Empire Magazine - Genre

Empire magazine is part of a small market place of magazine that focus on the film industry as well as TV and games. Empire gives the audience exclusives, first looks, film reviews, actors opinions etc. These are typical of the magazine and give it a slight edge over other film magazines as the competition for this magazine is much more minimal than competition for magazines such as lifestyle magazines or fashion magazines. Empire has a specific audience type and had adapted through time introducing new content to its magazine such as many different film genres and focusing on many big stars as well as up and coming stars.  

The front cover of Empire magazine always had a familiar character on the cover for the audience to instantly recognise and link them to the film or TV programme they have been in, in addition the fact that these images are exclusive shots for Empire magazine only gives them a feel as if they are movie posters on their own and give the audience a sense of exclusivity as this is specific to Empire magazine. The front cover also gives an insight into the genre of the magazine as although it does display the film industry it is also has a touch of masculinity as it is always a male on the cover who is strong and iconic, this gives the sense that the magazine has a specific male target audience that they want to reach and do this just by looking at the front cover. In addition to this the content inside is stereotypically masculine as it displays sci-fi, horror, superhero films etc. That could be seen as more male centred.  

Empire magazine champions many things within its pages but the most prominent ideology is that film can be viewed in two ways, the first is that film can be serious and respected as an art form but also all movies are valuable and  important in their own way. An example of this would be from the 2017 Feb issue where there is an article about Spider-Man Homecoming, this article shows that film is a valuable pass time as this is the 6th Spider-man film in 14 years showing that not only do people love film but they also love repetition and remakes. Spider-Man is a huge established brand and it is something so simple and easy for many audience types to buy into not just people who love films. Another way this is shown is simply by the covers of this issue as this magazine is championing the fact that after 20 years Trainspotting has made a second film.  

Another signifier of the magazines genre is the fact that a lot of the content of the magazine is about how the film industry is western hemisphere dominated as although the magazine is all about film and TV it doesn’t really expand to Bollywood, Chinese cinema etc.  

Overall Empire magazine praises any and all type of films, no film that is reviewed is given less than three stars showing even if it is a bad film the magazine will always find the positives and notice that the film is a piece of work that should be recognised and admired in ways.