Wookieepedia:Featured article reviews/The Arena (musical theme)

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The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a Featured article that failed review. Please do not modify it.

The Arena (musical theme)

  • Requested By: Enderdrag64 (talk)
  • Date Requested: 00:21, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
  • Date Archived: 18:04, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Object

Enderdrag64

This article has many many issues, some of which I have brought up in the Discord. The article essentially needs to be rewritten from the ground up, assuming it even meets notability.

A "theme" refers to a musical idea that is repeated across multiple cues throughout a score. Assuming this article was actually written about what its title referred to, it would cover the melody that makes up the Attack of the Clones cue 6m2 Entrance of the Monsters. This melody is not thematic, because this is the only cue it appears in in the entire score. One could make the argument that it might be retroactively a theme due to its cue being tracked into the Jedi Temple March scene in Revenge of the Sith, but this would require a larger discussion about whether tracking makes something thematic or not. I'm certainly not opposed to having articles for setpiece melodies (which are currently not covered under notability) but that is outside of the scope of this review.

Edit: one thing I just thought of before posting is that Battlefront II (2017)'s score may quote this. I will have to double check to be sure, but if it does that would rise this melody to the level of "theme".

In the previous paragraph I made the assumption that the article's title and contents covered the same subject. Unfortunately, this assumption is false. The article in its current form does not cover the setpiece melody of 6m2 Entrance of the Monsters, rather it covers the OST track "Love Pledge and the Arena", which is an edit of the following cues:

  • (0:00-2:42) 6m1 Love Pledge
  • (2:42-6:58) 6m2 Entrance of the Monsters
  • (6:58-7:40) 6m5 Padme Falls
  • (7:40-8:00) 6m5 Insert
  • {8:00-8:15) 6m5 Padme Falls
  • (8:15-end) 3m1 Finding Kamino

This directly contradicts the notability policy, which doesn't allow articles about individual OST tracks for exactly this reason. This is not music as John Williams composed it, it is an edit of multiple cues made for the album. If the article is to remain, it must be refashioned into one that actually covers the setpiece melody of 6m2 Entrance of the Monsters.

Beyond these large issues, I have several other objections to the article in its current form:

  • Citing the piano arrangement for kids as a source of musical information about the actual theme (tempo, keys). This is analogous to citing a coloring book drawing for detailed information about a concept art painting
  • Referring to the theme's appearance in various videogames that don't have original scores. It's not accurate to say that the theme was reused, themes are only used inside of scores. What these games did is reuse the cue in which the theme appeared, so all we'd need to have is an appearance list for what cues the theme is in. However, as I already stated, this is a setpiece melody and not a theme and so it only appears in one cue.
    • Adding on to this, if appearances are to remain or do appear in other articles, they should probably be in table form instead of paragraph form.
  • Referring to the digital release as "MP3 download" when you can also buy it in other forms such as FLAC, which may be more preferable due to being lossless.
  • Referring to the 2016 Sony sets (Ultimate Digital Collection/Ultimate Vinyl Collection/Ultimate Soundtrack Edition) as "Ultimate Editions" which is both incorrect terminology and can be easily confused with the actual Ultimate Edition that was released for The Phantom Menace in 2000.
  • The article's arena picture says the following: "The theme is used during the executions in Attack of the Clones." This is not actually the case. It's true that it was written for this scene, but it went unused in the final film.

Comments

  • As the author, I was a music school baby when I wrote this over a decade ago, and Enderdrag is right. While I think it's likely this could end up still counting as a theme in the end, the current iteration of the article is not about a theme at all and needs major work. It would need a complete rewrite. As I haven't studied music in almost a decade, I don't think I'm the right person to do the rewrite. However, if someone else wanted to do it, I'd be more than happy to help consult and draft any policy changes that are needed to better the wiki's coverage of similar topics. Master FredceriqueCommerce Guild(talk) (he/him) 08:38, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
  • Sent to probation at 1 month unaddressed.—spookywillowwtalk 03:15, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Vote to retain Featured status

Vote to strip Featured status

  1. Inqvote Has been on probation for a month, after the initial 1 month unaddressed.—spookywillowwtalk 04:20, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
  2. Inqvote LucaRoR Sigil of House Serenno (Talk) 16:39, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
  3. Inqvote Unaddressed objections. Braha'tok enthusiast Hello there 17:24, 7 May 2023 (UTC)