Talk:Gladiator (2000 film)/GA3

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Reviewer: TompaDompa (talk · contribs) 20:41, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

General comments

• The writing style resembles WP:Proseline throughout. Significant copyediting is needed.

Lead

• Gladiator is a 2000 epic – where does the designation as an epic come from? It is unsourced in the WP:LEAD and not mentioned in the body.
• It was released by DreamWorks Pictures in North America, and Universal Pictures internationally through United International Pictures. – is this information so crucial as to warrant mentioning in the second sentence of the lead? We have the infobox for information that does not need to be present in prose.
• Gladiator grossed over $465.4 million worldwide – not according to the cited source it didn't. The gross is given as $465,380,802.
• The lead has six paragraphs, of which two are two sentence long and one is a single-sentence paragraph.

Plot

• This section is pretty heavily WP:OVERLINKED.
• saving the life of German gladiator Hagen during the fight – "German" seems anachronistic here.

Cast

• The photographs of Crowe and Phoenix are from almost 20 years after this film was shot. The actors have obviously aged since. It would be better to have photographs that are closer in time to the film itself, assuming such photos are available.
• The amoral, power-hungry, psychopathic son of Marcus Aurelius. – "psychopathic" definitely needs to be sourced explicitly.
• This was Reed's final film appearance, as he died during filming. – seems rather out of place, as this is not character description but real-world detail.
• A patrician and senator opposed to Gracchus. – patrician and senator, not simply patrician senator?
• Quintus later redeems himself – that he redeems himself is an opinion.
• The only undefeated gladiator in history, he was brought out of retirement by Commodus to kill Maximus. – does the film say that he was the only undefeated one in history?

Production

• Gladiator shares several plot points with The Fall of the Roman Empire, which tells the story of Livius, who, like Maximus, is Marcus Aurelius's intended successor. – unsourced.
• From there, Richard Harris, Ralf Möller, Oliver Reed, Djimon Hounsou, Derek Jacobi, John Shrapnel, and Tommy Flanagan joined the cast. – unsourced. They're in the film, sure, but this makes a statement about when they joined the cast.
• There is an over-reliance on verbatim quotes.
• Crowe was reportedly uncomfortable with Reed's excessive drinking. – referring to the drinking as excessive in WP:WikiVoice is extremely dubious.

Release

• It achieved the year's highest opening weekend and also earned the third-highest opening weekend for an R-rated film ever, trailing only Air Force One (1997) and Interview with the Vampire (1994). – do sources on Gladiator make this point? Per WP:PROPORTION, articles should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject. "On the subject" is key.
• Giving details about the opening weekend in the US and Canada but no information about any other territories apart from the combined gross in all of them is a pretty clear example of WP:Systemic bias.

Reception

• Gladiator opened to generally positive reviews – this WP:ANALYSIS of the overall critical reception needs to come from a source making that analysis. Citing examples of positive reviews is not sufficient.
• Crowe's performance received widespread acclaim. – ditto. This is a very strong statement.
• Gladiator was nominated for a total of 104 awards, of which it won sixty. – inconsistent formatting of numbers using words versus figures aside, awards is an area where quantitative descriptions are way less enlightening than qualitative ones.
• IMDb is not a WP:Reliable source, see WP:IMDb, WP:RS/IMDb and WP:Citing IMDb.
• In 2019, The Guardian ranked Gladiator as the 94th best film of the 21st century. – so what?

Cultural influence

• This entire section is dubious. See e.g. MOS:POPCULT. Do sources on Gladiator mention these WP:ASPECTS?

Sequel

• On November 22, 2024, a sequel to Gladiator will be released in the United States. – it may be scheduled to be released on that date, but it's way too early to say that it will be considering how common delays are in this field.
• Verb tenses in this section are not consistent.

Summary

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it well written?

   A. The prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct:

   B. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:

2. Is it verifiable with no original research, as shown by a source spot-check?

   A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:

   I'm not sure quite what's up with the "Sources" section, but seeing as neither Grant nor Landau et al. are cited it cannot be a list of works cited in the article (unless this is a vestige of the now-deprecated approach of using WP:General references without inline citations?) and how it differs from the "Further reading" section is unclear to me.

   B. Reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose):

   C. It contains no original research:

   D. It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:

   Earwig reveals no copyvio. Because the article will need so much additional work, I have not conducted anything approaching a thorough spotcheck for WP:Close paraphrasing.

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic:

   The article is rather thin on details about pretty much all aspects.

   B. It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):

   See above.

4. Is it neutral?

   It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:

   The article does not at all times distinguish between fact and opinion sufficiently clearly.

5. Is it stable?

   It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:

   The article is currently being actively, and rather heavily, edited. It's not an WP:Edit war, but it's a bit of a stretch to call it stable right now.

6. Is it illustrated, if possible, by images?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   B. Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

@Wafflewombat: I'm closing this as unsuccessful. The article needs a lot of additional work before meeting the WP:Good article criteria, and as such was clearly nominated prematurely. The above is a non-exhaustive sample of issues I noted while reading through the article. TompaDompa (talk) 20:41, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.