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

Re: Common

[Anonymous Coward]

By the time the real reviews start flooding in, the trolls can no longer keep up. At least not with a big movie like Captain Marvel. You see it all the time. Once the movie hits, the review aggregate starts climbing. But this will address the potential negative impact for opening weekend so Rotten doesn't inadvertently screw its own metrics.

There was not a *prefilm* review...

[aepervius]

Last time I went on that page to see what the fuss was about, there was no review. In fact the only thing which was there was a percentage of people which announced whether they would want to see the film or not, and that was what was down very low, and a MISNAMED tab "audience review" which tells whether people want to see it in future or not. Case in point i jsut replaced the not interrested / will view picture with words : :

"(not interrested)
Never cared for Captain Marvel. Where's the Black Widow movie?

(not interrested)
Nate J February 25, 2019 looks kind of boring honestly

(want to see it)
Chris E February 25, 2019 Not a top tier character, but interested in the big picture "

. Where are those invisible review bomb which everybody speak of ? Those are not review but hyped/not hyped feedback from potential cinema goer.

Re:troll = dissatisfied movie-goer

[RedK]

You never could post reviews on RT before release. No one "troll bombed" the reviews on Captain Marvel. You were spun a fake story, and now the "fix" is in, based on those lies.

The actual section that was "bombed" (aka, people have an opinion that's different from our manufactured consent) was the "Intend to see" section. And you see, the pesky thing about an "Intend to see" section is that you actually need to fill that out before you see the movie.

Slashdot is merely continuing the push the fake RT narrative of a "review bomb" by trolls, to mask Brie Larson's poorly chosen attempt at shoving her "activism" into the promotion of the movie.

Re: Top 100 Best Movies of All Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting a negative review of Black Panther was proof of racism. At one point RT was systematically deleting negative reviews.

So, naturally, only positive ones are left.

Re:Common

[penandpaper]

Critics at least try to look at the movie for what it is

LOL. No they don't. They are the most obvious shills on the internet and the old business model of independent critics is coming to an end. Critics now have to compete with regular viewers which is apparently a problem. Can't have people disagree with critics/narrative or else they be racist sexist trolls!

The Orville Season 1 hated by critics. What changed in season 2? How can you go from creatively, morally, and ethically bankrupt to it's all characters stories in the space adventure return and that's a good thing. When it's the same show/formula nothing major different? I am all for people changing their mind but there are plenty of these kind of examples and that kind of 180 is a little ridiculous. Media producers are buying up critic sites so in many cases there is a conflict of interest to say something bad.

Online trolls do not explain why box office numbers are down . It doesn't explain Oscar viewership at the 2nd lowest record. And it certainly doesn't explain the garbage that is being produced and hailed as the 2nd coming of sliced bread. Do not disagree lest ye be troll!

Re:Common

[AmiMoJo]

The Orville is a really interesting example. Personally I rated season one higher than the critics, but then I have a higher tolerance for Star Trek style cheeze. The stories were all re-hashes of common tropes, but enjoyable, and it was occasionally funny.

But then season 2 has been pretty bad for the most part. Some decent episodes but the first two in particular were terrible. Yet other fans rated them very highly, despite them being full of the stuff they were complaining about with Star Trek.

I think some fans are just pumping it as a kind of protest at Discovery, which is giving us a second excellent season right now.

Actors need to grow up

[bongey]

Brie Larson , Feb 12 says doesn't want Captain Marvel press tour to be "to be overwhelmingly white male". Feb 5-10 , 91% , Feb 10- Feb 12 90%, 13-14 89%, 15 88%, Feb 16,87% Feb 17 86%, Feb 18 85% Feb 19 82% . You cannot just be a complete ass and expect people not to react. https://web.archive.org/web/*/...