Talk:Species (film)

References to use

Please add to the list references that can be used for the film article.

• Stacey, Jackie (2010). "Screening the Gene: Femininity as Code in Species". The Cinematic Life of the Gene. Duke University Press. ISBN 0822345072.

Review

In his review, Roger Ebert wonders why seemingly sophisticated aliens capable of travelling between stars and sending messages across space turn out to be "(d)isgusting, slimy morph-creatures with rows of evil teeth, whose greatest cultural achievement is jumping out at people from behind things..."[1]

I removed this from the article on Species II as it pertains to the first film. Maybe if the article is expanded to review criticisms, this can be slipped in here. --Bacteria 00:30, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Stylistic Similarities - Basis?

That said, it must be admitted that a large part of most Science Fiction bears a great deal of similarity to those two series, which were in their way, ground breaking.

This phrase is an opinion, not fact, using weasel words. By attributing most of science fiction (!) to these series the author hopes to legitimize the connection between them and Species. Modern science fiction predates these series by two centuries. There were other novels, films and television series from which all three of these series borrowed. The idea of Species is a take on Alraune, a novel from the early 20th century that was made into several films between 1918 - 1952. And the idea of Alraune was culled from ancient religions, myths and medieval European literature sources surrounding the mandrake plant Mandrake (plant). 76.241.119.16 (talk) 23:18, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

There is also a striking plot similarity to A for Andromeda, produced by the BBC in the early 60s. (And starting Julie Christie!) But maybe they were also borrowing from that novel.

Plot

"The area where Sil and her offspring are destroyed."

Since I'm not a native speaker, I'm not certain whether there is only an is missing in this sentence. --Hodsha (talk) 21:47, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

"Sil and her offspring" is a compound that can behave as a plural, just like "the police are looking for..."88.111.238.94 (talk) 08:32, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Writing and development

"the initial Species script would suggest a love triangle between Sil, Press and Lennox"

Press is Preston Lennox' nickname so any triangle must include another character. --Hodsha (talk) 22:22, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Species (film)/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Cirt (talk · contribs) 21:14, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

I will review this article. — Cirt (talk) 21:14, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Good article nomination on hold

This article's Good Article nomination has been put on hold. During review, some issues were discovered that can be resolved without a major re-write. This is how the article, as of October 14, 2015, compares against the six good article criteria:

1. Well written?:

1. Thank you very much for your efforts to contribute to Quality improvement on Wikipedia, it's really most appreciated !!!
2. NOTE: Please respond, below entire review, and not interspersed throughout, thanks!
3. Suggestion: This suggestion is optional only, but I ask you to please at least read over the Good Article review instructions, and consider reviewing two to three (2-3) GA candidates from good articles nominations, for each one (1) that you nominate. Again, this is optional and a suggestion only, but please do familiarize yourself at least with how to review, and then think about it. Thank you.
4. Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Film, please re-order sects accordingly.
5. Please place Influences and themes above Production.
6. Please expand the lede sect a tad bit more, so it can fully summarize the entire article's contents, per WP:LEAD. I'd suggest about three paragraphs of four sentences each.
7. Please re-order the lede intro sect, so it moves in the same chronological order as the body sects in the article itself, per WP:Manual of Style/Film.
8. Please improve the writing quality a bit -- several long sentences and run on sentences and sentences with too much use of commas, throughout.
9. Species is a 1995 American science fiction horror film directed by Roger Donaldson, written by Dennis Feldman and starring Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Alfred Molina, Forest Whitaker and Marg Helgenberger as a motley crew of scientist and government agents who try to track down an alien seductress played by Natasha Henstridge before she successfully mates with a human male. -- way way way too long sentence. This can be broken up easily into three (3) sentences. Please look for this, throughout the article.
10. The film was poorly received by critics, but nevertheless turned out to be a box office success, grossing US$113 million ($175 million in 2015 dollars), and spawning one theatrical (Species II), as well as two direct-to-video sequels (Species III and Species: The Awakening). -- another example of a sentence that could be two shorter sentences.
11. Overall, writing style throughout article can be more concise and succinct.
12. Good use of quotations, only quibble is sect, Writing and development, please trim and or paraphrase the quotes in there.

2. Verifiable?:

1. Checklinks tool shows some redirected sites. Strongly suggest archiving all links to Wayback Machine by Internet Archive using archiveurl and archivedate fields.
2. USA film so please change date format to USA format: Day Month, Year. You already have some in USA style and some in Europe style, so this will increase uniformity and standardization of all citations.
3. I placed one citation needed tag, at end of Sequels sect.
4. Some cites appear to be missing fields. Please use WP:CIT templates and make sure you've provided as much information as possible to ease with verification of reliable sources.
5. Example of problem cite: Navarro, Yvonne; Feldman, Dennis (1 June 1995). Species: A Novel. Bantam. ISBN 978-0-553-57404-3. = missing page numbers.
6. Fugarino, Virginia S. "Journal of Folklore Research: JFR Review for Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore". Retrieved 2013-06-17. = accessdate is filled out wrong, please use Month Day, Year. What journal? What date of publication? What publisher? doi number? volume? issue? page numbers?
7. Please go through cites to make sure that type of info is added.

3. Broad in coverage?: Article is indeed broad in scope and coverage. Just keep in mind Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Film, per above.

4. Neutral point of view?: Article is indeed presented in a neutral tone with matter-of-fact wording. No issues here.

5. Stable? Upon inspection of article edit history, the article is stable going back at least two months. Talk page shows no issues upon inspection back to 2014. No issues here.

6. Images?: One image used, fair use, very good job on image page at File:Speciesver3.jpg. No issues here.

NOTE: Please respond, below entire review, and not interspersed throughout, thanks!

Please address these matters soon and then leave a note here showing how they have been resolved. Within 7 days, the article should be reviewed again. If these issues are not addressed by then, the article may be failed without further notice. Thank you for your work so far. — Cirt (talk) 02:28, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

@Cirt: Thanks for the review :) Here are my comments:

• 1.4. I've put Influences... above Production. Is there anything else that needs to be done?
• 1.6-7. I've edited the lead. Please let me know if you want me to go into more or less detail about any specific section.
• 1.8. Hopefully I've found most of them. I've read this about a dozen times now, so there are probably things that slipped through but which I won't notice.
• 1.11. I've done some changes, let me know if it needs a more thorough editing. I would probably do more, but I wanted to wrap this up for today, it's quite late now where I live.
• 2.3. Resolved :)
• 2.4-5. Re: page numbers in books, unfortunately I can't help with that; I didn't add those refs and don't have the books. I went through the history, and it seems that User:Igordebraga wrote the bulk of the article, adding both book refs with missing page #s. He has written numerous GAs, so I trusted his coverage of the sources. If this is necessary, I suppose he is the person to ask.
• 2.6. I'm using {{cite web}} here for Fulgarino's review since I don't have any information about the print version of the journal. It is mentioned as being in the 2011 issue here, but that's all the information I could find. Alternatively, judging from this page here, it may well be web-only content.

Daß Wölf (talk) 02:52, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Reevaluation by GA Reviewer

1. Upon revisit, lede intro sect looks much better, good job!
2. Checklinks tool - http://dispenser.homenet.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/webchecklinks.py?page=Species_%28film%29 shows no problems, excellent here.
3. Copyvio Detector tool - https://tools.wmflabs.org/copyvios/?lang=en&project=wikipedia&title=Species+%28film%29&oldid=&action=search&use_engine=0&use_links=1 - result = "Violation Unlikely 21.3% confidence" = EXCELLENT WORK HERE, THIS IS WHAT WE LIKE TO SEE, NICELY DONE !!!
4. Several of the citations have more field info, good job here.
5. Page numbers would certainly make it easier for other editors in the future. As far as a strict reading of WP:V, verifiability is still met. This would most likely not pass muster at WP:FAC, but I'm going to allow it for WP:GA. Going forward in the Quality improvement process, please try to get the page numbers for the books cited.
6. Overall quotation use looks a bit better.

Will post final analysis, below. — Cirt (talk) 03:19, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

@Daß Wölf:Have you taken some time to read over the instructions in my suggestion number 3, above, that is only optional and just something to consider as a suggested way to pay it forward ? — Cirt (talk) 03:21, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

@Cirt: See Talk:Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon/GA1#Reevaluation by GA Reviewer :) Daß Wölf (talk) 14:36, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, just a suggestion to read over the instructions and consider it as an option only is all I ask. :) — Cirt (talk) 14:38, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Passed as GA

Passed as GA. My thanks to GA Nominator for being so polite and responsive to GA Reviewer recommendations, above. — Cirt (talk) 14:39, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

The nudity

Should the nudity exhibited by Natasha Henstridge be reported somewhere in this article? I have access to this movie's collector's edition Blu-ray and Henstridge stresses how the press as well as audience "made such a big deal" out of her being stark naked. She also adds that some people recognize her for starring in the film, not in other films she has starred in. The other commentary track by the crew members also discusses, among others, Henstridge's nudity as well as her sex scenes. Slightlymad 04:33, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Some of the reviews cataloged here mention the nudity, but I don't remember if it was a huge deal back then or not. Does the commentary track say anything interesting? Blue is the Warmest Colour has some discussion of its graphic sex, which really caused a stir. As a fairly mainstream exploitation film, I don't know if Species ever really got the same kind of attention. Maybe there are career retrospectives out there that discuss this stuff, like how the frequent nudity may have helped or harmed Henstridge's career. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 05:31, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

These reliable sources by Den of Geek!—this and this—revisit the film but neither discusses the nudity. In regards to the commentary, otoh, I was able to listen to the ones headlined by Henstridge, Michael Madsen, and Roger Donaldson (director) in full; its rather dry, but there a couple of bits that could be added later in the article, such as the casting of Michelle Williams, shooting locations, and some anecdotes by Henstridge and Madsen. I think readers would be expecting us to cover the nudity (no pun intended) in the article because, more or less, it has been remembered for Henstridge's unfazed nudity. Slightlymad 06:30, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Unfortunately, sources likely to discuss the nudity are probably listicles and other clickbait. If I have to, I use them. One possibility for a better source, though, is to look for comparisons to Lifeforce, which did the whole "naked space alien who kills men" thing ten years earlier, something mentioned in reviews. It's the sort of topic that would merit a retrospective look in a film journal today, though academics wouldn't have been caught dead talking about Lifeforce or Species back then. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 08:45, 21 January 2018 (UTC)