Talk:Thor: The Dark World

Budget

It seems to me that the budget should represent the amount spent to make the movie. The citation for the budget clearly states the following: "producers of Thor: The Dark World spent £ 164.6 million ($237.6 million) and claimed a rebate of £25.6 million ($37 million)." Hence, the source I am using agrees with my statement: the cost to produce Thor 2 was, unequivocally, $237.6 million. Yes, there was a rebate from the UK, but that means that the rebate covers that portion of the actual spend of $237.6 million. I am reverting it back one final time. I would appreciate it if the other editor could respond to these points rather than engage in another revert with no discussion. Depauldem (talk) 03:05, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

You know full well this matter is already under discussion at Talk:Avengers:_Age_of_Ultron#Disruptive_changes_to_the_budget. Betty Logan (talk) 03:20, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

And since there is a dispute on this page, I think it fitting the talk for said page have its own discussion. Now, can you actually reply to what I wrote above? I will note that you also didnt respond to my points in the other page either and merely engaged in an esoteric diversion about whether a rebate is a subsidy. Even though of topic and it didn't address my points, I even took the time to respond to that as well, with sources. Depauldem (talk) 03:39, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

The budget on this page should represent the GROSS budget, which is the actual amount spent (cost) to make the film. If I had to spend $100 million to get the $20 million rebate, the people I paid $100 million to still got $100 million and made the movie, correct? At the end of the day, the $20 million rebate may mean my NET budget only put me out of pocket $80 million, but $100 million was still spent to make the film, correct? Unless the other editor is going to reject the simple concept that the budget of each film is representative of the gross budget, i.e. the amount spent to make the actual project, I am going to edit the budget to reflect the amount spent. The note will still reflect that the cost was later offset by a government rebate. But the rebate was only able to be receives AFTER the had to spend the full budget to make the film. Depauldem (talk) 21:52, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Focus your discussion at the Avengers 2 article, it can be resolved in one place.Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 21:54, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

I have. But the other user is not responding to points there either. And the changes about the budget on this page should have a discussion on this page. Depauldem (talk) 22:07, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Not when it is centered on the same topic. Something affecting this article, as well as similarly somewhere else, doesn't have to have discussions in multiple places. So as Dark said, stick to the one discussion at Age of Ultron. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 22:15, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

I've restored the long-stable consensus version of the budget figure until the discussion taking place on this page and across those of Age of Ultron, "SW: The Force Awakens" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" is resolved.

Aside from the issue of one editor using his own interpretation of a WP:PRIMARY source, we do not use personal, amaeteur blogs as reference cites. Forbes "contributors" are not journalists but just unpaid, HuffPo-like writer-wannabes. Forbes itself disavows them, writing at each column, "Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own." There's no editorial oversight — just Forbes cynically exploiting unpaid would-be journalists with little or no training who will write for "exposure." Amateur journalists writing without editorial oversight are just personal bloggers and not WP:RS.

If Forbes itself won't vouch for these contributors' claims, how on Earth can an encyclopedia do so? --Tenebrae (talk) 14:48, 4 April 2016 (UTC) --Tenebrae (talk) 14:35, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

The policy provides: "Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge. For example, an article about a novel may cite passages to describe the plot, but any interpretation needs a secondary source." Since we are using these reports to state the cost only, those numbers are "straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified". If the report says a film cost $100 (hypothetical example), then we can list the cost as $100, as there is ZERO interpretation involved. Depauldem (talk) 20:38, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

No, because you're analyzing the numbers and coming up with a conclusion no one in the industry is coming up with except Deadline, which you yourself said you gave it. That involves interpretation. At the most basic level, it's interpretation to claim a budget is higher than what a company actually spent, since budgets are made with the idea of the tax rebate already built-in. If Disney did not spend $300 million, because it budgeted the movie with tax rebate at $250 million, then the budget is $250 million. --Tenebrae (talk) 16:31, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Again, routine calculations are NOT OR. Please stop making this false claim. As for the cost of Thor, the Forbes Contributer is a reliable source (you have conceded this yourself). He puts the budget at $237.6 million. Those numbers are based on the actual company filings. Basic math refutes your claim that, for Thor 2, $237.6 million wasn't spent. It was. This is not a matter of opinion, it's just a fact. Your false understanding of budgeting is contradicted by reality. Depauldem (talk) 17:29, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

I've already said on another of the four talk pages on which you're arguing that any analysis of tax rebates and their impact on a film's budget, further complicated by an exchange rate than may or may not be applicable at a given time, is hardly "routine calculations". If that were so, trade publications — other than Deadline which simply published your analysis, or the copycat sources re-reporting the figure with attribution to Deadline — would have independently come up with that same "routine calculation". But they did not.

And while I go into this in further detail on one or another of the pages where you're spreading your argument, you suggested a reasonable compromise at Talk:Avengers: Age of Ultron, one with which I certainly agree. Would it not be productive to use that as a shared foundation from which we can move forward?--Tenebrae (talk) 05:38, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

I asked this in the Avengers page, but what compromise are you referring to, specifically? There are a few in that page and It doesn't appear you agree with all of them. As for this article, it's a mute point about my use of math. The Forbes Contributor article lists the amount on Thor 2, specifically: "producers of Thor: The Dark World spent £ 164.6 million ($237.6 million)." So, using the compromise arrived at Avengers (including, perhaps, agreed to by you), then we would list the budget on this film as $237.6 million and include a parenthetical with the net budget w/rebate amount or, in the alternative, list the budget as $237.6 million in the info box with a note to explain the net budget with the rebate amount. I am fine with either approach, but I know Betty Logan favored the former--i.e. using a parenthetical to show net after rebate). Depauldem (talk) 04:26, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Yes ... in the article body. not the infobox. The infobox is supposed to use the widely acknowledged, generally reported figure. Details about complicated tax arrangements and rebate go in the article body.--Tenebrae (talk) 16:19, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

That was NOT the compromise reached on the other page. The compromise, which you are the only holdout on was to either 1. List spend with parenthetical showing net minus the rebate or 2. list spend with note that gives net after the rebate. Either way, it would have $237.6 in the info box. Depauldem (talk) 17:05, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Responding at Talk:Avengers: Age of Ultron. This four or five talk-page argument over the same issue is so inappropriate, as Betty Logan notes above at 03:20, 1 April 2016, fully nine days ago. Sigh. --Tenebrae (talk) 17:16, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

I know this is an old argument but someone has done these supposedly "routine calculations" on several articles and the figures are unreliable original research. The claimed net budget figure is not contained in the source and the problem is that it is not even clear if the claimed budget figure (and the report freely admits to using the unreliable Box Office Mojo for those figures) is before or after the incentives so the people doing the supposedly simple calculations to come up with this theoretical "net budget" figure cannot even say with certainty if they should add or subtract. I was going to delete the net budget figure from the infobox but I did not because I see it has already been disputed, but as the net budget figure has been repeatedly shown to be dubious in several other articles and has been removed in other case I strongly encourage named editors to remove it from this article too. -- 109.79.191.81 (talk) 20:12, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

We should look closer at the information from Disney company accounts that came out in 2016 and was analysed by UK-based film industry researcher Stephen Follows and summarized by Forbes magazine, and realize that Box Office Mojo goofed again.

The article states: "Thor: The Dark World spent £ 164.6 million ($237.6 million) and claimed a rebate of £25.6 million ($37 million)" and we should looking closer at the important detail is that symbol £ indicating British pounds, and that figure of 170. Once more and yet again Box Office Mojo took the cost of a film in British pounds and incorrectly claimed the film cost 170 million dollars. Film LA freely admit that their reports make assumptions on information available at the time and update later when company accounts are released. This article should abandon the outdated incorrect claim that the budget was $170 million US dollars when The published company accounts make it clear that rounded up it was £170 million British pounds, or $237.6 million US dollars. -- 109.79.191.81 (talk) 20:35, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

I don't think Box Office Mojo so much as "goof" as estimate. They tend to have their budgets up before the film comes out while the full financial accounts from HMRC don't usually come out until a year after the film is released. The problem is that BOM don't update their information when the exact figures come out. They are so dominant as a source that their out of date data tends to be perpetuated. Budgets can be very secretive and inexact so editors do need to be more open to updating them with newer information. Betty Logan (talk) 01:37, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

Good call by Kailash29792 ... er, TriiipleThreat|

The cited MTV article didn't actually have her confirming she would be in Ragnarok. Her quote was that Sif would be back — which could simply mean another episode of SHIELD -- and it was the writer's conclusion that she meant she'd be back in Ragnarok. I think, particularly given the circumstances, that this was never an actual confirmation by her. --Tenebrae (talk) 20:41, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

@Tenebrae and Kailash29792: If you watch the video, the interviewer asks her directly "Will we see you in Ragnarok?" to which she responds "Yes". The interviewer then follows up with "A lot? A little?" and Alexander says "I don't know the answer to that question but I'm definitely in it."--TriiipleThreat (talk) 21:13, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

@TriiipleThreat and Kailash29792: D'oh! You're a better man than I am, TriiipleThreat! I'll do that, add the event time, and reword to indicate she said she was in but not she's not.

Alexander first said she would be in Ragnarok, but as of now, due to scheduling conflicts with Blindspot, is not part of the film. Hence, removed. Kailash29792 (talk) 01:35, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Mention of Infinity Stones, etc. in the plot summary

@TriiipleThreat: I don't understand this edit summary. It doesn't explain why they are leaving it with him; to anyone who had not seen The Avengers the scene would be nonsense since they would not know what a Tesseract is. And why exactly do we need to specify the reason, when it relates exclusively to the plots of other related films and not to this one? We don't explain how Loki survived or when he returned to Asgard, nor why they know where the Convergence will be, nor why Selvig was institutionalized. (Well, actually we do give a reason for that last one, but it's wrong.) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:50, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

It explains that there is already another Infinity Stone on Asgard and that leaving the Aether with it would be unwise. That’s all anyone needs to know. You don’t need to watch The Avengers to understand it. The only thing that watching the Avengers will tell you is how the Tesseract got there, which is irrelevant because the only information that we need is that it is on Asgard, not how it got there. Without this information in the plot summary it doesn’t make sense why they are taking such a volitile substance to a stranger.—TriiipleThreat (talk) 11:25, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

The fact that comic-fan think-pieces like this one were showing up within days of the film's release to explain to "casuals" like me what an "Infinity Stone" and why it's relevant for future films is enough evidence that knowledge of what an Infinity Stone is was not prerequisite knowledge for this film, and had nothing to do with the basic plot of this film except from the point of view of intertextual speculation by fans. Your claiming that he is "a stranger" is OR that does not appear to be supported by the text; you are technically allowed to do so on the talk page (as much as I am), but given that you appear to be using your talk-page OR to justify including a piece of uncited non-basic "plot" information in the article it's a little more of a grey area. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:49, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

No WP:OR necessary, I believe they make reference to that fact that they only know the Collector by reputation in the dialogue. We don’t explain what an infinity stone is or why it’s relevant here either, just that for some reason keeping two of them together is unwise, which is all we need for the purposes of this plot.—TriiipleThreat (talk) 13:02, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Think pieces are not a good indicator of something needing to be explained beyond the film itself. Dozens appear after every film comes out these days, explaining things that are actually perfectly clear in the film. All of our summary of that scene comes from watching it, no further understanding required. - adamstom97 (talk) 17:51, 30 November 2017 (UTC)