1. Tyler Durden (Fight Club)
Our protagonist in
Fight Club is an unnamed narrator (Edward Norton) who has become stuck in a safety net of conformity and consumerism. In faking a different disorder every night, he attends the support groups that indirectly combat his insomnia. But when his guilt, triggered by the arrival of another 'tourist', Marla Singer, (Helena Bonham Carter) forces him out, he seeks refuge in a different kind of collective. Following a chance encounter with the charismatic soap salesman Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), the two men literally get their kicks from beating the crap out of each other in dimly-lit parking lots. This quickly escalates into Fight Club; a secret support group (of sorts) where disillusioned and disgruntled men let out their frustrations with their fists. The Narrator is an unadventurous office clone, clearly in awe of Durden's devil- may-care attitude and self-destructive lifestyle. Yet as much as he envies him, he can hardly emulate him. Durden is just too impulsive, too limitless, too damn nihilistic. As his idol beams with an increasingly toothless grin, '' I look like you wanna look, I f**k like you wanna f**k, I am smart, capable and most importantly I am free in all the ways you are not.'' After the relative comfort of Fight Club evolves into the anarchic guerilla-warfare of 'Project Mayhem' Durden one day simply disappears. When The Narrator realises the true explosive extent of the Project, he is determined to track Tyler down and call it off. When he finds him, however, relations are no longer quite so cosy. For Durden is a self-proclaimed liberator, ready to do the world a favour at the press of a detonator button. The Narrator, on the other hand, isn't going to let this happen.Part of this conflict arises from the fact that The Narrator and Tyler are, in fact, the same person, with the latter merely being a manifestation of an id let loose.The finale sees the 'pair' locked in a power struggle; and so when Durden screams the uncharacteristically safety-conscious, ''You're now shooting at your imaginary friend near
four hundred gallons of nitroglycerin!'' you know it's time to call it a day. After all, when the man who blew up your apartment, scorched a lye burn into the back of your hand, punched Jared Leto's pretty face into a purple pulp and orchestrated the destruction of the city's credit card company buildings points out that something is dangerous, then it most probably is.