Sigourney Weaver swapped with the various cats playing Jonesy in Alien. Feline badass ruthlessly combats an alien monster with the occasional jump scare by Sigourney.
Fight Club would be neat, as a reversal of the implied tropes.
The movie we got has Tyler as the narrator’s masculine ideal. “I look the way you wanna look, I fuck the way you wanna fuck.” He’s a fit, clever, hyper-confident… cult leader. The film casts Ed Norton as Hollywood’s idea of a schlub. An also-ran. Largely the same archetype he played from The Italian Job to Birdman, dancing along a spectrum from identifiably pathetic to kind of a broken asshole. Of course that guy dreams of being supermodel-era Brad Pitt, looking like the underwear ads they both mock.
The reverse is when that schlub is supermodel-era Brad Pitt, and still feels nothing. He’s on the corporate ladder, he has statue-esque physique, he is everything society tells him to be. And he’s teetering on the edge. All it takes to push him over is a few run-ins with this unshaven, superficially-charming nutjob, full of uncomfortable questions and obscene suggestions. A man who visibly does not give a fuck. Some business-casual Diogenes, more Travis Bickle than Patrick Bateman, who lives in a condemned building, and still congenially invites him to stay. His manic arsonist dream bro. When this version’s Tyler scoffs at a Calvin Klein ad with bodybuilder abs, the narrator does not laugh with him, because it is a vicious jab, asking: is that why you’re like this? To look good in your undies? That guy lands the crazy hot chick from therapy. He obliterates the narrator’s self-image by demonstrating that none of that toxic masculinity shit matters.
Admittedly prone to some hey-wait moments after, y’know, but it’s not like dudebro audiences were thinking deeply to begin with.
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