Forum:Movie characters

So I figure we need to have a discussion on how to handle articles about movie characters. Personally, my favored approach is similar to how the Transformers wiki deals with their various universes, which also happens to be more or less how we've been treating the alternate universe characters from Warlords of Draenor: add a parenthetical tag to the end of the article name if it's something that already exists in the main game canon, and use a template at the top of the page to indicate it's a movie-related article. I've already created the template (Movie), and would suggest using (movie) as the parenthetical. Thoughts? --Dark T Zeratul (talk) 23:33, 13 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Makes sense. I changed the template to say "This article contains lore exclusive to the Warcraft movie continuity and is therefore considered non-canon in the main Warcraft universe", but it could probably be worded better. -- 08:05, 14 November 2015 (UTC)


 * (movie) or (film) works for me, though I'm not completely sure how different the characters will be from their established sources. 11:28, 15 November 2015 (UTC)


 * I think we should create separate film character articles for now. If we find that either the film follows the lore nearly verbatim, or Blizzard adjusts their lore to fit the scope of the film, (ie. being added/referenced in the game), then we can simply merge the articles and perhaps even have the main infobox images be the live-action/high-definition film versions of the characters. MightyBotto (talk) 09:25, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

How do we name characters from the movieverse that appear in Warcraft: Durotan and Bonds of Brotherhood? Garad (movie)? What about Garad (movie universe)? Mordecay (talk) 15:26, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
 * My feeling is that using (movie universe) instead of (movie) just because they don't technically show up in the movie is purely semantics. We should use a consistent tag for any movie universe characters, whether they're from the movie(s) or the novel(s), regardless of which tag that is. I personally favor (movie) over (movie universe) purely for simplicity's sake, but I otherwise don't have any strong feelings one way or the other. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 21:20, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
 * While I don't feel strongly either way, I like the simplicity of just (movie). PeterWind (talk) 22:39, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I'd have to agree with DarkTZeratul, I'd prefer (movie), but keeping with the theme of how we handle alternate characters (movie universe) would be best.... or maybe (film universe). 23:54, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Ah yeah good point. PeterWind (talk) 01:32, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, tags should be definitely consistent. I was thinking of (movie universe) because, as said, we have (alternate universe) for WoD characters and that's hardly simple (ugh, those misspells I always make with "alternate" :D ) but it's in use. (film universe) looks also nice. Mordecay (talk) 10:10, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

I've changed the template up from "Movie" to "Film", as it seems more encyclopedic and professional. We should probably consider a new titling format, like "Character Name (film universe)", rather than "Character Name (movie)". The current titling is kind of shoddy and misleading. Also, we should concentrate on cleaning up and expanding the film articles, as they're virtually all stubs. MightyBotto (talk) 02:56, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
 * I can see why (film universe) would be more appropriate since Durotan novel characters such as Garad won't be in the actual movie itself, as far as I know. As for expanding the stubs I'm slowly working on the Durotan novel characters, since I own the book. So at the very least the Durotan characters have someone covering them. --X59 (talk) 05:06, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Awesome. Yeah, I've been away from Wowpedia for a while, but seeing this uphill battle actually excites me as a challenge, rather than a nuisance. We're essentially covering a whole new universe, so of course it will be complicated. MightyBotto (talk) 07:04, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

What about kingdoms and places seen in the movie? Should we create an "Elwynn Forest (film universe)" page? Xporc (talk) 09:28, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't think this would be a good idea. The differences are too small. Maybe pointing out the differences (if there are any) in the Trivia section is an alternative. Technically Heroes of the Storm is also a alternate Universe and we dont make new pages for Thrall etc...--LemonBaby (talk) 06:27, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
 * We already have separate pages for clans and characters so why not for kingdoms and areas? I'm in favor of creating separate pages of kingdoms, areas and worlds since it's its own universe. Unlike HotS the movie universe has evolving (hopefully) story and if there are more movies & literature it would be better to have separate pages rather than putting all into one. Regarding the differences, are they too small? Novelization goes into more detail than what is presented in the movie. Frostfire Ridge is also a bit different that what we see in WoD. Mordecay (talk) 08:50, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Since I watched the movie I already started adding stuff inside their normal page. See Stormwind for an example. What do you think about it? Xporc (talk) 09:27, 9 June 2016 (UTC)


 * It's not bad I guess but I still think having multiple history sections (a thing that irritated a certain mod with the RPG sections...) of different & separate universes in one article is not good. We also have Bonds of Brotherhood which has many details different from the gameverse. Also, what happened with consistency? Mordecay (talk) 08:56, 10 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Going by the Stormwind example, I think it really shows the need for a film universe article. The writing is framing it in relation to the main universe rather than letting it stand on its own as a piece of information. It's iffy as to whether the film universe will continue right now, but with one film, two novels, a comic, and an artbook, that's still a bit of material to work with.--Hawki (talk) 09:01, 10 June 2016 (UTC)


 * The problem is that if you have a separate article for Stormwind City in the movie-verse, the article will literally be two-lines long, with information like "okay its got houses and a cathedral I guess, considering it's seen for about 3 minutes". There is also the risk of having an explosion of "For the character in XXX, see..."-style notifications above some pages, which I don't like, and another one with page names "Stormwind (kingdom)", "Stormwind (region)", "Stormwind (faction)", which is confusing enough. If we added a "Stormwind (film universe)", which would it be linked to? Xporc (talk) 09:33, 10 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Is it a problem tho? It is the beginning of a new universe. With the literature provided the pages would be covered properly I believe. If needed a disambig page could be placed on top of Stormwind pages. But yes Stormwind names may be problematic. "Stormwind (film universe)" could be IMO linked to either region ("continent") page or kingdom, Stormwind City (film universe) to the city and Kingdom of Stormwind (film universe) to the kingdom. Mordecay (talk) 10:37, 10 June 2016 (UTC)


 * That "Stormwind (disambiguation)" page is gonna be long eheh. Though I'm a bit annoyed that your proposal would lead to having "Stormwind (kingdom)" for the main universe and Kingdom of Stormwind (film universe) for the alt-verse, two different naming conventions for the same thing. A similar problem could also happen for the "Azeroth (world)" and "Azeroth (continent)" of the movie-verse ... Xporc (talk) 10:47, 10 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Speaking of, I don't even know why Stormwind (kingdom) is used as the name of the article when its full name is Kingdom of Stormwind. Is Azeroth (continent) a thing in the movieverse? I once proposed to move Azeroth (world) to Azeroth as most of the references for other "Azeroth-areas" have been disregarded in current lore and are a relic of initial lore but that did not pass. So Stormwind (film universe kingdom) then? What would you suggest? Mordecay (talk) 11:26, 10 June 2016 (UTC)


 * My opinion would be to leave things as they are right now and to wait & see what kind of lore novels and other movieverse content will actually introduce Xporc (talk) 20:08, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Template
Small deal, but I made Film universe to make endless linking to the film universe pages a little easier. It would probably be better with a snappier (less confusing?) title, but since I'm probably not going to be the main one using it, I'll leave that to others to decide :) -- Taohinton (talk) 00:38, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Since I have actually ended up doing a fair bit of film universe work, I've added a redirect at fu, as in FU (film universe), ala MU (main universe) and AU (alternate universe). -- Taohinton (talk) 20:13, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

'Now'?
The material for the film universe so far presents a range of ‘present day’ points. Since we need to write articles for characters, factions, etc, from a specific point in time, it seems we should decide on when exactly 'now' is meant to be.

The obvious point is that seen at the end of the film, with Llane dead and the Alliance rallied to attack the Horde - but not having yet done so.

However, the novelization ends with the description of a battle between the Horde and Alliance forces, clearly some time in the future - the humans, elves, dwarves and even gnomes are united in battle, and the Horde have had time to build at least one mighty orcish fortress. There’s no mention of dates, so this could be a few months later, or potentially years deep into a long war between the two forces (as in the main universe timeline, which spanned many years). Indeed, the setting of this section is described as "War. Not a battle, or series of skirmishes; not a single mission or campaign. War, gritty, long, brutal, and cruel."

The intro/outro of the book appears to also be set in a slightly later point in time, and has Khadgar refer repeatedly to "the war", saying at one point "Don't you think we've had enough of war?" However, the same point in time states that for Varian the grief from his father's death is still "new", and that it was only a few days since his life had been irrevocably altered, suggesting it's set very shortly after the end of the film, and therefore presumably long before the novel's teaser Horde vs Alliance battle. There is also the intro to the film, which looks likely to be far in advance of the original war, with an impression of the World of Warcraft era.

While not technically the future-most point depicted in either film or books, it seems to me that the era of the end of the film is where we should set our film universe 'present day'. For the most part this should be fairly natural and save a lot of trouble, but it does mean taking a different approach to writing up info from the other settings. For example we now know that a "long, brutal, and cruel" war will rage between the Horde and the Alliance, but technically it hasn't happened yet. It's like the game devs telling us last year that the Burning Legion was going to invade Azeroth again; we can add that info to pages, but it should be kept aside, and not used as primary context for lead sections. -- Taohinton (talk) 23:27, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Icons
Not a big deal, but it should be mentioned that the MU icons don't always match the FU characters. See those currently in the infobox in the Horde article; for many the skin tone is entirely wrong, as are other details. In other cases like Gul'dan there isn't a key difference, but it's still what he looks like in the game, and doesn't much resemble his appearance in the film. I'm not sure if these are preferable to basic race icons since at least those aren't obviously contradictory. -- Taohinton (talk) 00:07, 6 July 2016 (UTC)