Film Theory: David Fincher's Se7en Is Set In Gotham Before Batman
1. It Feels More Like Gotham Than Nolan's Batman
The Gotham City of Nolan's films has been received with a fair level of indifference by Batman fans.
Though Batman Begins actually made a solid effort to create a unique locale complete with its own transportation system created by the Waynes, the sequels more-or-less threw this out and settled for a fairly generic American metropolis - in this case Chicago.
The opening lines of Sam Hamm's screenplay for Tim Burton's Batman describe Gotham as if "Hell erupted through the pavement and built a city", and that honestly sounds like the perfect written embodiment of the city.
It's also a fitting description of Se7en's unnamed city, teeming with all the aforementioned crime as it is.
The city's systemic issues and generally tawdry nature are also deeply felt away from the crime, though. Mills and Somerset both reside in unglamorous apartments, with Mills living next to a train line which constantly rocks his home.
It's not a million miles apart from the crummy apartment Jim Gordon resides in in Frank Miller's legendary comic Batman: Year One, either.
In purely aesthetic terms, Se7en's city is constantly raining - a Gotham hallmark if there ever was one - and the various crime scenes are shot in dingy low light, which again emphasises the ugliness and, honestly, makes the viewer just want to take a shower.
Especially telling is the memorable foot chase between Mills and John Doe, for when the chase reaches a winding alley-way, it's easy to imagine this being the very same alley where the Waynes were gunned down in cold blood.
The bleakness is so oppressive throughout and creates a rich, thick fog for Fincher to tell one of the most absorbingly grim films of the 1990s.
Nolan's Batman films are often compared to the crime thriller greats such as Heat and The Departed, but the director probably should've been looking to Fincher if he wanted to sell Gotham as a thoroughly dirtied, systemically broken city.