It’s difficult to think of much that’s more pathetic than a campaign to tank a movie because it stars a woman. Yet that’s the fate that’s befallen Captain Marvel, which saw its user reviews and “want to see” rating bombarded by chuds who are surely living fulfilled, happy and emotionally complete lives when they’re not brigading an upcoming superhero film.
Earlier this week, Rotten Tomatoes overhauled their system, which everyone had assumed was a reaction to these trolls. Now, though, Fandango President Paul Yanover, who owns Rotten Tomatoes, explained in an interview with CNET that the changes weren’t to specifically defend the movie.
 “(The changes) are not simply a reaction to, ‘Oh, gee, there’s some noise created around (certain movies).”
He admitted that the aim of the changes was to do some “noise reduction” aimed at protecting films starring women or minorities (or whatever’s driving shut-ins crazy this week) from being review-bombed. At least one of the changes makes a definite sense. Namely, preventing users from commenting on a movie’s quality before it comes out.
Black Panther was famously targeted prior to its release, with online campaigns working out ways to try and turn audiences off it – which proved fruitless as soon as everyone saw the pic and realized it was awesome. And with reports of Russian bot farms already beginning to gear up to criticize Star Wars: Episode IX, it seems that these campaigns aren’t going away anytime soon, so I guess sites like Rotten Tomatoes can only minimize their impact on the movies and the rest of us can just learn to ignore them as best we can.
Perhaps the best advice I can think of on the matter comes from the theme song to the estimable Mystery Science Theatre 3000: “Just repeat to yourself “It’s just a [movie], I should really just relax.”
