Fight Clubonly had global consumerism and emasculation to rail against.
Imagine Tyler Durdens invective now, after Facebook, the 2008 financial crisis, PRISM….
The things we own ending up owning us?
That almost sounds cosy compared to a world where we, and our privacy, are the product.
Had Palahniuk writtenFight Clubnow, its anger would likely be directed somewhere other than Starbucks.
Project Mayhem wouldnt just be blowing up credit card companies, itd be spreading its chaos online.
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In short, it might beMr Robots fSociety.
Like Finchers film,Mr Robotuses its voiceover creatively.
This is by no means lazy storytelling.
Its also wholly unreliable for a number of reasonsperhaps the closestFight Clubsimilarity of all.
Elliots narration also functions as a vehicle for lengthy, cynical state-of-society monologues.
So far in the run, he hasnt mouthed off about IKEA catalogues, but give the boy time.
Content-wise,Fight Clubs Project Mayhem finds an equivalent inMr Robots fSociety.
Both seek to free ordinary people from the shackles of corporations and capitalism.
The 1999 film used explosives to this end; the 2015 TV series uses coding.
The landscape for modern rebels and revolutionaries has changed fundamentally since Brad Pitt peed into that fancy soup.
After the foreclosures and tumbling economies of the last decade, debt has taken on new significance.
As have vigilante collectives, or to give them another name, terrorist groups.
That means something different to what it did in 1999.
To use a psychobabble term Tyler and Elliot would both almost certainly scoff at, it has more baggage.
In Elliot, its provided us with a new anti-capitalist poster boy.
Mr Robots cyber-thriller story refreshes parts of a cult classic, blending them with original elements and genre inspirations.
