Fight Club Poster Analysis

Typical codes and conventions of film posters are the names of actors/actresses, eye catching images, critic review, production blurb, a tagline and a large title of the film. This film poster has a tagline, a large title of the film, an eye catching image and the name of the main actors.

All audiences expect to see these aspects on a film poster. The genre of Fight Club is Drama/Thriller. From the film poster I can tell the genre of the film is a drama/thriller because one of the supposed main characters (Tyler Durden) on the cover looks aggressive, angry and ready for a fight. He looks aggressive because of his clenched fist and tightened jaw.  The other character is also the narrator of the movie (he is unnamed but is played by Edward Norton) looks very mischievous like he has a sick, mastermind plan. In this poster, Tyler Durden is holding the bar of soap (which the title of the movie is engraved into) very tightly and aggressively. You get the vibe that the movie is a very violent movie based on fighting hence the title.

The title has been designed this way because it shows the character/characters are very skilled with soap and know how to create things from it. It also shows that soap will be featured in the story line somewhere. Like I said before, Tyler Durden (who is played by Brad Pitt) is clenching the bar of soap aggressively. Since the bar of soap is bright pink it stands out from the rest of the movie poster which is dark tones of the colours green and black. This makes the title an eye catching image. The poster also includes the tagline, ‘Mischief. Mayhem. Soap.’ This tells the audience viewing this poster, that the movie would be about causing chaos using soap as the substance.

This movie is based on a book by Chuck Palahniuk, even though the movie poster doesn’t say this. I think the people who would be interested in seeing this film would be people of an older age group, seeing as the movie is an 18 and it has an interesting but complex and confusing story line. The main selling points of this movie would be the well known actors, and the fact that the movie is based on a book. So the people who liked the book will see the movie.  Also, on the poster it says ‘A David Flincher film’. This is a very good selling point because David Flincher is a very experienced and well known director. He’s worked with a lot of famous movies so if people have liked his other movies, they would want to see this one.

I like this movie poster because of the contrast between the colours. The name of the movie really stands out and obviously gives something away about the film. I like both the character’s expressions and the way the poster is set up. If I saw this poster on a bus or billboard, I would be intrigued to see it.