Battle Royale (バトル・ロワイアル, Batoru Rowaiaru?) is a 2000 Japanesethriller film, adapted from the 1999 novel of the same name by Koushun Takami. It is the final film directed by Kinji Fukasaku, was written to screenplay by his son Kenta Fukasaku, and stars Takeshi Kitano. The film tells the story of Shuya Nanahara, a high-school student struggling with the death of his father who is forced by the government to compete in a deadly game, where the students must kill each other in order to win. The film aroused both domestic and international controversy, and was either banned outright or deliberately excluded from distribution in several countries.
Battle Royale is not a film for the faint hearted, involving young teenagers killing one another, friends turning against friend, and a large amount of gore and blood. However, the poster is somehow calm and emotionless in comparison to the contents of the movie.
The poster is mainly in black and white, with dark shadows throughout, making the faces of the student unlegiable, removing personality from them, and therefore making the audience see them as ‘objects’. This connects with the contents of the movie, as the ‘show’ is broadcasted out to the general public, so they see them as not real people, but as figures for their entertainment. This dark shadows surrounding the students could also symbolise the darkness and potential lying within each one of them, as they are told to kill each other to survive. The colour black also symbolises death, evil and the unknown, possibly symbolising the student confusion at being thrust into the ‘game’. The only other colour used in this poster design is a vibrant red, which leaps off the page when paired next to the dark black tones. This colour is shown only in the typography, which tells you of the name of the movie and the logo of the ‘program’. This colour difference, greyscale for the students, red for the program, shows the difference in lives, desires and futures between the students at the time that the picture is taken, and the time which they will spend in the ‘Battle Royale’. The red colour look emposing, threatening and dominent, making it more powerful in this image that the photo, therefore drawing the eye first to this area and making it the main focal point. Red symbolises blood, violence, anger and hatred, which all are the key ideas of this movie, and so this symbolises this to the viewer increadibly well. They are left wondering what will happen to this innocent schoolchildren.
The largest component of this poster is the landscape image of the school children. I feel it is landscaped place as to accentuate the amount of them, and also to re-create the usual sitting of a typical school photograph. This image is a annual school photo, taken once a year, usually when Japanese students first start their year. I feel they have used this photo instead of one showcases the bloody horror of the film, as to capture a time when the students are together as a whole, united as one, like a team. To show them peacefully standing alongside one another, which therefore makes the horror of them killing each other even more shocking. It makes the viewer realise that they are just normal, non-insane teenagers, who did usual things until this twist of fate.
A stark white is used to highlight the text ‘Would you kill your best friend?’. This sentence is used to give the viewer a hint about the contents of the film, leaving them with a moral dilemma, which most people would answer as ‘no’. This therefore leaves the audience wondering why the poster is asking them this, and thus their mind connects them with the idea of friends killing friends, which both shocks them and intrigues them. All the font on this poster is in capital letters, and thus seems dominant and powerful, and also more masculine and so connects and attracts to the male audience more than the female. This must of been done as the general majority of horror movie viewers are male as opposed to female. The use of red could also be used to attract males, as red is used as a sexy colour in society, even though this movie contains no such content.
