All 3 David Fincher And Brad Pitt Movies Ranked

It's pretty common for directors to have favorite actors who they work with repeatedly and vice-versa, but one of the more unusual director-actor pairings in recent cinema history is director David Fincher and actor Brad Pitt. Fincher is notoriously meticulous and detail-driven, while Pitt seems relatively easy-going and free-wheeling by comparison, yet the two work fabulously together. Fincher and Pitt have since reunited for the upcoming "The Adventures of Cliff Booth" (a "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" spin-off film about Pitt's eponymous character), which led us to wonder: Which Fincher-Pitt film is the best of the best? 

After first collaborating on the 1995 serial killer film "Se7en," Fincher and Pitt developed a killer working relationship and friendship, going on to make the movies "Fight Club" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" as well. Heck, Fincher and Pitt even have regular movie nights together, which sort of cements their cinema nerd bromance. (That's not to mention all the abandoned projects they nearly joined forces on, including a "World War Z" sequel.) 

It can be a little tricky to rank Fincher and Pitt's three movies to date because they're all good in some way, and each has had a tangible impact on pop culture. With that out of the way, here are my picks for the best of their collaborations, ranked. Just don't sic the space monkeys on me.

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is based on a short story by "The Great Gatsby" author F. Scott Fitzgerald, telling the story of Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt), a man who ages in reverse. It's a deeply sentimental movie that feels pretty out of place with the rest of David Fincher's work, though a great deal of the sentimentality comes from Fincher, screenwriter Eric Roth ("Forrest Gump"), and star Taraji P. Henderson, who went through a self-described "spiritual journey" during filming. The result is a heartfelt, if slightly corny, story about love, loss, and the chaos of life.

Fincher had to wait half a decade to make "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" because of its large budget and depressing subject matter, though the movie was ultimately a box office and critical success. For some Fincher fans, "Benjamin Button" is just a hair too twee to enjoy, but it's still a beautiful film featuring a pretty great Brad Pitt performance ... even if he spends a lot of it digitally transformed in some seriously bizarre ways.

"Fight Club" is a rare film adaptation that truly improves its source material, as David Fincher understood and tweaked the best elements of Chuck Palahniuk's source novel to create a postmodernist cult classic. And while "Fight Club" was a box office failure, it was appreciated by critics and audiences who found it once it was available on home media, which kind of fits the film's anti-consumerist themes. 

In "Fight Club," Brad Pitt plays Tyler Durden, a handsome anarchist who convinces the Narrator (Edward Norton) to start a fight club with him in the basement of a local bar. Soon, the two are running a fight club empire and their own cult, Project Mayhem, and even though Fincher tried to make it clear that Tyler wasn't a hero, Pitt was so charismatic that people still don't seem to understand that "Fight Club" was a warning and not a call to arms. It's really not a surprise, as Pitt went to extreme lengths for his "Fight Club" role and Tyler is supposed to be an idealized late 1990s man. It's the kind of satire that plays things almost straight with a twist ending that makes for near-endless re-watch value. Even if you aren't all that into postmodernist satire or men beating the crud out of one another, there is also a scene where Pitt left a studio executive furious because he appeared onscreen wearing only yellow rubber dishwashing gloves. That alone is worth the price of admission, if you ask me. 

"Se7en" was the movie that introduced Brad Pitt and David Fincher to one another, at a time when Pitt was feeling disenchanted with Hollywood. Pitt once told Dax Shepard on his podcast that being cast in "Se7en" and working with David Fincher "reinvigorated" his love of acting, and you can really see it in Pitt's performance as homicide detective David Mills. "Se7en" follows Mills and his partner William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) as they try to catch a serial murderer who kills his victims based on the Seven Deadly Sins. It's a truly nasty flick that was nonetheless a box office and critical hit, which is pretty impressive for a movie about such a morbid subject.

"Se7en" is a gritty, disturbing film with one of the bleakest (and most endlessly quotable) conclusions in cinema history. Pitt and Fincher both had to fight for the ending of "Se7en," and that stubbornness honestly saved the movie. Pitt's pained refrain of "what's in the box" has become the stuff of silly memes, but when viewed in the context of the film, it's absolutely brutal. Fincher would eventually go on to make the scariest serial killer film of all time, "Zodiac," and help create the brilliant Netflix criminal pathology series "Mindhunters," but he cut his teeth on the subgenre with "Se7en." The movie may not be a fun watch, but it's an impressive one that deserves to be seen and lauded all the same.