Template talk:Christopher McQuarrie

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Writing credits[edit]

Navigation templates are to be used for directing credits because they're the key person behind a film. When it comes to writing credits, the degree of importance will vary. Christopher McQuarrie's involvement with Edge of Tomorrow is a good example. The spec script was written by Dante Harper, then rewritten by Joby Harold, and now McQuarrie is credited with the Butterworths with no real-world coverage about their involvement. Readers can always click on the less-important crew members' names to find out what else they've done; we should not bloat up the footer with templates for every one of them. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 02:15, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Another good example is how {{Guillermo del Toro}} is used at The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug due to him having a writing credit, even though he was last involved with the films in 2010. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 02:17, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hyliad, see my comments above. Per WP:NAVBOX#Disadvantages, this bloated template should not be showing links that are only tangential and "may not give the reader enough clues as to which links are most relevant or important". The option remains that readers can go to a crew member's article and see the other works. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 11:25, 19 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Except that with Wikipedia being an encyclopedia, the fact that McQuarrie is hugely involved (like in Usual Suspects) or not much is irrevelant, as long as he is credited for such. This is why Red Tails is not on George Lucas's template as a film he directed, since he is not credited as such (which is normal, he only shot additional material, but still). Since it has been decided since long time (with first discussions comming about people such as Steven Spielberg or James Cameron who wrote and produced movies other than their own) that the films a director wrote and/or produced belong in his/her template (in opposition to other functions such as actor or executive producer), the actual involvment doesn't actually count for it would start endless discussions about if any involvment is important enough to be included in a template. If you think the current way templates are done is wrong, it's not a discussion that should be doner here. Cordially --Hyliad (d), 19 may 2014 16:47 (CEST)
There is not a consensus to have producing and writing credits in these navigation templates. It looks like this has become a slippery slope starting with Spielberg, Lucas, and Cameron being household names and being connected via template to everything they've done. McQuarrie's nowhere in their league. Being an award-winning writer for The Usual Suspects does not mean he had similar creative contribution to the other films, as opposed to what a director does each and every time. Per WP:NAVBOX#Disadvantages, we need to avoid showing only tangential links that "may not give the reader enough clues as to which links are most relevant or important". McQuarrie as director of these two films makes sense to cross-link. All the writing credits of various importance does not. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 11:56, 20 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
McQuarrie is rarely the sole writer on the films where he is credited; see Christopher McQuarrie#Writer only. It is not representative to have only a writer template with his name at these films' articles. That means we'd need to have other writer templates too, and we would just start bloating up the footer with various crew templates. It's similar to why we don't have actor templates. There's no reason why readers can't just access the rest of these credits via wikilink. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 12:29, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Betty Logan, we have Hyliad to contend with here in removing this template. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 12:33, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, this has been discussed fairly recently at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Film/Archive_52#Navigation_templates which Hyliad may wish to read. Simply put, the idea of director navboxes is to group articles together in terms of principle authorship since this is how reliable sources usually approach the subject, bar the odd exception. Regardless of the pros and cons of auteur theory we are just reflecting the common perception. Betty Logan (talk) 13:20, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]