeks later, Tencent released a version of the film restoring 11 of the 12 minutes that had previously been cut. The novel's author Chuck Palahniuk believed the censored version partially restored the book's ending.

## Critical reception

When Fight Club premiered at the 56th Venice International Film Festival, the film was fiercely debated by critics. A newspaper reported, "Many loved and hated it in equal measures." Some critics expressed concern that the film would incite copycat behavior, such as that seen after A Clockwork Orange debuted in Britain nearly three decades previously. Upon the film's theatrical release, The Times reported the reaction: "It touched a nerve in the male psyche that was debated in newspapers across the world." Although the film's makers called Fight Club "an accurate portrayal of men in the 1990s," some critics called it "irresponsible and appalling." Writing for The Australian, Christopher Goodwin stated: "Fight Club is shaping up to be the most contentious mainstream Hollywood meditation on violence since Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange."

Janet Maslin, reviewing for The New York Times, praised Fincher's direction and editing of the film. She wrote that Fight Club carried a message of "contemporary manhood", and that, if not watched closely, the film could be misconstrued as an endorsement of violence and nihilism. Roger Ebert, reviewing for the Chicago Sun-Times, gave Fight Club two stars out of four, calling it "visceral and hard-edged", but also "a thrill ride masquerading as philosophy", whose promising first act is followed by a second that panders to macho sensibilities and a third he dismissed as "trickery". Ebert later acknowledged that the film was "beloved by most, not by me". He was later requested to have a shot-by-shot analysis of Fight Club at the Conference on World Affairs; he stated that "[s]eeing it over the course of a week, I admired its skill even more, and its thought even less." Jay Carr of The Boston Globe opined that the film began with an "invigoratingly nervy and imaginative buzz", but that it eventually became "explosively silly". Newsweek's David Ansen described Fight Club as "an outrageous mixture of brilliant technique, puerile philosophizing, trenchant satire and sensory overload" and thought that the ending was too pretentious. Richard Schickel of Time described the mise en scène as dark and damp: "It enforces the contrast between the sterilities of his characters' aboveground life and their underground one. Water, even when it's polluted, is the source of life; blood, even when it's carelessly spilled, is the symbol of life being fully lived. To put his point simply: it's better to be wet than dry." Schickel applauded the performances of Pitt and Norton, but criticized the "conventionally gimmicky" unfolding and the failure to make Bonham Carter's character interesting. In Alexander Walker's highly critical review for the London Evening Standard with the headline "A Nazi piece of work", he claimed that the story was "a paradigm of the Hitler state". Two quotes from his review ("It is an inadmissable assault on personal decency. And on society itself." and "It echoes propaganda that gave licence to the brutal activities of the SA and the SS. It resurrects the Fuhrer principle.") were among several negative critical opinions included in the booklet accompanying the 2000 DVD release.

Cineaste's Gary Crowdus reviewed the critical reception in retrospect: "Many critics praised Fight Club, hailing it as one of the most exciting, original, and thought-provoking films of the year." He wrote of the negative opinion, "While Fight Club had numerous critical champions, the film's critical attackers were far more vocal, a negative chorus which became hysterical about what they felt to be the excessively graphic scenes of fisticuffs ... They felt such scenes served only as a mindless glamorization of brutality, a morally irresponsible portrayal, which they feared might encourage impressionable young male viewers to set up their own real-life fight clubs in order to beat each other senseless."

Fight Club was nominated for the 2000 Academy Award for Best Sound Editing, but it lost to The Matrix. Bonham Carter won the 2000 Empire Award for Best British Actress. The Online Film Critics Society also nominated Fight Club for Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor (Norton), Best Editing, and Best Adapted Screenplay (Uhls). Though the film won none of the awards, the organization listed Fight Club as one of the top ten films of 1999. The soundtrack was nominated for a BRIT Award, losing to Notting Hill.

On Rotten Tomatoes, Fight Club holds an approval rating of 79% based on 181 reviews, with an average rating of 7.4/10. The site's consensus reads, "Solid acting, amazing direction, and elaborate production design make Fight Club a wild ride." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 66 out of 100 based on 35 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B–" on an A+ to F scale.

## Cultural impact

Fight Club was one of the most controversial and talked-about films of the 1990s. The film was perceived as the forerunner of a new mood in American political life. Like other 1999 films Magnolia, Being John Malkovich, and Three Kings, Fight Club was recognized as an innovator in cinematic form and style, since it exploited new developments in filmmaking technology. After Fight Club's theatrical release, it became more popular via word of mouth, and the positive reception of the DVD established it as a cult film that David Ansen of Newsweek conjectured would enjoy "perennial" fame. The film's success also heightened Palahniuk's profile to global renown.

Following Fight Club's release, several fight clubs were reported to have started in the United States. A "Gentleman's Fight Club" was started in Menlo Park, California, in 2000 and had members mostly from the tech industry. Teens and preteens in Texas, New Jersey, Washington state, and Alaska also initiated fight clubs and posted videos of their fights online, leading authorities to break up the clubs. In 2006, an unwilling participant from a local high school was injured at a fight club in Arlington, Texas, and the DVD sales of the fight led to the arrest of six teenagers. An unsanctioned fight club was also started at Princeton University, where matches were held on campus. The film was suspected of influencing Luke Helder, a college student who planted pipe bombs in mailboxes in 2002. Helder's goal was to create a smiley pattern on the map of the United States, similar to the scene in Fight Club in which a building is vandalized to have a smiley on its exterior. On July 16, 2009, a 17-year-old who had formed his own fight club in Manhattan was charged with detonating a homemade bomb outside a Starbucks Coffee shop in the Upper East Side. The New York City Police Department reported the suspect was trying to emulate "Project Mayhem".

Fight Club had a significant impact on evangelical Christianity, in the areas of Christian discipleship and masculinity. A number of churches called their cell groups "fight clubs" with a stated purpose of meeting regularly to "beat up the flesh and believe the gospel of grace". Some churches, especially Mars Hill Church in Seattle, whose pastor Mark Driscoll was obsessed with the film, picked up the film's emphasis on masculinity, and rejection of self-care. Jessica Johnson suggests that Driscoll even called on "his brothers-in-arms to foment a movement not unlike Project Mayhem."

A Fight Club video game was released by Vivendi Universal Games in 2004 for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and for mobile phones. The game was a critical and commercial failure, and was panned by such publications and websites as GameSpot, Game Informer, and IGN. The video game Jet Set Radio, initially released in 2000 for Sega's Dreamcast console, was inspired by the film's anti-establishment themes.

In 2003, Fight Club was listed as one of the "50 Best Guy Movies of All Time" by Men's Journal. In 2004 and 2006, Fight Club was voted by Empire readers as the eighth and tenth greatest film of all time, respectively. Total Film ranked Fight Club as "The Greatest Film of our Lifetime" in 2007 during the magazine's tenth anniversary. In 2007, Premiere selected Tyler Durden's line, "The first rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club," as the 27th greatest movie line of all time. In 2008, readers of Empire ranked Tyler Durden eighth on a list of the 100 Greatest Movie Characters. Empire also identified Fight Club as the 10th greatest movie of all time in its 2008 issue The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.

In 2010, two viral mash-up videos featuring Fight Club were released. Ferris Club was a mash-up of Fight Club and the 1986 film Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It portrayed Ferris as Tyler Durden and Cameron as the narrator, "claiming to see the real psychological truth behind the John Hughes classic". The second video Jane Austen's Fight Club also gained popularity online as a mash-up of Fight Club's fighting rules and the characters created by 19th-century novelist Jane Austen.

## See also

- List of American films of 1999

1999 film by David Fincher

Films about dissociative identity disorder

Films about terrorism in the United States


Russian battleship Rostislav

Rostislav was a pre-dreadnought battleship built by the Nikolaev Admiralty Shipyard in the 1890s for the Black Sea Fleet of the Imperial Russian Navy. She was conceived as a small, inexpensive coastal defence ship, but the Navy abandoned the concept in favor of a compact, seagoing battleship with a displacement of 8,880 long tons (9,020 t). Poor design and construction practices increased her actual displacement by more than 1,600 long tons (1,600 t). Rostislav became the world's first capital ship to burn fuel oil, rather than coal. Her combat ability was compromised by the use of 10-inch (254 mm) main guns instead of the de facto Russian standard of 12 inches (305 mm).

Her hull was launched in September 1896, but non-delivery of the ship's main guns delayed her maiden voyage until 1899 and her completion until 1900. In May 1899 Rostislav became the first ship of the Imperial Navy to be commanded by a member of the House of Romanov, Captain Alexander Mikhailovich. From 1903 to 1912 the ship was the flagship of the second-in-command of the Black Sea Fleet. During the 1905 Russian Revolution her crew was on the verge of mutiny, but ultimately remained loyal to the regime, and actively suppressed the mutiny of the cruiser Ochakov.

Rostislav was actively engaged in World War I until the collapse of the Black Sea Fleet in the beginning of 1918. She was the first Russian ship to fire on enemy targets on land during World War I, the first to be hit by a German airstrike, and the first to destroy a submarine, albeit a Russian one. In April 1918 the fleeing Bolsheviks abandoned Rostislav in Sevastopol. A year later the British occupation forces disabled her engines. The White forces used the ship as a towed floating battery, then scuttled her in the Kerch Strait in November 1920.

## Design and description

Similar in size to earlier coastal defence ships but seaworthy for operations in the Black Sea, Rostislav was conceived in 1892 as a cheap and compact platform for 12-inch guns. Admiral Nikolay Chikhachov, Chief of the Ministry of the Navy, envisioned a squadron of such ships, each displacing 4,000 to 5,000 long tons (4,100 to 5,100 t), that would fit into his total desired displacement target of 24,000 long tons (24,400 t). Chief designer of the Nikolaev Shipyard, Sergey Ratnik, evaluated Chikhachov's request for proposals, and advised against the idea in general. The Naval Technical Committee (NTC) concurred: any meaningful combination of firepower, armor, speed and stability required at least 6,000 long tons (6,100 t). The NTC discarded Ratnik's advice to build an improved copy of the battleship Sissoi Veliky of 8,880 long tons (9,020 t), but did not present a definite alternative. The NTC declined to discuss tactical matters, leaving the choice of armament to Chikhachov.

Chikhachov instructed Andrey Toropov of the Nikolaev Shipyard to draft two proposals, one armed with 10-inch and the other with 12-inch guns. Toropov estimated that the ship should have displaced at least 8,880 tons. Chikhachov admitted the fact and presented the two options to the NTC. The admiral himself and the active fleet commanders voted for the 12-inch caliber, which had already become a worldwide battleship standard, but the NTC strongly advised against it. The Navy brass spent April and May 1893 in lengthy debates. They agreed to increase displacement to 8,880 tons and were leaning toward accepting 12-inch guns when General Admiral Grand Duke Alexey resolved the discussion in favor of the smaller caliber.

Rostislav had the same hull as Sissoi Veliky, protected with the newly developed Harvey armor. She was also the first Russian battleship to use electric power instead of older hydraulic systems to train her guns.

### General characteristics

Rostislav was 345 feet 6 inches (105.3 m) long at the waterline and 351 feet 10 inches (107.2 m) long overall. She had a beam of 68 feet (20.7 m) and a draft of 25 feet 2 inches (7.7 m). She displaced 10,520 long tons (10,690 t), over 1,500 long tons (1,500 t) more than her designed displacement of 8,880 long tons (9,020 t). This weight gain increased her draft by about 3 feet (0.9 m), submerging most, if not all, of her waterline armored belt.

### Propulsion

Rostislav had two vertical triple-expansion steam engines, identical to those of Sissoi Veliky, that had a total designed output of 8,500 indicated horsepower (6,300 kW). Eight cylindrical fire-tube boilers provided steam to the engines, each of which drove one propeller. Half of the boilers were coal-fired and the other half were oil-fired, making Rostislav the first capital ship in the world to use fuel oil. This was done in order to substitute cheap oil from Baku for expensive imported coal. On sea trials, the power plant produced a total of 8,816 ihp (6,574 kW) and a top speed of 15.8 knots (29.3 km/h; 18.2 mph). She carried a maximum of 820 long tons (830 t) of fuel oil and coal at full load that provided a range of 3,100 nautical miles (5,700 km; 3,600 mi) at a speed of 8 knots (15 km/h; 9.2 mph).

### Armament

The main armament consisted of two pairs of 10-inch (254 mm) 45-caliber Model 1891 guns mounted in French-style, center-pivot twin gun turrets fore and aft. Each turret had an arc of fire of 240°. These guns had a maximum elevation of +15° and could depress to −5°. They fired a 496.5-pound (225.2 kg) shell at a muzzle velocity of 2,273 ft/s (693 m/s). At an elevation of +6° the guns had a range 7,320 metres (8,010 yd). All eight of the 45-caliber, 6-inch (152 mm) Canet Pattern 1891 guns were mounted in twin-gun turrets on the main deck. Each turret was positioned at a corner of the superstructure and had an arc of fire of 110°. They fired shells that weighed 91.4 lb (41.46 kg) with a muzzle velocity of 2,600 ft/s (792 m/s). They had a maximum range of 12,602 yards (11,523 m) when fired at an elevation of +20°.

The anti-torpedo boat armament consisted of twelve 47-millimetre (1.9 in) Hotchkiss guns. Eight of these were mounted in the superstructure and the locations of the remaining four are unclear. They fired a 2.2-pound (1.00 kg) shell at a muzzle velocity of 1,400 ft/s (430 m/s). The ship also mounted sixteen 37-millimetre (1.5 in) Hotchkiss guns, eight of which were carried in the fighting top. The locations of the other eight are unknown. They fired a 1.1-pound (0.50 kg) shell at a muzzle velocity of 2,150 ft/s (660 m/s).

Rostislav carried six 15-inch (381 mm) torpedo tubes. The bow and stern tubes and the aft pair of broadside tubes were above water. The forward broadside tubes were underwater. The ship carried 50 mines to be used to protect her anchorage.

### Protection

The maximum thickness of the Rostislav's waterline belt was 14.5 inches (368 mm), tapering to 10 inches (254 mm) abreast the magazines. It covered 227 feet (69.2 m) of the ship's length and was 7 feet (2.1 m) high. While the exact height of the belt above the designed waterline is unknown, much of it, if not all, would have been below the waterline as the ship's draft was over 3 feet (0.9 m) deeper than designed. The belt terminated forward in a 9-inch (229 mm) transverse bulkhead and aft in a 5-inch (127 mm) bulkhead. The upper belt was 5 inches thick, 7 feet 6 inches (2.3 m) high and covered 160 feet (48.8 m) of the ship's side. The sides of the main gun turrets were 10 inches thick and they had 2.5-inch (64 mm) roofs. The sides of the 6-inch turrets were 6 inches thick as were the sides of the conning tower. The armor deck was flat and located at the upper edge of the main belt. It was 2 inches (51 mm) thick. Below the waterline, forward and aft of the armored citadel, were 3-inch (76 mm) decks.

## Construction

Work on Rostislav commenced on January 30, 1894. The ship was officially christened May 20, 1894; in line with Russian tradition, the formal laying down ceremony was delayed until May 19, 1895. The contract for oil-firing boilers and engines was awarded to Baltic Works. The armor was rolled in the United States by Bethlehem Steel within the framework of an earlier contract for Petropavlovsk-class battleships. Bethlehem Steel faced the scrutiny of the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs for charging the Russians an unusually low "introductory" price of \$250 to \$300 per ton, compared to \$600 to \$660 paid by the United States Navy. Senator Benjamin Tillman publicly accused Bethlehem and Carnegie of price fixing and robbing the American taxpayer.

Rostislav's hull was launched on September 2, 1896. Lack of proper cranes in Nikolaev made the installation of its engines exceedingly difficult, to the point that the navy even considered towing the hull to Sevastopol for completion. The Nikolaev engineers eventually resolved the problem and the ship was ready to sail in July 1897. Rostislav conducted her speed trials on October 21, 1898, still missing her main guns. Her power plant performed flawlessly, but its weight exceeded the design target by more than 295 long tons (300 t).

Non-delivery of the new 10-inch Model 1897 guns, made by the Obukhov Factory in Saint Petersburg for Rostislav, Admiral Ushakov-class coastal defense ships and Peresvet-class battleships, delayed the completion of the ship by two years. One of these guns, earmarked for Admiral Ushakov, exploded at the proving ground and the whole batch was subjected to exhaustive tests and, when possible, repairs. Guns Number 16 through Number 19 passed the tests and were delivered to Sevastopol in July and August 1899. Rostislav was able to sail to her first gunnery trial on April 12, 1900. On the second day of shooting practice the recoil mechanisms of her forward turret failed and more defects were discovered back at the base. Rostislav spent the rest of the spring having her gun mounts repaired, but the problem persisted and the Navy "solved" it by prohibiting them from being used. The gun mounts were rebuilt along the pattern of those used by the armored cruiser Admiral Nakhimov in 1901 and 1902, and Rostislav successfully passed the gunnery tests in June 1902. The ship's electrical turret controls, with their 332 contact pairs, required tedious maintenance and proved too complex for most of the enlisted men.

## Service

On May 1, 1899, Captain Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich assumed command of Rostislav, becoming the first Romanov since Peter I to command a combat ship. Another Romanov, Grand Duke Kirill, spent a few uneventful months on board Rostislav in 1900. Alexander's guests, parties and diplomatic visits to Istanbul regularly interfered with the crew's duties, but he personally managed the repairs and alterations of the ship's equipment. Shipyards and contractors treated Rostislav as a priority customer. Alexander, based on his experience with Sissoi Veliky, persuaded the NTC to reinforce Rostislav's rudder frame and supervised installation of a backup control post deep under the conning tower. In 1903 Alexander was promoted to rear admiral and returned to his ship as a squadron commander. Rostislav served as the junior flagship of the Black Sea Fleet until September 1912.

The 1900 season revealed grave problems with Rostislav's boilers. Black smoke from burning oil was more conspicuous than coal smoke. Uneven distribution of heat inside the boilers caused severe local overheating, buckling of fireboxes and sudden backdrafts. For three and a half months the boilers failed one by one, starting with small auxiliary power units and ending with the main boilers. Oil delivered by the Rothschild-controlled Russian Standard Oil was not at fault; similar problems were experienced by oil-fired ships of the Baltic Fleet. Repairs and alterations of the power plant continued until 1904, when the continuing boiler failures compelled the Navy to dispense with oil fuel and convert Rostislav to coal in 1904 and 1905. Each round of repairs and alterations added more weight to the already overweight ship, and by 1907 the ship's belt armor was completely below the waterline.

The Tsentralka, the group plotting a mutiny of the Black Sea Fleet, decided on June 25, 1905, that the mutiny should start on Potemkin rather than Rostislav. On June 27, 1905, the day of the battleship Potemkin mutiny, Rostislav was sailing under the ensign of Vice Admiral Alexander Krieger. Nicholas II ordered Krieger and his superior, fleet commander Grigory Chukhnin, to destroy the rebels by force, but the admirals refrained from shooting. They let the rebels flee to Odessa and later to Romania. Krieger's own crew was on the verge of open mutiny. On July 2, 1905, a military council held on board Rostislav decided to moor the ships in Odessa, disconnect the engines from the propellers and let the enlisted men walk ashore at will. By the time of the Ochakov mutiny in November 1905, fleet morale had improved and Krieger did not hesitate to fire two 10-inch and fourteen 6-inch shells against the rebels.

### Exercises and casualties

After the Battle of Tsushima the Imperial Navy concentrated on improving their gunnery skills and fire-control practices. In 1908 Alexei Krylov and Yevgeny Berkalov led Rostislav on an unprecedented long-range gunnery shoot: Rostislav fired 330 ten-inch shells at a distance of 8 to 10 miles (13 to 16 km) in a few days. The experiment proved that the older ballistic tables used by the Navy were inaccurate. Berkalov compiled the data from the 1908 exercise into the new tables adopted by the Navy. Another of Krylov's initiatives, rapid counter-flooding, was standardized in 1909.

Two plans for modernizing the ship were put forward before World War I. In 1907 the Naval General Staff proposed a major reconstruction aimed at reducing her draft and raising her armor belt higher out of the water. Her above-water torpedo tubes, torpedo nets, auxiliary boilers and 47-millimeter guns would have been removed, her superstructure cut down and her rigging reduced to a single pole mast. These changes would have reduced her displacement by 250 long tons (250 t), but the plan was rejected due to a shortage of money. Her above-water torpedo tubes, however, were removed about this time. In 1912 the staff of the Black Sea Fleet proposed to replace all of her 47 mm guns with four 75-millimetre (3 in) guns and to remove the auxiliary boilers and the submerged torpedo tubes to offset the additional weight. The Naval General Staff did not think that this was worth the cost and rejected the plan. Even though these plans did not come to fruition, other alterations were made to Rostislav before the war. A dozen of her 37 mm guns were removed in 1906, and she was fitted with 15-foot (4.6 m) rangefinders, probably made by Barr and Stroud, in 1907 and 1908.

In 1909 and 1910, Rostislav and the rest of the Black Sea Fleet prepared for joint operations with submarines. She was scheduled for an installation of the first Russian underwater acoustic communication system, but the installation was interrupted and her hardware was installed on the battleship Panteleimon (the former Potemkin) instead. During an anti-submarine exercise on the night of June 11, 1909, Rostislav accidentally rammed and sank the submarine Kambala. Twenty men of Kambala and two rescue divers died. The accident was blamed on reckless maneuvering by the submarine, and Rostislav's captain was cleared of any negligence or wrongdoing.

### Diplomatic incidents

Before the outbreak of World War I Rostislav was involved in two minor international incidents. On August 11, 1911, Evstafi and Panteleimon, two of the Black Sea Fleet battleships paying a state visit to Romania, ran aground on a shoal just off the port of Constanța. Rostislav's officers had detected the hazard and steered her to safety, but did not alert the other ships. The international embarrassment that followed led to the resignation of fleet commander Admiral Ivan Bostrem. During the First Balkan War Rostislav sailed into the Sea of Marmara to protect the Russian Embassy in Istanbul from a mob. Rostislav accidentally fired a live shell into the Turkish defenses. No one was injured during the incident, and the captain defused the situation with a personal apology to the Ottoman government.

### World War I

Rostislav spent the winter of 1913–14 refitting, and in April 1914 she returned to the active fleet with newly overhauled machinery, new rangefinders and new gun sights. The ship made 15.37 knots (28.47 km/h; 17.69 mph) on her post-refit trials.

On November 4, 1914, the Black Sea Fleet sailed out on its first combat operation of the war: the bombardment of Zonguldak. The operation was conceived as a retaliation against the Turkish-German attack on Sevastopol. Rostislav, captained by Kazimierz Porębski, was the "designated gunboat" while other Russian battleships formed a defensive screen around her. On November 6 she fired 251 shells at the port of Zonguldak, reducing it to rubble. On November 18 the ship faced Goeben during the Battle of Cape Sarych, but the German ship broke contact before Rostislav, trailing behind the Russian formation, even spotted her. Rostislav had other encounters with Goeben in 1915 and 1916, but did not engage her directly. In 1915 the ship received four 75 mm anti-aircraft guns.

After the commissioning of the Imperatritsa Mariya-class dreadnoughts, the old battleships were split into independent combat groups. Rostislav became the flagship of the Batumi Group tasked with supporting the ground operations of the Caucasus Army. Their first joint action began February 5, 1916, near Arhavi. On the first day alone the ship fired 400 shells against the Turks. On March 4 Rostislav and the gunboats Kubanetz and Donetz supported the amphibious landing at Atina. Three days later she supported the landing of marines that ended in the capture of Rize. At the end of March Rostislav and Panteleimon forced the Turks to evacuate Trabzon.

In the summer of 1916 the Navy seriously considered an all-out amphibious assault on the Bosphorus. Fleet commander Andrei Eberhardt anticipated a high risk of naval mine and torpedo hits in the coastal waters and suggested equipping all pre-dreadnought battleships with anti-torpedo bulges. Sinop had her bulges fitted in Nikolaev in July 1916, and Rostislav was next in line, but the work was cancelled in August, and she was transferred to the Romanian coast as flagship of the Constanța Group. Constanța temporarily became an important logistical hub for the Russian troops heading to the Romanian Front, and the base for minelayers, submarines and destroyers harassing the enemy in the Bosphorus area. The Germans responded with air raids; their first aerial success against a Russian naval target was scored against Rostislav. The bomb hit the edge of the aft 10-inch turret and injured sixteen sailors. The turret itself remained fully operational. The collapse of the Romanian Front in October 1916 forced the Navy to evacuate Constanța. Rostislav returned to Sevastopol for a much-needed overhaul.

### Revolution

The February Revolution of 1917 did not demoralize the Black Sea Fleet as quickly as the Baltic Fleet. Captain Fyodor Stark, a former destroyer commander, maintained Rostislav in combat-ready condition until the end of the year. The battleship sailed out for her last voyage to Batumi in September and October. Stark managed to contain the radical politics, anti-German sentiment and Ukrainization of the crew, but nevertheless raised the flag of Ukraine on his return to Sevastopol on October 25. From this moment desertion and "volunteering" into the Red Guards intensified, and by December 21 the crew was reduced to 460 enlisted men and 28 officers. In January 1918 the fleet disintegrated completely: the officers fled from the enraged enlisted men, then the enlisted men abandoned the ships and fled from the advancing German Army. On April 29, 1918, the Bolsheviks managed to extricate two battleships and sixteen destroyers from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk, but Rostislav and the rest of the fleet remained in Sevastopol.

The German occupation of Crimea from May to November 1918 did not affect the abandoned ship. The Anglo-French forces that replaced the Germans stayed in Sevastopol until April 1919. Before leaving, the British wrecked Rostislav's engines on April 25 to prevent the ship from being any use to the advancing Soviets. The White forces of Baron Wrangel used the disabled ship as a floating battery in the Sea of Azov. The ship, manned by a ragtag volunteer crew, was stationed in the shallow waters of the Kerch Strait to harass the Reds in Taman and prevent a landing in the Crimea. After the defeat of Wrangel's land forces, the crew scuttled Rostislav in the Kerch Strait to prevent the Red forces from breaking through to the Black Sea.

When Rostislav sank in the shallows her superstructure remained above water. In 1930, the EPRON (a Soviet salvage unit) retrieved the ship's guns and partially dismantled the hull. According to diver Alexander Yolkin, the remains of the hull are still lying in the strait, around 1,200 metres (1,300 yd) from the Ukrainian coast, and gradually sinking into the silt.

Russian battleship

Battleships of the Imperial Russian Navy


Purico complex

The Purico complex is a Pleistocene volcanic complex in Chile close to Bolivia, formed by an ignimbrite, several lava domes and stratovolcanoes and one maar. It is in the Chilean segment of the Central Volcanic Zone, one of the four volcanic belts which make up the Andean Volcanic Belt. The Central Volcanic Zone spans Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina and includes 44 active volcanoes as well as the Altiplano–Puna volcanic complex, a system of large calderas and ignimbrites of which Purico is a member. Licancabur to the north, La Pacana southeast and Guayaques to the east are separate volcanic systems.

The Purico complex consists of a shield shaped volcanic structure consisting of the Purico ignimbrite and a number of secondary volcanoes that are emplaced on this volcanic shield. During the ice ages, the shield was in part covered by glaciers which have left moraines. Purico is the source of the Purico ignimbrite, which has a volume of about 80–100 cubic kilometres (19–24 cu mi). After the emplacement of the Purico ignimbrite, a number of lava domes and stratovolcanoes developed on the ignimbrite shield. The maar of Alitar is still fumarolically active. In historical times, sulfur was mined on Purico. Today, the Llano de Chajnantor Observatory lies on the ignimbrite shield.

## Geography and structure

The Purico complex lies in Chile close to the border between Bolivia and Chile, east of the town of San Pedro de Atacama and northeast of Toconao. The volcanic complex can be seen from San Pedro de Atacama. A road runs along the northern and eastern margin of the Purico complex, and a gas pipeline crosses the complex as well. The existence of the Purico complex was established on the basis of Landsat images.

### Regional

Licancabur volcano was constructed on ignimbrites from Purico just north of the complex. Guayaques lies east of Purico, the La Pacana caldera is located southeast of the complex, and La Pacana's Filo Delgado ignimbrite has buried part of the Purico ignimbrite. The known volcanoes Lascár and El Tatio are found at larger distances from Purico.

Purico is part of the Central Volcanic Zone (CVZ), a belt of volcanoes that runs along the western margin of South America between 14° and 28° southern latitude. This 1,500 kilometres (930 mi) long belt is one of four separate volcanic belts that make up the Andean Volcanic Belt. They are separated from each other by gaps where no recent volcanism occurs. The CVZ segment includes 44 active systems, 18 minor volcanic centres and over 6 large ignimbrite or caldera systems. One of these volcanoes, Ojos del Salado, is the highest volcano in the world. The largest historical eruption in the CVZ occurred in 1600 at Huaynaputina in Peru while Lascár is its most active member, with a major eruption in 1993.

### Local

Purico is a circular shield with a diameter of 15–25 kilometres (9.3–15.5 mi), whose slopes descend away from a centre at an elevation of 5,000 metres (16,000 ft). This shield forms a plateau, which is known as the Chajnantor Plateau, and which contains further flat areas such as Llano de Chajnantor, Pampa El Vallecito and Pampa La Bola. There is no evidence that a caldera exists there, unlike in many other volcanoes of this type. To the west, close to the margin of the Salar de Atacama, the shield drops down to a bajada. A north-south trending system of fractures and conspicuous normal faults cuts across the western margin of the Purico complex.

On top of this shield, a complex of lava domes and lavas reaches elevations of over 5,800 metres (19,000 ft) above sea level; the vent of the ignimbrite may be buried beneath this complex. This complex forms approximately a 10 by 20 kilometres (6.2 mi × 12.4 mi) wide semicircle open to the southwest around the centre of the shield, which may reflect the existence of a ring fault on which the individual centres were emplaced.

Clockwise starting from the west this semicircle includes 5,016 metres (16,457 ft) high Cerro Negro (), Cerro Purico, "dacite dome D" and 5,639 metres (18,501 ft) high El Cerillo which is also known as Cerro Chajnantor (), 5,703 metres (18,711 ft) high Cerro El Chascon (), the 5,262 metres (17,264 ft) high Cerro Aspero ( and the 5,462 metres (17,920 ft) high Cerro Putas () to the south. All these domes (with the exception of the pancake-like "dacite dome D") have conical shapes, and Aspero, El Cerillo and El Chascon appear to be post-glacial in age.

The Chascon dome is constructed by lava flows and has a well preserved summit crater, while Cerro Purico is a stratovolcano and also known as Cerro Toco (). Additional more subdued structures in the principal complex are 5,058 metres (16,594 ft) high Cerro Agua Amarga () just southwest of El Chascon and the Cordon Honor with Cerro Purico Sur in the "opening" of the semicircle. Lahars and debris flows from the volcanoes have covered parts of the ignimbrite shield with gravels. A meltwater-fed spring on Cerro Toco is known as Aguada Pajaritos, and a small lake Laguna de Agua Amarga is found south of Chascon. Presently, the Purico complex forms the drainage divide between the Salar de Atacama and the Salar de Pujsa. The 5,130 metres (16,830 ft) high Macon stratovolcano (), Alitar maar () and 5,346 metres (17,539 ft) high Alitar volcano () lie to the south of the main complex. Alitar maar is located is 500 metres (1,600 ft) wide and 50 metres (160 ft) deep.

## Geology

West of South America, the Nazca Plate subducts beneath the South America Plate at rates of 9–7 centimetres per year (3.5–2.8 in/year). This subduction process along with that of the Antarctic Plate beneath the South American Plate farther south is responsible for volcanism in the Andean Volcanic Belt.

Volcanic activity in the region of the Central Volcanic Zone has been ongoing for 200 million years, but with temporal and local variations; 25 million years ago for example it was centered farther east and later moved west. About 23 million years ago, large scale ignimbritic activity commenced in the region with the emplacement of the Oxaya Formation, followed by the Altos de Pica Formation 17-15 million years ago. However, effusive activity of andesitic composition dominated volcanism until the late Miocene.

### Regional

Purico appears to be part of a group of large, caldera-forming volcanic centres that erupted dacitic ignimbrites, a group that is known as the Altiplano-Puna volcanic complex. This group includes the Cerro Guacha, Cerro Panizos, Coranzulí, La Pacana, Pastos Grandes and Vilama centres that cluster around the tripoint between Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. The arid climate of this region means that most volcanic systems are well preserved with little erosion.

This complex is underpinned by a magma body at depths of 15–35 kilometres (9.3–21.7 mi), where arc magmas interact with the crust to form the secondary magmas later erupted by the volcanoes of the Altiplano-Puna volcanic complex. This magma body has been imaged with seismic tomography as a sill-like body and has been named the "Altiplano-Puna magma body".

Ignimbritic activity in such systems is episodic, being interrupted by periods with lower volume "steady state" volcanism. The eruption of the Purico ignimbrite is the youngest large ignimbrite eruption in the Altiplano-Puna volcanic complex; the Altiplano-Puna volcanic complex presently is in such a "steady state" stage, but the presence of active geothermal system indicates that magmatic activity is still ongoing.

### Local

Outcrops in the region range in age from Paleozoic to Holocene. The Purico complex formed on top of older ignimbrites such as the Puripicar ignimbrite in the north, the Atana and the La Pacana ignimbrites farther south. The neighbouring La Pacana caldera between 4.5 and 4.1 million years ago erupted some of these ignimbrites including the Atana ignimbrite. Occasionally Purico is considered part of the La Pacana system.

### Composition

The Purico complex has erupted various different magmas, ranging from the dacitic Purico ignimbrite over rhyolitic pumices contained in the ignimbrite to the andesitic-dacitic post-ignimbrite volcanics. Dacite is the dominant component and forms a crystal-rich potassium-rich suite. Varying amounts of phenocrysts occur in the Purico complex rocks; the minerals they are formed of include augite, biotite, clinopyroxene, hornblende, hypersthene, iron oxides, oligoclase, orthopyroxene, plagioclase, quartz and titanium oxides.

Additionally, mafic xenoliths are found in the Purico ignimbrite; such xenoliths are a common finding in volcanic arc rocks. They are even more common in Chascon rocks, where they might reflect the occurrence of mafic magma in the feeder system prior to the formation of Chascon.

Some physical properties of the Purico magmas have been inferred from the chemistry and petrology of the erupted rocks. The dacites had temperatures of about 750–810 °C (1,380–1,490 °F) while the andesites and rhyolites reached higher temperatures, up to 800–880 °C (1,470–1,620 °F). Water contents ranged from 3.2 to 4.8% by weight, while carbon dioxide concentrations were low throughout.

## Climate and vegetation

The climate at Purico is cold (mean temperatures −3 – −4 °C (27–25 °F)), the air thin because of the high elevation and ultraviolet radiation is high. There is little precipitation in the area (about 200 millimetres per year (7.9 in/year) on the upper parts of the shield, decreasing to less than 10 millimetres per year (0.39 in/year) close to the Salar de Atacama), which mainly happens during the summer months as a consequence of the South American monsoon. Snow also falls during winter but winter snow mainly evaporates while summer snow melts. This dry climate is due to the combined effects of the subtropical ridge, the Humboldt Current in the Pacific Ocean and the rain shadow exercised by the Andes, but it was in the past interrupted by wet periods.

The dry climate and high elevation mean that vegetation is scarce in the region, with cacti such as Echinopsis atacamensis and grasses occurring at lower elevations. The little vegetation that is present displays an altitudinal zonation with a lower "Prepuna" with shrubs and succulents, a middle "Puna" with grasses and shrubs and a "high Andean steppe" with bunch grass. A report in 1993 stated that red-brown cacti and brown grass grew around the foot of Purico. Conversely, the soils on the Purico complex contain a diverse population of microbes which have to tolerate extreme environmental conditions. Among these are the bacteria Amycolatopsis vastitatis, Lentzea chajnantorensis, Micromonospora acroterricola, Micromonospora arida, Micromonospora inaquosa, Modestobacter altitudinis, Modestobacter excelsi, Nocardiopsis deserti and Streptomyces aridus which were first isolated at the Purico complex. Some of these yield pharmacologically interesting compounds.

Increased moisture availability during the ice ages caused the development of glaciers on Purico; at times, an ice cap with outlet glaciers covered an area of 200 square kilometres (77 sq mi)-250 square kilometres (97 sq mi) at 5,000 metres (16,000 ft) elevation on Purico. Apparently three different stages of glaciation occurred, the third between 30,000–25,000 years ago, the second between 50,000–60,000 years ago and the first over 100,000 years ago. Moraines associated with Lake Tauca appear to be either small or nonexistent. These glaciations have left moraines on Purico which extend for many kilometres at altitudes of 4,400–4,600 metres (14,400–15,100 ft), sometimes descending as far down as 4,200 metres (13,800 ft). The moraines reach heights of 10 metres (33 ft) on the eastern side of Purico and 2–5 metres (6 ft 7 in – 16 ft 5 in) on its western side. These moraines are covered with boulders and accompanied by striated surfaces and erratics. Penitentes still occur on Purico to this day.

## Eruptive history

The Purico complex is the source of the major Purico ignimbrite, which was emplaced at the time of the Jaramillo geomagnetic reversal. It was originally called Cajon ignimbrite and attributed to an area northwest of Purico known as Chaxas. Also, the Toconao ignimbrite was originally attributed to the Purico complex, but now the La Pacana caldera is considered to be its source.

The Purico ignimbrite itself covers a surface area of 1,500 square kilometres (580 sq mi) over the whole complex, and its volume has been estimated to be 80–100 cubic kilometres (19–24 cu mi) with an additional 0.4 cubic kilometres (0.096 cu mi) contributed by tephra fall deposits. The ignimbrite is 250 metres (820 ft) thick and becomes thinner westward, with more distal sectors reaching thicknesses of 25 metres (82 ft). Potassium-argon dating has yielded ages between 1,380,000 ± 70,000 and 870,000 ± 520,000 years ago for the Purico ignimbrite. The 2 cubic kilometres (0.48 cu mi) large "dacitic dome D" has an age of 980,000 ± 50,000 and may thus have formed at the same time as the ignimbrites. The emplacement of the Purico ignimbrite was part of a pulse of activity in the Altiplano-Puna volcanic complex 1 million years ago.

The Purico ignimbrite contains three flow units, the two Lower Purico Ignimbrites and the Upper Purico Ignimbrite. Their thicknesses differ; the Upper ignimbrite is 10–12 metres (33–39 ft) thick while the two lower ones together reach an average thickness of 30 metres (98 ft), with a maximum of 80 metres (260 ft). The lowermost Lower Purico Ignimbrite is one single flow. The upper Lower Purico Ignimbrite is more heterogeneous, starting with a base surge, a pumice layer and then another flow unit, which is volumetrically the largest part. The Lower Purico Ignimbrite covers a surface of 800 square kilometres (310 sq mi) primarily on the western side of the Purico complex. Finally, the Upper Purico Ignimbrite is a moderately to densely welded flow that occurs particularly close to the summit of the Purico complex, where it forms six flow units that contain fiamme textures. Characteristic for the Purico ignimbrite is the so-called "banded" pumice, which consist of alternating darker mafic and brighter components, in the upper 33% of the ignimbrite. The extrusion of the Purico ignimbrite was accompanied by the eruption of large amounts of tephra, some of which fell as far as the Coastal Cordillera west of Purico.

After emplacement, the ignimbrites were modified by fluvial erosion, which formed curvilinear channels in the ignimbrites. In contrast to other ignimbrites in the region, there is little evidence of eolian erosion of the Purico ignimbrite. Eolian erosion takes much longer than fluvial erosion and it is possible that the Purico ignimbrite is too young to have been modified by wind action. Some surfaces of the ignimbrite have been affected by glaciation, giving them a smooth surface.

This structure of the ignimbrite has been explained by magma chamber processes. Prior to the Purico ignimbrite eruption, a dacitic magma chamber already existed beneath the volcano. Probably after an injection of andesitic magma, dacitic contents of the magma chamber escaped upwards and formed the lowermost Lower Purico Ignimbrite. This injection of mafic magma rapidly increased the temperature and gas content of the dacite, causing the eruption to become a violent Plinian eruption with the development of an eruption column. This phase then drew onto denser dacitic magma, causing the column to collapse and the Upper Purico Ignimbrite and the "dacite dome D" to form.

### Post-ignimbrite activity

Volcanic activity after the eruption of the ignimbrite has been subdivided into the older andesitic Purico group and the younger Chascon group. The first includes Cerro Negro, Cerro Purico, Putas and Cerro Toco which assume the structure of polygenetic volcanoes, while the latter is taken to include Aspero, El Cerillo/Chajnantor and El Chascon which are lava dome-lava flow structures. The Chascon group of domes is also the only one which contains mafic xenoliths.

The Cerro Purico and Macon volcanoes formed a short time after, and possibly even before, the ignimbrites. They are thus old volcanic centres and deeply eroded, displaying moraine deposits from glaciation and rocks which have been subject to hydrothermal alteration from fumarolic activity. Such hydrothermal alteration processes, together with desublimation of fumarolic sulfur, are also the origin of the sulfur deposits at Purico.

Aspero, Cerro El Chascon, Cerros El Negro and Putas are younger and show no evidence of glaciation. El Chascon especially may be only tens of thousands of years old, seeing as it displays both a summit crater and pristine lava flow structures. Aspero was once considered to be of Holocene age in light of it and Chascon overlying moraines; later, dates of 180,000 ± 20,000 years ago were obtained on Aspero and Chascon. Apart from these, there are no radiometric dates for post-ignimbrite volcanic structures at Purico. The Alitar volcano is considered to be of Plio-Pleistocene age. The eruptive episode that formed these centres is thus more recent than the Purico ignimbrite and may have been triggered by mafic magma being injected into the Purico system. It is also much smaller, with volumes ranging 0.36–4 cubic kilometres (0.086–0.960 cu mi).

This change in the pattern of eruptive activity from large ignimbrites to smaller domes reflects a change in the nature of the magma supply, from large volume flow that heavily interacted with the crust and gave rise to the ignimbrites to smaller volume flows in a colder and thus brittler crust and did not accumulate or interact with it in a significant way. Thus the later eruption products appear to be more primitive and less affected by crustal contamination.

### Holocene and fumarolic activity

Macon stratovolcano is considered to be of Holocene age, and Alitar maar displays active fumaroles and hot springs. There are no know historical eruptions of Alitar and there is no indication of seismic activity in the Purico area. Renewed activity at Alitar would likely be in the form of phreatic eruptions of only local significance.

The fumaroles of Alitar are concentrated in the northern and eastern parts of Alitar, while the hot springs occur in the Quepiaco creek area about 250 metres (820 ft) southwest of Alitar and consist of six separate small vents. The temperatures of the Alitar vents range between 54–57 °C (129–135 °F). Fumarolic gases are mostly water vapour, with lesser amounts of carbon dioxide, and sulfur deposition takes place. They appear to originate from both magmatic and precipitation water, with a large contribution from atmospheric air and an important role for a hydrothermal system.

## Other

Purico has been quarried for building materials, and many buildings in San Pedro de Atacama were built from rocks quarried there. As of 1984, Alitar was under investigation as a potential source of geothermal power. Two sulfur deposits occur at Purico, the first southeast of Cerro Toco and the second at Alitar. The Purico deposit in 1968 was estimated to feature 4 million tons of caliche with a grade of 50%, while the Alitar deposit in that year amounted to 1.5 million tons of caliche with a grade of 60%. In the 1950s and as recently as 1993, sulfur was mined on Purico and transported by truck to San Pedro de Atacama where it was processed. In 1993, production of sulfur amounted to 200 tonnes per month (2,400 t/a).

The Purico complex is the site of a number of astronomical observatories, including but not limited to the Llano de Chajnantor Observatory and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array. In 1998, the Cerro Chascón Science Preserve was established on Purico, which among other things disallows mining in the area of the preserve. This Science Preserve covers most of the Purico complex.

## See also

- List of volcanoes in Chile
- Ignimbrite
- Salar de Atacama

Pleistocene volcanic complex in Chile