Last year, there was yet another dumb controversy involving Rotten Tomatoes. Warner Bros owns a minority stake in Fandango, and Fandango is RT’s parent company. Do you see how that works? By any metric of corporate synergy, that means Rotten Tomatoes would work a little bit harder to be “nice” to Warner Bros films. The problem is that RT uses a somewhat simple metric for their scores. Plus Warner Bros’ biggest franchises – the DC Comic movies – are utter crap lately. So instead of rejiggering the metric or, you know, making better movies, WB got Rotten Tomatoes to embargo the sh-tty RT score of Justice League, even though the movie was widely panned. People could still read the sh-tty reviews, but the RT score just wasn’t released until the last second.
Since fanboys are dumb, they’ve started blaming Rotten Tomatoes for the sh-tty scores of their beloved sh-tty movies. Because here in the decline of an empire, people really have enough time to care about such picayune things, I swear. DC Comic fanboys think there’s a RT conspiracy against THEIR films, and that conspiracy involves Marvel and Disney. So they’ve decided to fight back by being super-racist about Black Panther.
Rotten Tomatoes has denounced a Facebook group attempting to flood its site with poor audience scores for Disney and Marvel Studios’ upcoming superhero pic Black Panther. The film, opening in theaters Feb. 16, is a bold move by Marvel and Disney in featuring a virtually all-black cast. The movie is generating keen interest, with one major tracking service predicting a $130 million-plus domestic debut. Other box-office observers believe that number could even climb to $150 million.
“We at Rotten Tomatoes are proud to have become a platform for passionate fans to debate and discuss entertainment and we take that responsibility seriously. While we respect our fans’ diverse opinions, we do not condone hate speech. Our team of security, network and social experts continue to closely monitor our platforms and any users who engage in such activities will be blocked from our site and their comments removed as quickly as possible,” the company said in a statement issued Thursday.
The Facebook group goes by the name “Down with Disney’s Treatment of Franchises and its Fanboys.” In recent days, the group created the event, “Give Black Panther a Rotten Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes,” that drew 3,700 participants. In December, the same group claimed it waged a campaign to flood Rotten Tomatoes with poor reviews of Disney and Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The group makes unsubstantiated claims that Disney somehow manipulated the press into creating negative buzz for Warner Bros.’ DC movies, and says it is waging the Black Panther campaign in response.
Not long after Rotten Tomatoes issued its statement, the group’s Facebook page was no longer available and appeared to have been deactivated. Facebook could not immediately be reached for comment. After the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in summer 2017, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg vowed to curb hate speech on his social media platform.
AGAIN, if Rotten Tomatoes is bending over backwards to appease any company, it’s Warner Bros NOT Disney/Marvel. Warner Bros is basically RT’s corporate partner, not Disney. While I agree that the critical love that Marvel films get is sometimes mystifying, I feel like it’s more of a trend than anything else. The trend is towards Marvel films being pretty well-done. The trend is towards WB f–king up their most valuable franchise. Anyway, I’m sure there will be a million stories about people being racist a–holes around Black Panther’s release. Stay strong, peeps.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
i sit at work and comment online all day but honestly – WHO HAS TIME TO WAGE A CAMPAIGN AGAINST A MOVIE NO ONE IS FORCING YOU TO SEE? it boggles the mind.
Seriously!
Exactly. And who’s that invested in how other people score a movie that they like?
They did the same thing with Star Wars, the Last Jedi. This because they were mad because women and minorities were too dominant in it.
Someone even cut the Star Wars movie down so that there were almost no women in it or only when they seemed to struggle or praise/agree with a man. It apparently left a very short movie that didn’t make much sense and was mocked by Mark Hamill and John Boyega.
I don’t think these people are fanboys, but very casual fans who only care about these movies because white men are not the (only) leads. I doubt they normally think about these franchises, but the idea that not everything is about them in media makes them hysterical.
Which makes me realize how mad everyone else should be for being afterthoughts or worse in the majority of movies for decades.
I remember when some Republicans wanted to shut down a screening of a Michael Moore doc and Moore said something like, “If Republicans don’t like a movie, then NOBODY should see it. If liberals don’t like a movie, *shrug* we just don’t go see it.”
That is exactly what I said when I saw this story circulating – who has TIME FOR THIS NONSENSE? Go live your life, man.
I didn’t see justice league after that RT stunt, which I saw as the epitome of childish, and neither did any of my family members.
Make better movies, and the reviews will reflect it. It’s pretty simple.
I used to really hate the notion of the comic book fan that was just sitting in their mother’s basement with no job and no friends. I just found it rude and dismissive. However, there must be some DC fanboys who are those type of individuals. Who has the time for this? Who cares that much? They’re always whining about some mistreatment or flooding some comment section/website. You don’t have anything else to worry about? There must be some overlap between these DC fanboys and Trump supporters. They continue to think it’s everyone else’s bias instead of just realizing that their fave could put the work in and that effort would go a long way.
Yeah, I mean. The ‘average’ nerd isn’t that bad. But there’s a certain level of fanboy nerd that definitely falls into that description. I work in IT – we have some incredibly well rounded, social guys who love comics and tech. But then we also have a good handful of really creepy dudes who just have a stink on for anything different from their heterosexual, white guy lives.
I heard a podcast recently that asked whether we would have had the Trump-enabling grievance culture of 2016 without the Gamergate of 2014. I thought it was an interesting point.
I think it was a variety of factors although Gamergate could’ve been an impetus for a certain segment of the population. In my opinion, it was a general sense of progressivism and change starting from Obama’s election in 2008 that spooked the idiots which eventually culminated in backlash and them winning (for now hopefully) in 2016.
There’s a massive overlap between those groups. That’s the real reason why the “angry nerd in mom’s basement” is so dangerous – it pretends these people are isolated from society to some extent. They’re not. They’re in your streets, in your workplace, in your Congress. They are angry, dangerous white men* lashing out at the world because they don’t feel it could ever give them enough.
*Don’t get me wrong – white women are in there too, but the online groups are very much predominantly masculine.
They say DC fans when they just mean lame bitter white boys. The same ilk is in the Marvel fandom whining about Wakanda being isolationist when they had nothing to say about Asgard being imperialistic and genocidal. Or calling Shuri a Mary Sue while slobbering all over Ironman and Peter Parker. Racism in fandom is one of the overwhelming reasons I don’t participate in it. It’s a very large toxic part of it.
I agree completely. The most frustrating part is that for all intents and purposes comics are made up fantasies. There’s nothing dictating that it must 100% reflect modern day life, and yet that’s the reason many will use for opposing inclusion. But having a dorky kid get bitten by a radioactive spider, and turn into a snarky badass is totally feasible lol okay
I swear to god if fifty shades gets a higher score, I am going to be pissed.
Looking forward to black Panther. Taking my brother to see it for his birthday
They mad but we stay winning.
Black excellence yall
YAASSSSSS👍👍👍
They are not DC fans or comic books fans they are white supremacists using this excuse for their illogical hate agenda.
ITA.
I mean they may be white supremacists who also happen to be DC fans but it’s not a DC conspiracy. They’re using DC as a cover to excuse their hate.
No? I mean, I’m not saying some aren’t racist fans, but it’s ALSO DC fanboys. Their specific purpose, if you read their little “manifesto”, is to target the unfair critical bias of Disney/Marvel movies vs. the WB/DC movies.
Anyone’s who taken a gander at DC’s movies subreddit has seen this before. That little section of DC fans are probably the same ones that tried to petition for RT’s demise after BvS bombed with critics.
I can’t quite understand from this threat if there are people who are saying racist things on RT or are those people blaming RT for somehow (how exactly?) favouring the Marvel movies? Because if this is the former that it has nothing to do with DC fans but rather racist idiots are using the release of Black Panther to further their racist cause. If the later, then probably it doesn’t have much to do with race. Those crazed DC fans are somehow bitter that their universe is doing worse than Marvel. Which is stupid. The fact that you enjoy a movie does not change based on whether other people agree with you. It aesthetic taste not a democracy. Even more stupid considering Marvel is just making better quality movies, withouth that tortured art of Zack Snyder (who needs that in the comics?), the wooden actors like the ones portraing Superman and Batman and their constant failure to act like they actually do enjoy making movies. But this whole situation puts DC in a very interesting possition. If they do not want to be associated with racist aholes they sort of need to say something, inderectly supporting the Marvel movie.
Just because they say that they are DC fans, doesn’t mean that they are.
Alt right boys have pretended to be all kinds of things (feminists, minorities) in order to make certain groups look bad.
It’s a big coincidence if DC Fanboys suddenly start doing this with the first non-white male lead in a Marvel movie, after all the many movies with a white lead where they could have started this.
@ Flan:
These are definitely DC lunatics. They’ve been doing this since the first Avengers, which was considered a risk at the time, mopped the floor with The Dark Knight Rises which was supposed to be the big finale for Nolan’s Batman’s trilogy.
P.S.: When TDKR was released, their reaction to the first negative review for the film was so vicious, RT’s editor in chief had to shut down all comments boards.
@Flan – The fact they specifically call out sabotaging Marvel projects (not Disney projects) tells me it’s DC fans. The entire event description is here:
https://mobile.twitter.com/MarvelousRealm/status/958860397884465152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbr.com%2Fdceu-fans-black-panther-rt-score-spoil-fans%2F
The reason why they’re doing this now is stated in that link – it was due to the success of The Last Jedi’s audience score being downvoted. Now that they’ve seen that it work, they’re hoping to do the same with BP and other Marvel stuff.
@Eve – Yep, and the incident regarding The Godfather vs. TDK – The Godfather had the highest IMDB rating until DC fans decided TDK deserved that title, so they brigaded The Godfather’s IMDB rating with downvotes so it would fall below TDK. Some DC fanboys have inferiority complexes. SMH
@ Lady Blackfish:
Oh, my word! I had forgotten that (The Godfather vs. TDK)…
I remember posting a comment on a thread at IMDb with a “Really?” tone and some poster told me to go “weep”.
For a few weeks TDK was at the number 1 spot. Seriously.
@Lady Blackfish, the Star Wars thing was in a large part about women and minorities having too much agency. Since they refer to that as the big example, I am not convinced that this is a relatively ‘innocent’ Marvel vs DC thing.
As you can see in the comments in the link you posted, quite a few people seem to think that this is a racist thing and I see several suspecting the alt right as well.
Does it matter? Black Panther is going to blow box office records to smithereens.
#WakandaForever
I told my husband about this the other day. He was just like “But WHY. WHY do they care? Just don’t go see the movie if they don’t like it”.
He can’t understand why they’d put MORE effort in and bring more attention to it when they could literally just not support it and let the cards fall as they may. But ultimately, that would rely on these kinds of dudes being logical. They’re not. They’re dim, angry, and fragile and they can’t handle any form of change. And for some twisted reason they think others becoming more well represented somehow takes away from them. As if other people having similar opportunities (and still not nearly as many or soon enough) somehow takes away from them. They’re finally realizing that maybe their life of utter mediocrity isn’t going to keep bringing them out on top – and it terrifies them.
And I say good – they should be terrified. And I am personally pretty excited for this movie.
@ Erinn:
Beautifully stated.
They’re gonna be BIG mad when those box office numbers come in and the reviews embargo gets lifted. So many people I know have helped sponsor kids to go see it. I’ve sponsored 4. lol, this movie means more for folks than some silly DC/Marvel fan war.
How do you sponsor kids to see the movie? I suppose I could google but if you have an answer…? I have about $40 in rewards credit at AMC that I can use and match for people to see this movie. It matters.
This is how I did it.
https://www.atlantawakanda.org
That’s amazing!
Finally, I’m excited about a Marvel movie again. I mean, I loved it in the beginning, until they started putting out movies with white men main characters (or at least the leaders of the assemble movies) in quick succession, without any variation.
And half the people on that promotion photo are women. Must be some kind of record for Marvel.
If I read the quote correctly they aren’t accusing RT of mischief, they are accusing the legitimate critics of being influenced (bought?) by Disney, which indirectly influences the RT score as they dutifully aggregate the press’s scores. And so they are trying to bias the audience score to offset what they perceive as a biased professional score.
NOT that I believe this argument. Just pointing out that they don’t SEEM to be accusing RT of bias, but rather that RT are dutifully parroting the consequences of alleged bias.
I think there are a lot of spiteful, angry people around (majority are white).
They transfer their prejudice in any form, racism, mysoginy and LGBTphobia, to their keyboards and the above crap happens.
Very sad people all around and with too much time on their hands (like the one who made a video out of Star Wars TLJ without the female characters!!).
Personally I will be the first in line to see this movie. And did the racist fanboys.
True story:I have a quasi-uncle that is adamant that the Marvel Black Panther movie is some HW scheme to force racial inclusion down our throat. He’s also adamant that even though the film will “get” positive reviews from critics… it will be “liberal HW” fudging those reviews.. heaven forbid it should win any awards. I try not to be too concerned – I mean, at the end of the day, he’s a racist white guy. Still, it makes me sad because he’s not alone in his thinking.
Next time, tell your uncle that movies featuring exclusively white casts is a scheme to force racial exclusion down the throats of a world where whites are the minority. Watch the fun begin.
@ Tanya:
LOL!
Obviously, now that Trump’s made America great again, his acolytes have time to freak out about Rotten Tomatoes. *rolleyes*
Also, I love the word “picayune” and don’t use it nearly enough.
Longtime movie fan, but even a LONGER comic geek and I’m actually part of an online nerd group specifically geared toward ethnic diversity and minorities. They’ve been buzzing about the Black Panther for years now and also they’ve been prepped for racist backlash so for some bizarre reason the rotten tomatoes crap isn’t bugging me (or most of them) as much as it did back when they had meltdowns over Idris Elba. The movie will still do well despite these sad human beings and basically the world will move on while they rot in their parent’s basements
I am so excited for this movie. The trailer looked amazing and the cast?
They tried it with The Last Jedi too, they were mad because Star Wars now has female central protagonists (I guess it took three movies for it to dawn on them lol, previously they just settled for parroting that rapist Max Landis’s claims that Rey was a ‘Mary Sue’), which led to a bot-lowered RT audience score and lots of media taking the bait and legitimising it for a bit.
People have wised up this time, though. RT certainly sounds like they aren’t having it.
Also, it’s hilarious to me that all of this just keeps people talking about the movies these neckbeards hate so much. Black Panther is getting more buzz than ever and TLJ is basically going down as having made racists mad by portraying diverse characters, so they win in the end.
Meanwhile, does anyone even remember Batman v Superman or Suicide Squad a year later? Or remember Justice League even two months later?
@ Teacakes:
I have HBO until July. The movies you mentioned are ALWAYS on (with the exception of JL).
You see…I have a huge crush on Joel Kinnaman and yet I can’t muster up the courage to watch Suicide Squad. In fact, when I’m browsing the channels, stop at one randomly and realize that’s one of these movies on, I switch to another channel — ANY channel — faster than a bullet.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
Didn’t a bunch of broflakes try to sabotage Wonder Woman as well, because OMG A FEMALE LEAD?!?!
Seriously, the alt-right should try to tank the box office more often; it seems to result in GREAT ticket sales, and we get to mock them even more. And you just KNOW some of them are scouring the net looking at comments like ours – they’ve already shown us they literally have nothing better to do with their time.
I never even check RT. I can’t wait to take my son to see the movie!
Chadwick Boseman is an outstanding actor and waaaaaay hot. I’d watch him watch paint dry for two hours before I’ll pay for anything Ben Affleck is in ever again, let alone Batman. The whole cast of Black Panther is excellent. Threatened much?
I cannot with these people. So I won’t talk about them.
I saw the Black Panther cast photos in South Korea and my heart skipped a beat, so much beauty, what a great looking cast and so much talent!
I’ve been checking the reviews and even critics who dislike superhero movies, who have dissed this movie based on the premise and trailers are loving it.
I cannot wait for February 16th!