He always includes shadowy metropolitan images and decaying ideas of what most would refer to as home to upset the comforts of life and to compel l the audience. The presence of satire in his work is important and thought-provoking. After listening to Fincher on the DVD commentaries of Fight Club and Se7en and Panic Room I found that he usually tries to push what he can get away with to the limits and will go as far as the producers will allow. This works for Fincher and is shown in his first film Alien, which was by no means a hit film, because his creative license was taken away by the producers. The produces limited his creative ability, which in part shows in the movie. Fincher's name was on it, but he wasn't able to put all that he wanted into the film. He is quoted saying, "Everybody hated Alien, but nobody hated it more than I did." .
The film Se7en was a smaller and more independent film, and much more of a success. Fincher was given a more extensive role and was more developed as a director so he was given more independence. Se7en is an urban thriller where the a detective and a lieutenant go out looking for a series of John Doe killings, but the unusual thing about all of these killings is that they are arranged around the seven deadly sins; pride, envy, gluttony, lust, wrath, greed, and sloth. At the end of the movie the detective's wife's head is sent to him in a box representing wrath which completes the set of murders. The producers wanted Fincher to change the ending of the film, but Fincher fought for his ending which he has to do in most of his films, thus emphasizing his dark postmodern style. One of Fincher's styles is that he is adamant about how detailed he wants everything to be. From John Doe's journals to spatial issues whilst shooting, for example if this was how it would have looked in the actual story as a reality, then the crew would have to deal with all of the spatial restrictions to capture the reality of the shot.