Talk:Gladiator (2000 film)

Country info

I'm reverting changes made a couple months ago by (possible sockpuppet) EAldroyd. The broad consensus of sources indicates this film is an American production (see American Film Institute, LUMIERE database, Swedish Film Database, Danish Film Institute, Allmovie, Turner Classic Movies Database, etc.). It's also described as an American film in the Encyclopædia Britannica. Although much of it was filmed at Shepperton Studios, it was financed by American studios, and was noted in the British press at the time as the most expensive American production ever brought over to Britain. After the BAFTA awards ceremony in 2001, it was again cited in the British press as an American picture. The film has not been included in the British Council's British Film Directory, which archives British films extending back to 1998.

There was significant British involvement in making the film that should be highlighted in the body of the article, but the changes made by EAldroyd are misleading and possibly inaccurate. As per the parameters for country information outlined in Template:Infobox film, if there is a conflict of information in various reliable sources, then only the common published nations should be listed, so I'm reverting on that basis. Feuertrinker (talk) 16:52, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

References

When different sources disagree, we don't go with the sources we agree with, we make a special note of that disagreement. And once you were reverted by another editor, it was bad form to simply revert to your preferred version. The claim that EAldroyd is a possible sockpuppet is irrelevant. ---The Old Jacobite_{The '45} 13:56, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

It's not a case of reverting to a preferred version, I've included evidence here to support the changes. In this case, there are about eight or nine reliable sources indicating this film was a US production. There is currently one conflicting source that suggests it was a US/UK co-production, which is the BFI - yet elsewhere the BFI has cited the film as a US-only production. The only nation common to all of these sources is the US, so my recommendation here would be to follow the guidelines described in Template:Infobox film. Would you agree? --Feuertrinker (talk) 14:55, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Resolved

I checked the various sources provided by Feuertrinker, and found that both the Danish Film Institute and the LUMIERE database list the UK as a co-producing country, so the argument that it's only a US production doesn't hold up. Wafflewombat (talk) 01:48, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Inappropriate link

The blue link to lanistae links to a cricket. To link to Roman trainers of gladiators or owners of training schools, a wiktionary article ( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lanista#Latin ) that simply defines the term or a link to the Wikipedia article on Gladiators, with nine uses of the word, would serve the article better. Kdammers (talk) 07:05, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

I've just re-linked the two instances of "lanista" that I found; pointed to "Gladiator#Schools_and_training", per redirect at Lanista article. Dhtwiki (talk) 03:54, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Resolved

I marked this topic Resolved because the links in question no longer exist in the article. Wafflewombat (talk) 03:50, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 7 December 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: consensus not to move the page at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 18:05, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

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Gladiator (2000 film) → Gladiator (film) – Currently Gladiator (film) redirects to Gladiator (disambiguation)#Film. The other films listed there, The Gladiator (1938 film), The Gladiators (film), The Gladiator (1986 film), and Gladiator (1992 film), are nowhere as notable or viewed as this one. Pageviews analysis: https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&start=2015-07&end=2019-11&pages=The_Gladiator_(1938_film)%7CThe_Gladiators_(film)%7CThe_Gladiator_(1986_film)%7CGladiator_(1992_film)%7CGladiator_(2000_film) Sharper {talk} 15:32, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:NCF. And also see Titanic (film), for example (there are lots of others). Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 15:57, 7 December 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:NCF and WP:INCDAB which results from proposed move. -- Netoholic @ 19:54, 7 December 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:NCF and WP:INCDAB. Will this primary fetish never end? Why do editors have so much desire to see their article occupy a primary topic, even when the "primary" is an incomplete disambiguation. --Gonnym (talk) 20:32, 7 December 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose There's no way it can be primary over the other movies._{ZXCVBNM (TALK)} 21:29, 7 December 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. I understand the argument that this film is currently the best known by the title and has far more page views. But that may not always be the case, and some of the other films are also significant. When there are so many films sharing the same title, most of them preceding this one, there's no real advantage in making this one primary for the title. P Aculeius (talk) 00:38, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per Lugnuts, Netoholic, Gonnym, ZXCVBNM and P Aculeius. No incomplete disambiguation. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 04:57, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. WP:INCDAB. 212.135.65.247 (talk) 16:14, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Claudius Pompeianus conflicting info

Fictionalization section says "Lucilla was implicated in a plot to assassinate her brother in 182 AD, along with her husband Pompeianus and several others." The next bullet point says "Pompeianus had no part in any of the many plots against Commodus." I can't access the book referenced in the first bullet point to verify, nor the link in the second bullet. Was Pompeianus plotting or not? Fuzchia (talk) 21:05, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

According to the article on Commodus, Lucilla plotted, was exiled, and, later, killed; but Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus, her second husband, was not involved. That section is unreferenced. My copy of Cary's A History of Rome Down to the Reign of Constantine says that Lucilla plotted to assassinate Commodus, and that her stepson, Pompeianus's son, was involved, presumably so that he himself would become emperor. Dhtwiki (talk) 23:39, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Resolved

I removed the "Fictionalization" section because it had no citations. Wafflewombat (talk) 03:48, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Disambiguation revisited

Hi all, this page is the first hit on search engines for "gladiator". Is it possible to add a disambiguation statement to say, "this article is about the 2000 film, for other uses please see -> disambiguation"? Sebhaque (talk) 23:43, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Roman Field Artillery

There's a statement which says "Roman field artillery used in open battle was far more compact and transportable than shown by the film", but there's no citation for that. In fact, I would argue that it is wrong, since in the film, they depict ballista, which were indeed quite large, and they also depict Onager's, which I would argue is the "real" anachronism, since they were not mentioned by Roman historians until the 4th century. I think that section should be re-written to reflect this, and change the picture from a Roman scorpion, to an onager.Belregard (talk) 04:08, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

I have removed the material that lacks citation. In the future, somebody will need to write a new "Historical accuracy" section. Wafflewombat (talk) 03:45, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Post Release Section

This whole section screams 'original research', not a single citation present and quotes dropped in randomly 51.52.43.171 (talk) 13:22, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

You're right. I've tagged the entire section. Neocorelight (Talk) 01:48, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, even with the tags for warning, this seems like a major flaw with the article. Abstractplayer (talk) 17:19, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

The tag for original research says that sections consisting entirely of original research should be removed, so I removed the entire section. Please advise if there is a better approach. Wafflewombat (talk) 05:30, 30 January 2024 (UTC)  Done

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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This review is transcluded from Talk:Gladiator (2000 film)/GA3. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

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.

Edits following GA Review

We failed the GA Review. Below, I copied the reviewer's feedback and added my responses.

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. Citation still needed; removed word "epic" in the interim
  Resolved
• 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. Removed the unnecessary information
  Resolved
• 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 inclusion of the word "over" was an error, and it has been corrected
  Resolved
• The lead has six paragraphs, of which two are two sentence long and one is a single-sentence paragraph. Lead needs to be modified to four paragraphs  Done
  Resolved

Plot

• This section is pretty heavily WP:OVERLINKED. Removed many links to bring section in line with overlink guidelines
  Resolved
• saving the life of German gladiator Hagen during the fight – "German" seems anachronistic here. Changed to "Germanic"
  Resolved

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. Changed the photos to older ones
  Resolved
• The amoral, power-hungry, psychopathic son of Marcus Aurelius. – "psychopathic" definitely needs to be sourced explicitly. Removed "psychopathic"
  Resolved
• 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. Removed it
  Resolved
• A patrician and senator opposed to Gracchus. – patrician and senator, not simply patrician senator? Fixed
  Resolved
• Quintus later redeems himself – that he redeems himself is an opinion. Fixed
  Resolved
• 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? Clarification: He is the only undefeated gladiator in Roman history. This is a direct quote from the film
  Resolved

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. Removed unsourced material

Resolved

• 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. Removed unsourced material

Resolved

• Crowe was reportedly uncomfortable with Reed's excessive drinking. – referring to the drinking as excessive in WP:WikiVoice is extremely dubious. Reed's alcohol use caused a fatal heart attack, as mentioned in the cited source. That qualifies as excessive to me, but if it's still too non-neutral, we can change it. Comments welcome.

  I'll clarify a bit. It might be okay to call Reed's drinking "heavy" (assuming the sources do likewise), but "excessive" doesn't just mean "much" but "too much", which is a value judgment. TompaDompa (talk) 12:09, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

  Changed to "heavy"  Done

  Resolved

  Wafflewombat (talk) 04:48, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

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. Material removed.

Resolved

• 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. Information on other territories needed.

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. Fixed.

Resolved

• Crowe's performance received widespread acclaim. – ditto. This is a very strong statement. Fixed.

Resolved

• IMDb is not a WP:Reliable source, see WP:IMDb, WP:RS/IMDb and WP:Citing IMDb. Removed material that relied on IMDb
  Resolved

Cultural influence

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

Resolved

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. Fixed
  Resolved
• Verb tenses in this section are not consistent. Fixed
  Resolved

Wafflewombat (talk) 23:00, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

I'll copy a series of numbered questions from my user talk page and reply to them here:

1. Does the over-reliance on verbatim quotes in the Production section constitute a violation of a particular guideline?
2. You said "quantitative descriptions are way less enlightening than qualitative ones" for the awards section. Is that your opinion, or is it a broad enough attitude/norm on Wikipedia that we definitely need to change it?
3. For the line "The Guardian ranked Gladiator as the 94th best film of the 21st century," your response was "so what?" Are you stating your opinion that this information is not important? Seems subjective, and I'm wondering if it would be best practice to change it merely due to your thoughts on it. Can you weigh in?
4. Could you clarify why the article failed the criteria for "clear, concise" prose and spelling/grammar?
5. Which parts were original research, and which parts went into unnecessary detail? It failed both those areas.
6. You said, "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." I spent a few weeks editing this page, and once I felt like I had done all I could do, I submitted it for GA review. Should I have waited a certain amount of time between finishing my major edits and submitting?

1. It can. For instance, it can become a copyright issue if there is too much quoted material. More to the point here, it makes for poor writing. See WP:QUOTEFARM.

2. My personal opinion is that the figures add basically nothing; which specific awards and nominations the film received is much more important than how many. For the overall view among Wikipedia editors about how to present awards, see MOS:FILMACCOLADES (which doesn't say anything in particular about figures). Typically, the figures are only presented in a dedicated sub-article such as List of accolades received by The Dark Knight (or in this case, List of accolades received by Gladiator – though that article has pretty far to go before reaching "article maturity", so to speak) and even there only in the infobox. I would recommend against presenting figures, and they certainly shouldn't be emphasized as heavily as they were here.

3. It's not self-evidently something that should be mentioned. Some things that indicate that it should not be mentioned are that it's by all appearances simply the opinion of the authors of that list (not a poll or anything like that), that The Guardian is by no means a top publication within the field, that the film placed very far from the top of the list, and that the selection of films is limited fairly heavily by time frame. We end up with a WP:PROPORTION issue: An article 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. It's entirely possible that this is something that should be mentioned, but if so that needs to be demonstrated to be "proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject", where the subject is Gladiator.

4. To a large extent, it's the WP:Proseline writing style and WP:OVERQUOTING tendencies I'm referring to here. That makes the prose less clear and concise.

5. What I had in mind was primarily the unsourced material and the "Cultural influence" section, respectively.

6. This was by no means a deal-breaker. Had the article been otherwise up to the standards mandated by the WP:Good article criteria, I would have simply waited a few days before finishing the review to make sure the article didn't change drastically in the meantime.

I hope this helps. I agree that going through some of the heftier sources is a very good place to start; in my experience that's usually the best starting point for writing articles to get a sense of the relative weight afforded to the various aspects by the sources on the overarching topic. "Heftier" is of course a relative term, and I might not start with book-length sources right away. TompaDompa (talk) 12:07, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Suggestions for improvement

Hello, fellow editors! I've spent the last several weeks working on this page, but I've reached the limit of what I can do. I did a lot of copyediting, removed a lot of uncited material, and added a few new segments. Overall, the page is more readable and fact-based. However, some of the sections need to be filled out more. The lead, Plot, and Cast sections are fine, and the Development section is not bad, but the rest of the sub-headings under Production need more information. The Release section needs more content, especially regarding territories outside North America. The Reception section is okay, but the Sequel portion will need more information as the release of Gladiator 2 draws near. Perhaps the most important thing needed is a new Historical Accuracy section. Gladiator takes many liberties with history, but the section as it existed previously was completely unsourced.

Unfortunately, I don't have the time or energy to do the research needed to create the Historical Accuracy section and fill out the other sections. I'm hoping that someone else will take on this task at some point. It may require consulting book-length sources, as I'm not sure there is much additional information on the Internet that I haven't already put into the article. The Landau book is a good place to start, as it is available for free online (there's a link to it). You may also want to get your hands on the Winkler and Schwartz books. When creating the Historical Accuracy section, you may want to consult Michael Grant's book The Roman Emperors. I suggest you avoid the website ScreenRant when looking for historical information; they have three articles on the film's historical accuracy, but I don't trust them because each of their three articles makes a different claim about the circumstances of Marcus Aurelius's death.

This is a very old version of the Historical Accuracy section (much older than the version I removed), which has a lot of information and a bunch of sources.

If you decide to work on the page and have questions, feel free to ask me. I've read through every web source cited in the article.

Thanks! Wafflewombat (talk) 11:23, 29 February 2024 (UTC)