Talk:The F Word (2013 film)

Meaning of the title

"The F Word" of the title suggests the word Fuck, as section of the article mentioning the name hints using a wikilink. At the time the film came out I recall Radcliffe claiming the F actually stood for Friendship as the story is about his character trying to avoid the friend zone. I'm having difficulty finding a source for though, the closest I have been able to find is Vulture explaining that F stands for Friendship. Maybe if a better source, or more sources, can be found the article could directly explain the title. -- 109.77.213.69 (talk) 16:38, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Rechecked some of the sources in the article and found " in the U.S. it’s now called “What If” (even though the “F” in the original title refers to “friends”)." -- 109.76.186.141 (talk) 14:43, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Petition to retitle article, What If

Yes, the original title of the film was The F Word but once it was bought at the Toronto International Film Festival the title was changed to: What If and was marketed that way on posters, trailers etc. On IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, countless film reviews, the film is referred to as What If. The article's title should reflect that.The One I Left (talk) 20:16, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

The Canadian Screen Awards tell a different story, with ten nominations given in 2014 to "The F Word" — as does the Vancouver Film Critics Circle, which gave a nomination in 2015 to "The F Word". It's also still The F Word according to National Canadian Film Day; "The F Word" is what I get on Netflix, "The F Word" is what it is on CBC Gem; it's still "The F Word" on Crave; it can be purchased under both titles on Amazon by the three people who are still looking to buy physical discs rather than streaming their movies; it was reviewed as The F Word, not as What If, by The Globe and Mail; That Shelf and Seventh Row grant both titles, but both make it very clear that the film retained its original title in its own native country and was only renamed in the US.

So this is not a move that should ever have taken place unilaterally without proper discussion. Bearcat (talk) 04:19, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

That's interesting to know that it seems only in Canada has the original title, "The F Word" has remained. In the U.S. and U.K. it was marketed and sold as "What If". Scores of recognized and established critics have it labeled as "What If".

Even established film reference databases have labeled "What If":

• IMDB, the films official title as "What If" saying it's previous title was "The F Word"
• Rotten Tomatoes, "What If".
• Metacritic, "What If"

Across the United States it's been recognized as "What If":

• Variety, "What If"
• The New York Times, "What If"
• The Hollywood Reporter, "What If"
• Rolling Stone, "What If"
• The Los Angeles Times, "What If"

Across the United Kingdom it's been recognized as "What If":

• The Guardian, "What If"
• The Independent, "What If"
• Evening Standard, "What If"
• The Daily Telegraph, "What If"
• Empire, "What If"

I could go on but I do not debate that it was at one time known as "The F Word" and still is in Canada but I think it is more widely recognized as "What If" in the United States, United Kingdom and across the globe. I fully apologize for the move, I truly thought it was a mistake and no one had updated the film's title since I have never heard anyone reference the film by "The F Word" only as "What If". However as we continue to discuss, I does seem silly to recognize the films title only used in Canada, when its more commonly known as and referred to as "What If".The One I Left (talk) 14:23, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

The film only ever had limited release beyond Canada. The fact that the US and the UK are larger countries than Canada doesn't carry nearly as much weight as the fact that far fewer Americans or British people ever saw this film at all, because it's only in Canada that it was ever remotely famous or widely distributed. And as the traffic patterns I noted below showed, even after your page move people were still, at a ratio of two-to-one, using The F Word, not What If, to find it — and the reason for that is quite simple, it's because Canadians, who still know it as The F Word, are very close to the only people who ever actually heard of it in the first place, and very close to the only people who are actually still looking for it in 2024. So the title that Canadians would expect has to carry a lot of weight here, because it's not the populations of the countries that carries the day, it's the percentage of each country's population that has heard of, and is looking for, the film, and it's only in Canada that the percentage rises above "effectively zero". Bearcat (talk) 14:36, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Source for the limited release beyond Canada? The One I Left (talk) 17:39, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 5 March 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Page moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Jerium (talk) 09:23, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

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What If (2013 film) → The F Word (2013 film) – Reversion of page move that was unilaterally performed in January 2023, moving the article from its longstanding title of ten years without any proper discussion — the page mover placed a "petition" on the talk page in December without actually formatting it as a proper RM to list it for any outside input, and then came back in January to arbitrarily move it themself despite the improper process and its unsurprising lack of any outside input. But the fundamental problem is that their reasoning isn't as airtight as they thought it was — this is a film which was indeed marketed under a different title in its limited United States release, but is still to this day known by its original title in its own native country. It received all of its notability-making award nominations as The F Word, not as What If; all of the (several) streaming platforms I as a Canadian can view it on still to this day offer it to me as The F Word, not as What If; it can still be found under both titles if you're looking to buy a DVD or BluRay disc on Amazon; and on and so forth. (Links have been provided above in response to the nominator's comment if needed, but it would make this comment too long if I repeated them all here.)
And even on pageviews, in a representative period last year (i.e. before the page move), the direct title "The F Word" was attracting an average 711 views per day while the redirect "What If" was attracting an average of less than 50, meaning that readers were overwhelmingly using "The F Word", not "What If", to find it. And even after the page move, The F Word is still doing 260 to What If's 389 (i.e. the redirect's 260 plus just 129 bypasses of the redirect), meaning that two-thirds of the article's overall traffic is still coming through the redirect.
So this isn't a film that's been objectively and universally renamed for all viewers — it's a film that is still to this day known by more than one title in different markets, so all things being equal its native title in its home country should take precedence. At the very least, this should never have been moved without a proper RM discussion. Bearcat (talk) 04:38, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

• Support, if the film was moved without discussion to a title that's not the original, that isn't a clear WP:COMMONNAME, and that isn't a more WP:Natural disambiguation than the other one, then it should be moved back. —El Millo (talk) 07:06, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
• Support move per nom. The original move was unilateral and didn't really make much sense. O.N.R. ^(talk) 02:55, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.