Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Blade Runner/Archive2

Blade Runner

This article has been nominated before. I've managed address the majority of the objections; and made some additions (Soundtracks, criticism, religious symbolism) so hopefully all is well. BR ROCKS!!! - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 00:18, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Object. There is still no synopsis of the film, a basic requirement (whether written or not) for articles about literary works. Morwen - Talk 08:07, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

A point. Still I'd like to note it is a major improvement with the first time it was FACed. Hopefully the objections will be resolved and the article will pass the FAC this time - keep up the good work, Roy. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 10:24, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Synopsis added. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 17:52, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Support. I think the article is now ready for prime time, now that the deckard is human or a replicant debate is out of the way. vaceituno 09:00, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Minor object, the lead needs a little bif od work to better summarise the content of the article. I'm also not a big fan of the single sentence paragraphs, if they can be merged into longer paragraphs I'll support--nixie 10:43, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Done. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 20:18, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

One other thing, is the Criticism section really all that has been said in the way of criticism? It seems pretty short for such a widely studied film, also, more generally should there be a distinction between critical (by film critics) and academic criticism--nixie 01:27, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm sure more has been said, but its mostly along the same lines... I can certainly clarify that to some degree. A distinction should be made if enough material that resides distinctly in each category can be found. But I don't see the section growing enough to require it, and I doubt enough academic criticism exists. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 05:13, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Comment. Google Scholar gives 1,160 citations for the film; even the MLA Bibliography, an index primarily about literature rather than film, yields an instant 93 articles. That would seem to be more than enough academic interest that something should be said about it in the article. In my personal experience it is perhaps the most discussed sci-fi film in academia. (But I can see no reason to make an artificial or rigid separation between newspaper critics and academics.) I haven't really looked at the article since its last FAC nomination, so I'm not voting yet. -- Rbellin|Talk 05:26, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Clarification: You and I obviously are not agreeing on what constitutes criticism; I bolded it for a reason. I speak of negative comments made about the film by academics. I cannot remember coming across one in the years I've studied the film. As to it being discussed; I've covered the majority of the main themes in the film with Significance and Issues section. There are certainly others (Mortality for example); but to expand the article to such an extent may force a separate article? I don't know if it would, but I want to avoid that for now. The criticism section is for what people see as the films faults. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 15:23, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

<Jun-Dai 18:17, 25 May 2005 (UTC)> Roy, I think you have a misunderstanding of what criticism is. It is not limited to negative critiques, it covers all kinds of judgements, with an emphasis on involved, thought-out, and interpretative judgement. While the term can refer to negative criticism in casual conversation ("Why do you always have to criticize!" or "Do you have any constructive criticisms about my paper?"), in more formal contexts (such as our articles on the Wikipedia), it refers as much to positive critism as to negative. Once you add the word academic (i.e., academic criticism), any negative connotation is gone. </Jun-Dai>

• Support -- good before and much improved now. — Xiong熊talk* 13:05, 2005 May 18 (UTC)

• I have a problem with lines like this: "If the famous origami unicorn in the Director's Cut reveals Deckard to be a replicant in the film's final moments, then the audience's expectations and prejudices are themselves called into question – and, by extension, our own humanity." WTF? --Tagishsimon (talk)

Indeed, wtf?

Agreed. This sentence (and others like it) read too much like lines from an Intro Lit-Crit essay written the night before it was due. Awkward, overlong and just a mite pretentious. Object. Anville 13:27, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Oh come on! You're doing a smashing job so far... a little nip and tuck and all will be well Anville. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 06:13, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

• Mention could be made of Harrison Ford's complete unwillingness to be interviewed on the subject of Blade Runner - what's all that about? And then there's the continuity error of Deckard being sent after, err, five replicants but only dealing with four of them. --Tagishsimon (talk)

It could be. Ridley didn't get on with the crew doing his first film in America, and had a stand-offish style with actors. Continuity moved to and dealt with in replicant; it may make its way back into a continuity section if someone feels like compiling it... but that's close to a trivia section.

I've added a Future Noir paragraph in Creators to mention Ford's history with Blade Runner. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 05:20, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

• The Soundtracks section still bears some evidence of cut & paste from wherever it was nicked from - towards the bottom, the track listing & comments have a couple of occurrances of odd character strings "Vocals on tracks 3$-1òú 9 (disc I) a" ; I'm not entirely sure what information is being conveyed & have left them alone for the time being. I corrected one of these in another section - I'm kinda a little worried about the copyright implications of the appearance of what I take to be copy&paste telltales. --Tagishsimon (talk)

The website it was copied from is in the soundtracks section; and it is notes from a bootleg CD. It's not an issue.

• Finally, I think it needs copyediting in parts. There are more than a handful of lines such as "The predecessor to Blade Runner is Fritz Lang's silent film Metropolis;" where one winces slightly at the word employed ("predecessor") without necessarily being awake enough to work out how to improve the sentence. Antecedent? Derivative? Homage? Echo?. Other jarring moments ina quick read-through included

How is predecessor inappropriate? Antecedent's nice; but is a looser meaning of precede; Metropolis didn't just go before... it had the pedestal.

A nice turn of phrase, but what does it mean? Anville 13:50, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

I meant for it to communicate Metropolis was held as the best (most influencial) dystopic sci-fi film prior to Blade Runner; yeah sounds a little subjective now that I say it out loud... but there ya have it. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 06:13, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

• • "Scott contracted Syd Mead as a conceptual artist, both of whom were ". Aaaargh.

Not sure what's wrong here, but I trust you.

• • The Joanna Cassidy parenthesis intruding into the Religious symbolism section

I had to get rid of the much maligned trivia section somehow; removed.

• • Use of the word "thru"

thru > using - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 04:06, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

--Tagishsimon (talk)

• "this footnote is missing, please see the article history and try to fix it." - can we have this fixed? - Ta bu shi da yu 18:41, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Fixed by me and CS42. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 02:31, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

• Object:
  • The writing in the article needs a lot of revision. For one thing, much of the article is too colorful in its descriptions, giving it a much more personal tinge on the part of the writer, and detracting from its encyclopedic value. Some of the worse examples:
    • "After a breathtaking flyover of sprawling industrial complexes"
    • "Its dark, ambiguous moral, visual and thematic complexity was ahead of its time and kept it from immediate popularity, but served to endear it with academia, polarize film critics and ensure its cult classic status"
  • The synopsis needs to be trimmed to about half its length. We don't need a blow-by-blow of every single plot point in the film. Also, there are references to things like the Voight-Kampff test, which, while nicely linked, should either be explained in a parenthetical statement, or simply generalized ("he performed a test to on Rachael that would determine whether she was human"). Passages like these don't belong in a brief synopsis of the film:
    • "Deckard is initially passive aggressive with Gaff but"
    • "It's the worse replicant escape Bryant has seen and he needs Deckard's "magic" to get the situation under control."

Finished 2nd draft. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 02:19, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

• • Additionally, rather than interpreting the film ("Tyrell has the appearance of a living god from within a pyramid above the clouds that exudes wealth and power. This self-image is reinforced when Tyrell assumes the role of the gods by dimming the sun on command."), the article should limit itself to making references to other people's interpretations.

    Reference added, is that sufficient? - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 05:09, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

    <Jun-Dai 18:12, 25 May 2005 (UTC)> Not exactly. The problem is that the article still presents the statement as fact, when it is merely an interpretation of the film. It should read like something along the lines of:

    • John Soandso has written that "Tyrell has the appearance of a living god from within a pyramid above the clouds that exudes wealth and power. This self-image is reinforced when Tyrell assumes the role of the gods by dimming the sun on command." He is referring to the line in the screenplay that reads "The windows darken, a polaroid effect that seems to give Tyrell the power to turn off the sun."

    Now that's not a very well thought-out example (and it assumes that there is a John Soandso that has written a relevant critique of the film), but at least it poses the statement with the correct distance. More importantly, this was just one example--the entire section on the "Significance and issues" (a problematically vague title) reads like a series of term paper synopses, which is not how an encyclopedia article ought to read. There is far too much primary research and interpretive writing in this article and there shouldn't be any.

Well its a fact many have interpreted that way; the "wealty and power" borders on fanfact and I think Ridley mentioned that was his intention, although I cannot deny it there may be extrapolation of interpretations (re: role of gods)... although I'm convinced I saw that somewhere... couldn't find it though. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 22:04, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

• • Another example is the sentence "The first draft of the entire human genome was decoded in June 26, 2000, by the Human Genome Project, followed by a steadily-increasing number of other organisms across the microscopic to macroscopic spectrum." This, along with the whole section on cloning, does not belong in this article. In a paper on Blade Runner that has a point to prove, sure, but not in any sort of encyclopedic article on just the film itself.

    More importantly (you're probably not going to like this point), there is much too much focus on interpretation of the film. While it is certainly relevant how the film has been interpreted, it dominates the article--break it out into a separate article, and try to keep the section size down to something not much larger than the current size of the synopsis section. As a guide to how an article on Blade Runner should look, try looking at Casablanca (movie). It is a pretty good model. </Jun-Dai>

I already took a look, inspired the criticism section... but not much else. Blade Runner's article should be much sexier than that! :"D

• • Last but not least, the article reads like the work of Blade Runner fans. Detail on topics like Blade Runner soundtrack bootlegs belong in an entirely separate article, if anywhere at all. They should have, at most, a sentence in an article on Blade Runner. The article should mostly be dedicated to what the movie is, why it is relevant, and truly notable facts about the film. It should not be a fan's article on the film--it should be an article for the general public. Jun-Dai 21:55, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

    I almost entirely agree but... the article is mostly about the movie etc. The soundtract section has the appearance of being larger than it is because of the tables; to split it or reduce bootlegs to a sentence I currently do not agree with. As to the rest, I'm on it... hopefully with help from others. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 05:09, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

    <Jun-Dai 18:12, 25 May 2005 (UTC)> If you feel that the soundtrack bootleg information needs to be available to the reader, make it a separate page, and link to it. The table, etc., should not be on the main Blade Runner page--it takes up too much visual space for something that is not at all central to the topic. </Jun-Dai>

Fine... for some reason I dislike creating articles. So what should it be called? Soundtracks of Blade Runner? And what should the significance and issues section article be called? - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 22:04, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm thinking of renaming it Criticism and themes, therefore combining "Criticism" and "Significance and issues" sections into one. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 04:36, 26 May 2005 (UTC)