Rotten Tomatoes, the popular film and television review aggregator, announced it will be changing the way that it handles user-generated reviews and rankings in an effort to combat toxicity on the site.
In the near future, Rotten Tomatoes users will not be able to rate or leave comments about movies that haven’t come out yet, the site said ina blog post. Rotten Tomatoes has also removed its “Want to See” score for pre-release films, claiming that many users confused the metric with a film’s “Audience Score” (i.e. the percentage of Rotten Tomatoes users who gave the movie in question a positive ranking). The Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score only appears once a movie is available to the general public.
The changes follow a targeted harassment campaign focused on Marvel and Disney’sCaptain Marvel, which arrives in theaters on March 8. In the weeks leading up toCaptain Marvel‘s debut, users floodedCaptain Marvel‘s Rotten Tomatoes page withangry and sexist commentsdespite not having seen the movie, most likely in an attempt to influenceCaptain Marvel‘s box office performance
This practice, known as “review bombing,” didn’t begin with Captain Marvel, which will be the first Marvel Studios film with a female lead. Paul Feig’s all-womanGhostbustersreboot,Star Wars: Episode VIII — The Last Jedi, which stars Daisy Ridley as a powerful Jedi-in-training, andBlack Panther, which had a mostly black cast, are all previous review-bombing victims.
Rotten Tomatoes didn’t citeCaptain Marvelas the reason behind its user review changes, saying only that “We have seen an uptick in non-constructive input, sometimes bordering on trolling, which we believe is a disservice to our general readership.” Still, given the timing, it seems likely that the inflammatoryCaptain Marvelpre-release comments played a big part in the company’s decision.
Despite the trolls’ best efforts,Captain Marvelwill probably be just fine. The film, which stars Academy Award-winner Brie Larson (Room,Kong: Skull Island) as the titular superhero, is on track for to makemore than $100 millionon its opening weekend, and already hasmore advance ticket salesthan all but two of Marvel’s previous movies.
If audiences react to the character as positively as those reports indicate they will, they won’t have to wait long for a second helping of Carol Danvers — the good Captain is also set to play a large role in April’s big Marvel crossover flick,Avengers: Endgame.
