Film Theory: David Fincher's Se7en Is Set In Gotham Before Batman

5. Se7en's Curiously Unnamed City

One of the most fascinating aspects of Fincher's film is that, despite the city basically being a character in its own right, it's never actually given a name.

David Fincher shot the movie in Los Angeles, though through clever editing, selective use of locations and smart colour grading in post-production, he was able to make the city more closely resemble a grey, imposing metropolis such as New York City.

In fact, so convincing is the trick that many critics cited the movie as taking place in New York, despite none of the movie's characters nor any single shot confirming that setting.

We don't even get a clear look at Detective Mills (Brad Pitt) or Somerset's (Morgan Freeman) badges to even hint at where the story might be taking place.

Clearly this was an intentional flourish on Fincher's part, amalgamating East and West Coast cities into a homogenous ideal of urban rot, and it quite perfectly allows the audience to accept that this fictional creation could indeed be Gotham City.

A street sign confirms that Se7en's unnamed locale was incorporated in 1926 and has a population of approximately 8.3 million, which isn't far off the typical estimates of 10 million for Gotham City.

While Fincher surely gave audiences a non-specific setting to enhance the heightened relatability of the story, he also removed a barrier to accepting the fan theory - there aren't any culturally specific trappings of either California or New York that would require some added suspension of disbelief.

But of course, it's easy enough to pawn this off as a happy coincidence. The fact that the film's antagonist, John Doe (Kevin Spacey), is basically a quintessential Batman villain? Not so much...