Fenetta's textual analysis: EMPIRE MAGAZINE. 'Inception'.

Empire magazine is a well known movie review magazine that usually features big hit movies as its front cover feature. This edition of Empire features a Christopher Nolan movie called Inception.
Firstly, when you look at this poster, you see a dark background that fades into a lighter image. This could be to connote the film starting in a dark place and then ending in a light place, or could have simply been done so that the font of the poster could stand out more and be seen. In the background, from far, looks like a maze of some sort with a lot of rectangles and squares in the view, but if and when you look closer, you can see that it is actually a bird’s eye view of buildings and architecture, which is a key theme of the movie.

Another key theme of the movie is being able to invade someone’s dream in order to change what they do, which is a very surreal theme that can be linked to the surreal-ness of the magazine front cover. The fact that the text on the front cover looks like its being pushed back by the protagonist’s figure makes the reader know that the man in the centre of the picture is of high importance. Also, the man’s stance, tells us that he means business and is very serious. He is wearing a black suit with a white shirt that is buttoned right to the top with a black tie, looking very official telling us that he is an official figure in the movie. His NVC connotes that he is serious and the stern look on his face makes us feel a little bit uncomfortable because of the serious glare that is on his face. Also, the fact that he is positioned in the centre of the magazine front cover and the fact that the text is almost wrapped around him gives us the idea that the world revolves around him in this movie, which could also mean that he is an essential character in this movie.

The colour scheme of blue/grey, black, white and red also connotes seriousness within the movie.  The colour red automatically makes me think of blood and because the character has a gun in his hand, this could mean that there is blood in the movie. Red also makes me think of seriousness and sternness so by the fact that the name of the film is written in red, shows us that it is a serious movie.

If you haven’t watched the movie, you wouldn’t know this but Empire gives us a slight hint into what the movie is about with its little gold badge on our pain characters body where is says “Dream access to the movie event of 2010”. The movie inception is about dreams so Empire used irony and a play on words on the cover to make it seem funny. Another point is that the man is standing in front of the EMPIRE title and his head covers some of the letters, also continuing on from the point that he is dominant and that he has a lot of control and authority that even the magazine title is behind him.

Also, the fact that has a bird’s eye view of the buildings also shows dominance and his importance. He has the power to do whatever he wants in an alternative world of dreams.