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

Posted by msmash on from the how-about-that dept.

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.

23 of 443 comments (clear)

  1. Common by Zorro · · Score: 4, Funny

    Meet Sense.

    1. Re:Common by penandpaper · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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!

    2. Re:Common by Mashiki · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    3. Re:Common by Mashiki · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    4. Re:Common by kaatochacha · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.
       

    5. Re:Common by sexconker · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    6. Re:Common by JoeDuncan · · Score: 3, Funny

      Do you understand now, or would you like me to draw you a picture?

      I don't care one way or the other, but now I do want you to draw me a picture, please.

  2. maybe require proof of attendance initially? by RhettLivingston · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:"Trolls". by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    For such big strong alpha males you guys sure do shit your diapers a lot.

  4. Re:quiet, blessed quiet by Nidi62 · · Score: 4, Funny

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

    I don't know what that world would be like, but I don't like it.

    --
    The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
  5. I guess that's another word lost ... by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... "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".

  6. What reviews? by dasunt · · Score: 4, Informative

    When I checked Rotten Tomatoes last week, I saw no bad reviews.

    I did see that about 29% of people planned to see the movie. That isn't a review or a rating.

  7. If a movie is worth trolling it’s worth watc by xack · · Score: 3, Funny

    To see what the fuss is about. Trolling backfires in this regard.

  8. Top 100 Best Movies of All Time by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Funny

    According to RT, these are the top 100 movies OF ALL TIME (their words):

    https://www.rottentomatoes.com...

    Who can take this site seriously?

    Rank Rating Title No. of Reviews
    1. 97% Black Panther (2018) 456
    2. 99% Lady Bird (2017) 355
    3. 98% The Wizard of Oz (1939) 111
    4. 100% Citizen Kane (1941) 80
    5. 96% BlacKkKlansman (2018) 386

    1. Re: Top 100 Best Movies of All Time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  9. Great and what about the real problem by DrXym · · Score: 3, Funny
    It's not the troll reviews which are the main problem, it is the shill reviews.

    For example, whenever a blockbuster is close to release you can expect stories on RT - audience "reactions" from a preview screening, or suspicious embargo busting reviews invariable positive. How are are these allowed to appear? Who greenlights the story in the first place? Why are reviews listed before an embargo? Who hand selects which tweets to highlight?

    My suspicion is RT is paid to generate positive feedback, "buzz" for a movie, and so prior to the embargo they fill the vaccum with bullshit and hype. And while troll reviews need to be fixed too, the user section is really is off on one side. I doubt it influences movie goers even a tiny fraction of what appears on the front page.

  10. Next up, require proof of seeing by mysidia · · Score: 3, Funny

      How about requiring people who want to review the movie to snapshot their ticket stub with an app on their phone?
        Or if you got the DVD, then take a picture of the box.

  11. There was not a *prefilm* review... by aepervius · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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.

    --
    C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
    visit randi.org
  12. Re:troll = dissatisfied movie-goer by RedK · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    "Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
    Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
  13. Dumb by argStyopa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    -Styopa
  14. Fake news and censorship, it is all so tiresome by Rasatsu · · Score: 5, Informative

    What they did was censor stats about how many people clicked that they wanted to see the movie, not review.

    And it was because once again because white men were told we are evil and not wanted, so a lot clicked on the not-wanting-to-watch option.

    Was /. always this moronic or is it just nostalgic memories clouding my view?

  15. 100% false and a coverup by slashmydots · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

  16. I don't want to see it. by oogoliegoogolie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.