Talk:Peter Jackson's interpretation of The Lord of the Rings/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: David Fuchs (talk · contribs) 23:54, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

 Doing... Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 23:54, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Many thanks for taking this on. I look forward to working with you and will respond promptly. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:05, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Hey! Sorry for the wait, this weekend was a total loss for getting wiki-stuff done. Overall, while there's a lot of good content here, I had some issues with the overall structure. From the lead on, the topic feels structured more like a term paper or personal essay rather than a Wikiepdia article.

No worries, thank you for reviewing the article, and for the kind words on content. I'll reply to the detailed points below.

• Part of this is down to the structure, which is heavily segmented and I think would read a lot better without all the very granular subheadings.
  • Well, firstly, I'm very happy to reorganise the article and if need be rename headings or merge subsections. However, with respect, the article is not especially heavily segmented. In terms of structure, the article is divided into three chapters, "Context", "Differences", and "Reception"; each of these is divided into just one more level of section to organise the material, with 2, 5, and 6 subsections respectively. Many editors would consider that rather well-balanced. In terms of section length, the article is of some 4000 words in 14 subsections including the lead, which makes around 287 words per subsection, which isn't specially short and choppy. If there are subsections you'd like merged, feel free to name them and it'll be done; please note however that each of the headings was carefully chosen to match the materials, i.e. bottom-up; this is the opposite of an essayist's approach, where a structure is created to represent the writer's point of view and the materials are then forced into the structure (or discarded if they don't fit!) to try to make an argument for one case or another. The current article makes no such argument, beyond the bare fact that opinions differ, hardly essay material.

• • Another issue is basic comprehensibility; aside from the "Context" section (which seems really weird, both as a title and jamming everything in there that should be more organically placed elsewhere) you don't really ever explain who characters are or what plots you're talking about, and thus the reference to certain scenes or missing characters is pointless for someone not intimately familiar with both book and film.
    • Taking the second point first, I'm very happy to add explanation of characters and plots to make the article more approachable, indeed I'll do that now; it's always a challenge when one has studied a topic extensively and read scholarly materials on it for a while to see it from outside, and the hint that it needs more context is welcome, just what one hopes a review will provide, thank you.
    • On the first point, since the subject is "Film vs Book", both "Book" and "Film" are main context elements for the article, so I don't understand what could be considered odd about that: they need to be introduced somehow, as your second point indeed makes clear. As for jamming everything in to the context section, "everything" here is just the two halves of the title. If you would like the heading "Context" to be renamed, suggestions will be welcomed, but it is the obvious term.

• • • I've added several glosses and explanations of characters and plot elements. Very happy to take further requests. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:31, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

• • The bigger issue, I think, is one of POV. The context section points out these films are phenomenally critically appraised, so the intimation is that we're going to get a bunch of relatively fringe opinions. We get descriptions of scenes cut or altered and it's rather strange that for the most part the filmmakers' commentary on why they made choices is absent, in favor of speculation from third parties (e.g. Tom Shippey speculating on the Warg scene.)
    • I find that strange. What the article does is tour the full range of scholarly, popular, and even insider opinion, and report neutrally on all of them without fear or favour. The phenomenal approval applies both to book and to film, they both had enormous sales and popular approval, but that is with respect not the same thing as critical approval; nor is a critic's warm approval of the film the same thing as the view that the film accurately portrays the book. What is more, the opinions reported, all at the same level of detail, range from openly negative to warmly supportive, so I'm at a loss to imagine which point of view I might be supposed to be holding, other than that the topic is worth reporting on. "Fringe" is simply wrong; mainstream approval of the film in itself says nothing on the subject of this article, which is film vs book. That said, the scholars named are among the best known in Tolkien scholarship, and are here publishing in major sources. Shippey is one of the most distinguished among such scholars, having been studying Tolkien since the 1970s. Calling his suggestion "speculation" is itself loaded; the article points out correctly that the episode is a digression from the main story (book or film), so it is not surprising that scholars should seek an explanation for having it; the article uses the neutral word "suggests" to introduce this. As for introducing more of the filmmakers' own views, I note that many GA reviewers would critique that as primary sourcing and request reliable secondary sources to support the primary opinion. I'm not opposed to using primary sources – I've done so in many Good Articles when necessary – but it's always under caution.

• • Beyond that, there's whole paragraphs that completely privilege a single scholar's point of view, and that's essentially used as the "final word" for a section given that there's few other commentaries included (the "Transformation of characters" section is entirely built from two critics' opinions, while the final section is one scholar's work wholly and completely.) While I didn't spot major issues with the reliability of sources, their usage en toto implies a level of prominence that feels inappropriate.
    • Well, we can only go on what scholars have reliably published; all that's been done here is (a) to report faithfully on each opinion, no matter where it lies in the spectrum, and (b) to give names to each salient point along the spectrum of opinion. Sometimes, several scholars have voiced a similar opinion, and they've been grouped under one of those salient points; other salient points happen to be marked by just one or two scholars, that's just the way the cookie crumbles. In the case of the last section, "A developing folklore", Dimitra Fimi, who in the past few years has become a respected and widely-published Tolkien scholar, has both established a distinctive viewpoint and has created a new subfield in her work on folklore; both these things are marks of excellence, and they have enabled her to write authoritatively with little competition in what is otherwise a crowded marketplace. It really doesn't feel inappropriate to report on such a voice. I don't know about "final words" in such a case; Fimi would I imagine welcome other scholars but so far there haven't been many in that area, and as for me, the humble editor, all I can say is that I've done my best to report faithfully what the scholars have written. When more material emerges, it will be added, but as of 2021 I believe the article does an honest job of reporting "the main points", as the GA criteria require.
    • If something is only being covered by a single scholar, it's an indication it's not important enough to have that weight in the article. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 17:30, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
      • All right, Fimi can step aside for now. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:42, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

• • • The New York Post ref is probably best replaced or removed.

Removed, there are enough sources there; but it's a 200-year old newspaper.

• • There's a few stray usage of out-of-quotes contractions that should be cleaned up.

Fixed a "can't". There is a mention of "show, don't tell" but that is in quotation marks and is the name of a common phrase and indeed of a Wikipedia article.

• • The biggest stumbling block here I see is the final reception section, which is basically a laundry list of critical opinions that are sort of clumped together by positive, neutral, etc. but don't really flow from one to another and definitely doesn't work to summarize rather than regurgitate critical consensus. I think the application of WP:RECEPTION would do wonders to make this read better.

Thanks for the frank view. I've certainly followed the essay WP:RECEPTION's step (1) "Organize the section by thematic element"; I'll go through its steps (2) and (3) now to see if the section can't be made to flow a little better. The essay is however correct to point out that almost anything one can add will border on original research, which is certainly the greater evil.

• • • I've added topic statements for each of the Reception topics, regrouped the material slightly, and made several small changes to improve flow. No doubt more can be done in this direction.

• I'm not really sure the inclusion of File:Variance in character design - Lia Turtle, Shain, and Cendrea from Chaos&Evolutions.png is appropriate, given that it's implying the picture a) is generic fantasy, and b) a relationship between it and the film.

Removed. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:10, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 21:25, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

As there's a fundamental disagreement here about structure and sourcing, I've requested a second opinion to provide feedback. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 17:30, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

.Thanks, that's fine if that's what you feel. It may be helpful for everyone including the second opinion to note that I have made some quite far-reaching adjustments in line with your comments (explaining characters and plot elements mentioned; signposting etc. per WP:RECEPTION as requested; removing the Fimi/Folklore section), and presented what I believe is a simple and coherent justification for the article's structure. As for sourcing, I thought you'd already agreed the sources were robust; I've stated I've no objection in principle to adding a few more primary sources, though the film-makers' views are already represented, so I don't see any fundamental disagreement on that front. Let's see what they say and work from there. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:50, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

David Fuchs, Could you give a concise description of what specific issue you're seeking a second opinion on? -- RoySmith (talk) 02:37, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

RoySmith - hope I'm not intruding, but it seems to me there's really just one question here: whether it's valid to examine scholarly opinion of the differences between film and book, given that popular and film-critic opinion has been so overwhelmingly positive. My view is that the two approaches are entirely separate: the box-office and newspapers rightly praised the film trilogy as cinema (did it work? - yes), whereas the scholars asked whether the film version was a faithful representation of the book (did it accurately say what Tolkien said? - answers on a postcard, see the article). I believe the rest of our discussion flows from one's appreciation of this difference. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:45, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi RoySmith. My main issue I'd like a gut check on is whether the article unduly focuses on critical opinions which the article acknowledges are not the general consensus, and whether the use of single academics with their own sections is similarly disproportionate weight. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 16:11, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

I believe the article doesn't do that; consensus on "it was a fine film" is not the same as consensus (or lack of it) on "it represented the book faithfully". And the article no longer has any single-academic sections. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:27, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Hmmm, there's a lot of stuff here. I'll try to focus specifically on the question of whether this is undue focus on non-general-consensus critical opinions.

There's no doubt this is primarily a survey of academic criticism. More popular (non-academic) commentators such as Rotten Tomatoes and Roger Ebert are glossed over in passing. I don't think that's a bad thing, nor is it necessarily undue weight, provided this is framed as a review of academic criticism.

Maybe rename the article something along the lines of Scholarly comparison of LOTR film vs book, and back this up by starting off with "Academic commentators have compared..." That at least frames this as what it really is. One of the criteria is "understandable to an appropriately broad audience. That doesn't mean it has to be understandable to people who never get past Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB, but you do need to be clear up front who the appropriate audience is.

Now that I've answered that specific question, I'll indulge myself with a couple of other items.

I agree that "From the lead on, the topic feels structured more like a term paper or personal essay rather than a Wikiepdia article." Tone is a really hard thing to get a handle on, but yeah, this reads differently from a typical Wiki article. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, and I can't see how it violates any of the six GA criteria, but it's certainly true.

As for The New York Post, they've been around for 200 years, but that doesn't mean it's a good source. In the Rupert Murdoch era, it's fallen to something maybe not quite as bad as WP:DAILYMAIL, but not far from it. Actually, now that I look at WP:RSP, I see it's rated as "generally unreliable for factual reporting", which doesn't surprise me at all. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:17, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Many thanks. Mention of The New York Post has already been removed. If we're to rename the article it must be after the GAN as otherwise it tangles up the bot process. However, I think the article's title is correct: the question has been debated by fans, actors, and film critics as well as scholars, and I've extended the article to make this (hopefully) clearer. Of course Wikipedia articles tend to favour scholarly sources - scholars make many quotable arguments, and can write in reliable sources, which as we've seen with The New York Post, commentators of other kinds often do not. (One might feel that if a paper has a decent cookery writer or film critic or sports writer, one could reliably cite them even if the paper contains gossip in its news columns ... maybe one day we'll get there.) I've tried to make up for that difficult-to-fill deficiency by adding scholarly discussion of fan opinion (they explicitly reference TheOneRing.net, for instance, a whole website full of this subject). Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:38, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Am I correct in thinking Chiswick that you're more or less settled on the content of the article? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 18:49, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I've finished adjusting the article (fairly extensively) to respond to your earlier comments, and I hope you will be pleased with the result. I'm open to comments. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:46, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm going to close the nom, with no prejudice to renominating it. I still have the issues with tone and summary style/sourcing, and I don't think we're going to bridge that divide so it'd be better to have an entirely fresh set of eyes. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 18:46, 18 April 2021 (UTC)