Talk:Speed Racer (film)/GA1

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: Biggs Pliff (talk · contribs) 23:14, 26 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, I'm reviewing this article as part of my training at WP:GARC as such it may take longer than normal to complete (see here). I'll start by filling out a review template and after that do a prose and source review. Any queries or input is welcome. Biggs Pliff (talk) 23:14, 26 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

Is it reasonably well written?
A. Prose is clear and concise, without copyvios, or spelling and grammar errors:
The plot section contains a lot of mentions of the brother subplot a lot of which isn't necessary to understand the overall story. See here.

Some minor grammatical and clarity issues, I'll go through them in detail in a prose review.

B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:
I can't be certain because I haven't seen the film myself but it seems to me that the "Cast" list seems to contain some people/characters who may not be notable enough to deserve a mention. I'm thinking about the ones described as "yet another racer". The critera are here.
Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
A. Has an appropriate reference section:

B. Citation to reliable sources where necessary:
I haven't looked at the sources yet, I will do a thorough check of sources tomorrow.

C. No original research:
Is it broad in its coverage?
A. Major aspects:
Seems to cover the topic pretty exhaustively.

B. Focused:
Is it neutral?
Fair representation without bias:
Is it stable?
No sudden major changes. No vandalism:
Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

B. Images are provided if possible and are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:
Overall:
Pass or Fail:

Prose review

Lead

The Lead Section is great, there are however a couple of small things I think should be changed. The sentence "The film received negative reviews" doesn't make sense to me as a stand-alone point since surely everything has a negative review somewhere, I would change it to run into the following sentence with the specific examples "The film received negative reviews, it was criticized for its storyline..."
The other sentence I would change is "Speed Racer also divided critics over its use of special effects; while some acclaimed its visuals, others disliked them". This is a tautology. I would either remove it or provide specific examples of critics in each camp for example "...while some acclaimed its visuals, like Mr. A who said..., others disliked them, citing issues like..."

Plot

The main issue with the plot section is that its too long. It should be cut down by 100 words or so. One way I would cut it down is the level of detail about the brothers back story in the first paragraph. The plot is supposed to be about Speed yet the first paragraph says more about his brother. I would reduce the mention of the brother to something along the lines of "Speed embarks on a racing career following in the footsteps of his record-setting older brother who was killed while taking part in the Casa Cristo 5000..."
Another way to make it shorter would be instead of saying that Royalton "threatens Speed's career and family, making good on these threats by...", mentioning the threat would only be necessary if he didn't follow through, instead you could say "Royalton takes out his anger on Speed by..."
You could also reduce "Speed decides that he must do something to stop Royalton and save the Racer business, and an opportunity to do so arises in the form of Inspector Detector" to "Speed gets an opportunity to retaliate through Inspector Dectector..."
The sentence "Racer X, who is watching, reveals through a flashback montage that he is indeed Rex" should be rephrased, the character doesn't use a flashback montage, the film does. Perhaps something like "While Racer X watches it is revealed in a flashback montage that he really is Rex".

Cast

Again this section is too long, see WP:FILMCAST for those who should be included. I checked out one of them Milka Duno, she's an actual racing driver, perhaps you should mention this beside her name in the cast list to establish her notability for inclusion, are there any other real-life racers in the cast?

Production

One issue I have is that the section mentions the film title too much, the film should only be mentioned by name if there is any doubt about which film is being talked about one example is "In December 1997, the studio briefly hired director Alfonso Cuarón for Speed Racer". Mentioning the title of the project here reads a little strange to me, I would change it to "...the studio also briefly hired Alfonso Cuarón as director".
Development: One sentence comes across slightly odd to me, "However, due to a high budget, the same August, director Julien Temple, who was attached to direct Speed Racer, left the project." Leaving because of a high budget doesn't make sense in and of itself, to me at least, in my opinion changing to "an overly high budget" sounds better.
Pre-Production: Fine
Filming: The sentence "The Mach 5, the vehicle driven by the protagonist Speed, was a drivable vehicle" comes across as a bit of a strange statement without the added context of the car being hung from a crane that's mentioned in the illustrations caption. I would either remove it from the illustration caption and put it in the main body of the article or re-phrase the statement for the article and have it in both.
Music: Fine
Animal Cruelty: One thing I would change is the "American Human Animal (AHA) Safety Representitive" I'm not familiar with the AHA and the fact that the word "animal" also fits the acronym threw me a little at first, simply putting "animal" after (AHA) would sort this.

Release and Reception

Marketing:Fine
Box Office: Fine
Critical Reception: "resembled "as a kindergartner's art class collage". He had praise it for the cinematography" should be "resembled "a kindergartner's art class collage". He had praise for the cinematography". This is a minor change so I did it myself. *The line "It was said to be one of "the most tiresome piece of CGI (Computer Generated Idiocy [sic])" of the "past couple of years" should either say "one of "the most tiresome piece[s]..." or "it was said to be "the most tiresome piece..."
The were also some places with words missing making them ungrammatical so I added those myself.
Awards and Nominations: Fine
Home Media: Fine

Possible Sequel

Some minor grammatical issues that I've corrected myself.
One bit I wasn't sure of is the sentence "The producer Joel Silver told the Wachowskis "have a great story idea for a sequel [...], we have a great idea for a sequel if it makes sense to make it." This sentence is ambiguous. Did he tell them that he had a great idea? or did he tell an interviewer that they had said to him they had the great idea?

Well that's that for the prose review, I'll try and do the source review tomorrow or the next day. Biggs Pliff (talk) 01:00, 28 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think I have corrected all issues you pointed. Thank you for the excellent review! I'm prepared for more corrections if necessary. Gabriel Yuji (talk) 03:01, 30 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've read over your edits and I'm happy with it. There's only the source review left to do. I have a college assignment to do over the next few days so I won't be able to do a full source review until Monday. In the meantime you could start fixing the sources over the weekend if you like, one thing is GA's require all sources to have "retrieved" dates within the last year so you could check that the sources still work and update the retrieval dates and I'll check it over on on Monday. Biggs Pliff (talk) 11:12, 1 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Source Review

Ref 2 "the original" link leads to an error page, i don't think its necessary so I would just remove it
Ref 4 is not working, "the original" link doesn't lead to anything "speed racer" related again i would remove it
Ref 11 again "the original" not working, just remove
Ref 23 "the original" again leads to error page
Ref 27 "the original" leads to 1 sentence long version of the same article, i don't think its necessary for it to be there
Ref 40 "the original" is same as other link, again I don't think its necessary
Ref 44 is not working
Ref 49 leads to an article completely unrelated to speed racer, needs to be fixed
Ref 58 "the original" not working, I would remove
Ref 61 "the original" again not working, remove
Ref 62 not working
Ref 63 not working
Ref 68 "the original" again doesn't lead to anything useful i would remove
Ref 75 Archive.is wikipage has been deleted, redlink can be removed

Besides these issues there is just the matter of updating the "Retrieved" dates on all the sources, once these are sorted out the article is ready to be passed. Biggs Pliff (talk) 11:58, 9 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have corrected the wrong links or dead links but I can't remove "the original"s because the "archiveurl" parameter requires the "url" parameter. I also couldn't figure out what you are saying about updating the "Retrieved" dates. Gabriel Yuji (talk) 15:26, 9 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's ok, forget about "the original" links then. For the "retrieved dates": If you look at the reference section, each one has a title/details followed by "Retrieved on...". This is the date that the link is verified as working. GA criteria require that all sources have "Retrieved on..." dates within the past year and some of these are much older than that. It's essentially a matter of checking all the links are working, which is done, and now updating those dates to today's date. The quickest way I have found to do it is to use "find" (Hold Ctrl and press F) and search the phrase "accessdate", then change these dates to today's. Does that explain it? Biggs Pliff (talk) 16:32, 9 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this explains. I didn't know this criteria. I will do it immediately! Gabriel Yuji (talk) 16:42, 9 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Is it ok now? Gabriel Yuji (talk) 16:56, 9 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it seems to me that everything meets GA standard but since as I mentioned at the beginning I'm being trained in reviewing GAN's right now I feel that I should refer it to my trainer to be 100% sure before I pass it. Biggs Pliff (talk) 17:32, 9 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. No hurry, man. Thank you for your great review! Gabriel Yuji (talk) 20:33, 9 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I passed the article. Congratulations! Biggs Pliff (talk) 14:11, 10 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]