Rotten Tomatoes Bans User Reviews and Comments Before a Film's Theatrical Release To Counter Online Trolls (rottentomatoes.com)

Rotten Tomatoes is finally addressing its troll problem. The review aggregation website has unveiled a new initiative to "modernize its audience rating system through a series of product enhancements," -- the first of which includes banning user reviews and comments prior to a movie's theatrical release. Getting rid of pre-release user reviews means internet trolls will not be able to flood film pages with negative scores before a movie comes out. As we saw earlier this week, Captain Marvel was at the receiving end of what appeared to be a targeted campaign to lower the upcoming movie's audience rating. Rotten Tomatoes is not banning user reviews entirely. It says it will offer this functionality to users once the movie has hit the theaters.

Further reading on Rotten Tomatoes: Movie Studios Are Blaming Rotten Tomatoes For Killing Movies No One Wants To See
Hollywood Producer Blames Rotten Tomatoes For Convincing People Not To See His Movie
Rotten Tomatoes Scores Don't Correlate To Box Office Success or Woes, Research Shows
DC Fans Angry Over Rotten Tomatoes 'Justice League' Ratings
Why Don't We Care About The Rotten Tomatoes Scores Of TV Shows?
Real Moviegoers Don't Care About Rotten Tomatoes.

Comments

quiet, blessed quiet

[PopeRatzo]

Can you imagine a world where you had to actually have some first-hand knowledge of something before you could express an opinion?

Me neither.

maybe require proof of attendance initially?

[RhettLivingston]

They could take this a step further by requiring some indication of actual attendance. This might be as simple as only accepting reviews posted by the app from the theater during or within a half an hour of a showing until the movie has been released on DVD or for streaming. Or perhaps every review could require a photo of a unique ticket stub assuming there is some way to validate them reliably.

The audience score is the only aspect of Rotten Tomatoes I find to be of value. The scores from movie critics just don't seem to have a strong relationship with whether or not I'm going to enjoy a movie. Actually, maybe that's not quite correct. It does sometimes seem like a movie with a very low critics score and a high audience score is usually great. So there may be a strong inverse relationship.

I guess that's another word lost ...

[cascadingstylesheet]

... "troll" means someone trolling for responses by posting something they don't really believe - or, they don't care whether they believe it, they just care that it is inflammatory and will get reactions.

What exactly does that have to do with fake movie reviews? Yes, you could troll with those, I suppose, but the concern is the negative scores, not the trolling per se.

"Troll" has evolved to mean "someone acting bad in my opinion on the internet".

Re:Common

[Anonymous Coward]

for each of you there will be more that aren't like you.

If that were the case Rotten Tomatoes wouldn't have to get rid of user ratings when they don't go their way.

Those hamfistedly pushing "progressive" politics can only maintain their narrative with censorship. THAT is truly being outnumbered.

Dumb

[argStyopa]

They weren't reviews.
They were "do you want to see this film" that a clickbaity blogger parsed as "review bombing of our feminist victory film" and the activist left-wing media has gotten triggered themselves into righteous snow(flake)storm.

That they don't even understand fundamentally what they are angry about is really the ironic icing on the cake.

Re:Common

[Mashiki]

Yeah well, this wasn't "freeze peach" the term used by progressives and authoritarians when someone calls them out on their bullshit. Don't let your stupid hurt you anymore then you just did with that post. There's also no proof of review bombing despite all of the media outlets reporting that's the case. Rather it seems to directly centered around the main actress(Brie Larson ) being a misandrist, and a racist, while engaging in over sexism towards the primary audience. Not the number of progressive fluff pieces that have ranged from "she didn't say anything wrong" to "she doesn't have to apologize for it."

So what's the real thing going on? People are simply saying that "they have no interest in it." Before rottentomateos scrubbed it the main "not interested" group was made up of old accounts greater than 8 years. Feel free to look up the archived snapshots if you want, wayback, archive.co, whatever go have fun. So what's that really mean? RottenTomateos is removing and modifying it because of likely either the studio or the progressive sphere of influence so people can't say they don't want to see it. What's this similar to? When netflix removed the star rating system after people said that Amy Schumer's comedy special was absolute bullshit. Then they remove the downvote option from showing up outside of your own account. So now, netflix only upvoting - which everyone can see.

What does it appear to be that they're doing? Pushing user reviews out, and pushing critic reviews only. I'm sure that works out really well when you're in the league of fart sniffers.

Oh speaking of how well is the moving going to do? They've already revised the opening weekend downward twice, and now are expecting it to not clear $100m on opening weekend. Of course the 'you're a sexist, racist, nazi, misogynist, etc' because you don't want to watch the movie is already pulling it's bloated corpse through various left wing media sites.

Re:Common

[Mashiki]

Oh, poor baby, did your Freeze Peach melt? Waa, f'n waa.

I'm not the one being or acting fucking stupid. But I'll bow before your obvious skill.

When a business decides that some use of their servers is a problem, POW, now you know that they decided it is a problem. Proof? What the fuck are you talking about, Homer? Why would you set their standard of proof? You do know who you are, right? You do know you're not Rotten Tomatoes, right? Right?? So why the fuck do you think you'd set the standard of proof? Because you shouted "freeze peach?" That doesn't confer ownership.

Oh, you mean a business who suddenly decides, that in a case with one movie, and an actor that was being a loud whiny douche waffle, that their best solution for people who said they "don't want to see it" is to turn around and remove people. Yes, that makes a lot of sense...doesn't it. Gee it's like there's this pattern of sites, that suddenly remove user rankings on a product because people say they don't want to see it.

Doing a bang up job on moving from stupid, into retarded. I'd suggest a mental health hospital, they can help special ...cases like you're. But they're pretty much all shut down.

100% false and a coverup

[slashmydots]

Brie Larson - I hate white men. If you're a white male, fuck off and don't see my movie and don't come to any press events (paraphrased)
Everyone - leaves an honest answer to the question "do you want to see this movie"
The Media - OMG TROLLZ!

Re:100% false and a coverup

[slashmydots]

Oh look, an SJW hiding behind an anonymous post. I've NEVER seen that before. Fuck off with your sexist man-hating.

Re:Common

[Mashiki]

The Last Jedi making 1B doesn't mean it's a failure. The failure that people are talking about is the Last Jedi created a genuine trust and core-fan loss of the product.

Considering by your post, you don't understand why Captain Marvel is likely to be a disaster, I'll help you out. After 20 years of them trying to shove her into some type of hero-type body-of-situation, and it failing every time. They then made a movie, where the lead actor proceeded to pull an EA. In EA's case, that was a bold movie...and they seem to be having one hell of a run with commercial failures these days. ME:A, BFV, Anthem(it's already 50% off in some stores). Do you understand now, or would you like me to draw you a picture?

Re:Common

[Mashiki]

Small dicks + raised as toxic macho assholes = army of neckbeards

I'm surprised you didn't put incel, neonazi, and alt-right in there. You could get all the progressive talking points in a row. It obviously couldn't be the lead actor spewing bullshit and attacking the core demographic for the movie. I mean, your and her methods seem to be the same, just like with ghostbuster 2016.

I don't want to see it.

[oogoliegoogolie]

Mainly because of the racist & sexist actress that plays the leading role character, but also because I'm so sick and tired of Hollywood pushing feminist and feminist ideology into every bloody movie being made now and/or proudly proclaiming right now is the first time in cinematic history where women have had strong leading roles when those have existed for decades. In order to push their poor oppressed women narrative they conveniently forget about Laura Croft (Angelina Jolie version), Sarah Conner, Ripley, Princess Leia, Million Dollar Baby, Thelma & Louise, Silkwood, Blair Witch, Basic Instinct, Charlie's Angles, Quick and the Dead, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, x1000. Don't forget Wizard of Oz.

Re:Common

[kaatochacha]

I don't really care what most actors and actresses say.
I do care, however, if my deciding to not see a movie somehow makes me a (fill in the blank) -ist. Which is what we're seeing.
People aren't rating the movie, they're rating their desire to see it.
 

Re:Common

[sexconker]

The fanbase was plenty flexible and accepted a crappy remake of Star Wars (A New Hope) when TFA came out.

The fanbase supported Rogue One / Star Wars Vietnam even though it was full of crappy characters no one cares about in a setting no one cares about with a plot that was entirely pointless.

The fanbase then went in on faith again for TLJ, but in lower numbers (mostly due to fewer repeat viewings).

The fanbase thought the TLJ was so bad that they let Solo burn.

The fanbase may or may not come back for Episode 9.

Disney/Lucasfilm can attack its fanbase and shit out crappy movies that destroy the characters all they want. One day they'll realize that the fans they hate so much are the customers they desperately need.

Honestly I hadn't even noticed a damn thing

[rsilvergun]

she said, and I'm the libbiest lib who ever libbed in lib-town. She is only the second female lead in a Super Hero movie, and I almost don't want to count Wonder Woman since that was kind of a no brainer (still a good movie) whereas Captain Marvel is actually a bit of a risk. What I'm saying is yeah, it's kind of a big deal that the movie got made.