Rotten Tomatoes Finally Bans Fan Reviews for Unreleased Films to Stop Abuse of the System

In the ongoing attempt to bring down Captain Marvel, trolls had begun to spam the film’s Rotten Tomatoes page with negative reviews to bring down the audience score for the film, despite that the movie isn’t out yet. The film dropped to Marvel’s lowest audience rating within days, despite positive early reviews from critics who had actually seen the film. The bad word of mouth hasn’t seemed to impact pre-sales, but it still isn’t good.

Now, in part due to this incident, Rotten Tomatoes has banned pre-release audience scores. Rotten Tomatoes executive Ara Nalbandian said in a statement via IndieWire, “Over the past few years, Rotten Tomatoes has been evolving into a robust movie and TV show recommendations platform that celebrates the views of professional critics and fans alike, and encourages discussion and debate. We continue to invest in our product to deliver useful and relevant resources for fans and are in development on new tools to help fans express their opinions and connect with others.”

Captain Marvel isn’t named, but it has to be a reason behind the decision. The backlash to the film from those who are really mad that a woman, who’s covered up and not male gaze-centered, is leading a Marvel film, and that the actress playing her advocates for inclusion, is proof of a very flawed culture surrounding film and inclusion. Entertainment Weekly reported that, similarly, Star Wars Episode IX received an influx of negative reviews, despite not even having a title or trailer yet.

Audience reactions are important. No one is saying that audience members shouldn’t be able to post reviews, but this is a smart move on Rotten Tomatoes’ part. It helps de-platform the trolls who are only interested in dragging films down for bad reasons and allows for the films to stand on their own free from controversy (or at least as free as they can be).

There is still the worry of whether or not opening day will instead become the target of a concentrated attack on films to try to drag down their score, but hopefully that will be balanced by those who actually see the film praising it for being as awesome as the critics say. While audience reviews before a film came out should never really have been a thing, I’m glad that things are starting to change and that these trolls as being de-platformed.

It’s important that films like Captain Marvel get to be experienced without sexist backlash dragging them down. This is one way to combat the trolls, and I’m glad that Rotten Tomatoes is taking this step to stop them and give future films a chance to exist without the backlash being brought to light in such a way.

(via IndieWire, image: Marvel)

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