Ask The Tropers

Well, the James Bond items have to stay but every other example can be debated and discussed as usual for any trope example.

As the troper who deleted The One With Taglines for the MCU movies, I find the issue description a bit misleading.

While I did "unilaterally" delete a slew of tags it was after KingOfCheese "unilaterally" added a tag line to every MCU movie over the course of an hour and to the best of my knowledge had done this exact thing (with the exact same taglines) probably 8-12 months ago. Also, except for one, I believe all of my deletions had an edit reason attached.

My understanding of The One With trope is that it's used to describe a tv show or movie when the title is forgotten.

As such this implies coming up with an alternate title that stands a good chance of being recognized by a majority of pop culture otherwise it's the somewhat niche opinion of a single troper and strays into YMMV territory.

I reviewed the James Bond film tags and I feel each one does a pretty reasonable job defining the movie with a key memorable aspect.

My initial qualm with the original MCU additions by KingOfCheese was that a majority of the tags focused primarily on being cute and clever rather than being a good alternative description of the movie.

Unfortunately, that issue has been obscured because I noticed that when Arsenal_Gear restored the tag lines, he revised the wording on some of ones that were pretty clunky and that he felt the need to do so kinda proves my point.

I can get behind Captain America:Civil War as "the one with the awesome airport fight" or Iron Man as "The one that gave birth to a universe".

However, the one for SpiderMan:Homecoming is The one about the bug-themed superhero. No, not that one.

This alternate title could apply to ANY spider-man film be it Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield or Tom Holland. It does nothing to actually identify Homecoming. It's made more unhelpful when the same tag is used for Ant-Man.

And some are kinda obscure like for the The Incredible Hulk which is The one where Jack gets a different alternate personality in his head.

Which kinda only plays if you're familiar with Fight Club.

Iron Man 3 is "The one where Tony Stark saves Christmas"... really? Why not "The one with the fake Mandarin"? which was the biggest point of contention about the movie.

I personally don't think the MCU films really need taglines like this. But if the consensus is to keep them, then some should really be redone to be a better alternative title.

I have to agree that a lot of them are really clunky and only really detract from the articles.

Also, summing things up in a single sentence is what the Laconic entries are for.

I took a stab at coming up with better "The One With" tag lines for the more clunky ones currently out there. I tried to tie them to a core concept, theme or scene from the film based upon their reviews and their tvtropes pages.

The Incredible Hulk: The one with the Hulk that really is part of the MCU.

Iron Man 2: The one with the burd. (or alternatively The one with the Iron Man suit in a suitcase).

Thor: The one where Thor proves he's worthy in New Mexico.

Iron Man 3: The one with the fake Mandarin.

Thor - The Dark World: The one most fans don't like

Captain America - The Winter Soldier: The one that made Captain America cool.

Guardians of the Galaxy: The one with the a-holes. (drop the Thanos comment)

Ant-Man: The one that was almost an Edgar Wright film.

Spider-Man:Homecoming: The one where Spider-Man returns to the MCU.

Thor - Ragnarok: The one that made Thor cool.

Black Panther: The one that showed Hollywood diversity rules.

If you look at this list and immediately start thinking of "something better", allow me to suggest that this indicates that MCU movies, in general, resonate with the fan base in so many different ways that to try and narrow each movie down to a single "the one with" isn't very productive and thus this trope isn't really necessary for this franchise.

Reposting from the other thread:

Hey, sorry for the late response. These look good - just don't include audience reactions (the Dark World one) with them, as that usually has modly frowns.

Frankly, this is yet another TV Tropes verbal tic that adds nothing to content and only serves to help make the wiki more in-jokey. Not a fan.

Again, we have the Laconic entries for quick summaries. No need to be redundant.

Agreed and I don't think we have achieved consensus that the MCU film series even needs "The One With" tags.

The moderator, SeptimusHeap pointed out that the James Bond pages are a special situation and if you look at the source code for the movie pages it says that the site owner mandated that "The one with" entries stay for these movies.

However SeptimusHeap also said that additions like these to the MCU pages are open for discussion and debate.

At this point it feels like we have at least three voices saying that they aren't necessary.

Is there anyone casting a vote for the tag lines?

Otherwise I move that they just be deleted.

I remember this being an issue before. Fast Eddie himself said that yes they were to stay, really put his foot down about it. Now that he's gone would Fighteer, think you're the new big boss now, you said you don't want them so...thoughts?

I too am kinda leaning in favour of removing the MCU "The One With" tags, although I'm open to other people's reasoning if anyone feels they should stay.

However, if they do end up being removed, then I also have to question the validity of the James Bond tags. While I do agree that the James Bond tags are better-incorporated than the MCU tags, it still seems contradictory to me to remove MCU but to keep James Bond. Are the tags really necessary even on the James Bond pages? Especially since we also have the Laconic pages, which I feel could fulfill the same purpose easily enough.

I am aware that Fast Eddie was the one who initially decreed that the James Bond tags should stay. But, as tsstevens pointed out, he's not here anymore. Do the site's current owners have any stance on the matter?

Fighteer's the boss now unless there's consensus with the mods and he would like them gone. His Wikipedia, his rules I guess unless we want to discuss otherwise.

I'm not "the boss". We rule by consensus here. That said, we aren't collectively under any obligation to stick to Eddie's policies, and one thing Eddie never completely got through his head is that any in-joke or wiki meme will inevitably be taken to the point where it gets annoying. It's not a matter of if, but when.

The only way to control this is to appoint a squad of tropers to curate it. If someone wants to open a projects thread for this purpose, feel free. Otherwise I see no point in keeping the joke except for works that use The One With in-universe.

So...Nuke 'em? I'm currently copying over files from an old DVD recorder, it won't take much to wipe them all.

I am OK with keeping them for James Bond only. Any other example can be handled in the usual ways and people claiming that James Bond is a precedent need to be corrected.

Also, unless I missed something there was a troper consensus back then in favour of the James Bond examples. It was not just Eddie's decision.

So it's feeling like the consensus here is to keep the James Bond "The one with..." tags but they aren't to be used as a precedent to justify automatically adding tag lines to every work in an existing franchise without discussion and consensus.

We've noted that to let tag lines like this run rampant through the wiki would require a dedicated cadre of tropers to monitor them and keep them from becoming pointless in-jokes that add no value to the article. At present, no one seems to be scrambling for a position on that editing team.

As far as the MCU tags go, it feels like the prevailing opinion here is that they aren't necessary and can be removed. If anyone feels the burning need to do an in-jokey summation of the film, that's what the Laconic folder is for.

Is this an accurate summation of the discussion?

^ Yes.

@Harpie Siren - I personally don't feel they're redundant, especially with the Bond AND Doctor Who recap pages using them and they're not serious one-liner summaries, but that's probably moot at this point.

Who does the honors of removing them once it's finalized? Can a mod revert, or should I/someone else chop them?

Is there anything more to be done regarding this discussion?

The Bond entries, despite the rocky history, did have a consensus to keep them. Presumably the Doctor Who entries did as well (or they could now also be challenged).

However, it seems that a majority of responders to this discussion thread feel the MCU entries are superfluous and can be removed.

Is there any disagreement to this resolution? Are there any additional steps that need to be done?

Yeah, my memory is a bit fuzzy but I feel like when it was discussed in the past, it was specifically in the context of the James Bond films. I don't think they had spread out to anything else at that point.

Which worked well enough since often the names of them are so esoteric that they could apply to several of them. So yeah. If we're putting this to a vote, I say cut except for the Bonds.

I am late to the party, but I agree that "The one with..." tags should be removed for MCU.

So after nearly two weeks of discussion on this topic, today, King Of Cheese, is putting back the "cutesy" taglines.

I've sent them a PM explaining that we've already had this discussion and sent them a link to this topic.

When I removed the taglines I included a link to this discussion, so hopefully, it's just an oversight on their part, but I wanted to let you know this issue is not resolved yet.

Links?

Sorry? What to do mean links?

RVA, what Larkman means is if there's a problem with a page (and/or troper), you need to link to the article in question and the troper's edit history.

How to link to things can be found at Text-Formatting Rules and as of the 1.8 TV Tropes update, you can find a troper's edit history right on their troper page. You can just copy and paste that link here.

King of Cheese was already banned and is being handled in Edit Banned on the forums.

That troper's edit history (in case anyone needs to vet what's there to see if there was any other problem edits that need reverting): https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/el.php?findfor=KingOfCheese

Thanks for the update Ngamer01.