The ailing beast known as American film criticism took another blow this week when Rotten Tomatoes was forced to pull a review of “The Dark Knight Rises” on Monday because of the hate mail it engendered.
At Marshall Fine’s request, the aggregate website temporarily took down his mostly negative review of the Batman film because the volume of vitriolic responses – including anonymous death threats and warnings that his personal website would be destroyed – crashed his server. The review was quickly restored to Rotten Tomatoes and can be read there. (I refer you, however, to this site’s analysis of the film by J. Hoberman.)
When further reviews by Christy Lemire of the Associated Press and Nick Pinkerton of the Village Voice criticized Christopher Nolan’s movie and were met with more nastiness, Rotten Tomatoes suspended reader comments. It’s a sad day when Gotham City fanboys (or anyone else) can exert enough power to derail public discourse in a democracy. Fine’s commentary is more reasoned than one might think given the rabid reaction to it, but as a functioning reviewer he had every right to disparage this or any other film in the strongest possible terms.
“As expected, we saw a mountain of comments come in about his review, and we’re policing them to make sure they’re in line with out TOS,” wrote Matt Atchity, the editor in chief of Rotten Tomatoes. “Broadly speaking, threats and hate speech will get your commenting privileges revoked.
“But Marshall has the right to not like the movie, and people have the right to express their disagreement with him (although if you haven’t seen the movie, your arguments may be on shaky ground). And we have the right to pull your comment down and ban you if we think you’re acting inappropriately.”
Atchity further noted that Rotten Tomatoes would probably move to a Facebook-based commenting system that doesn’t allow anonymity.
He is concerned there could be a similar backlash to negative reviews of “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” when it opens in December.
“There are a lot of options on the table,” he told the Associated Press. “We may do away with comments completely or get to a place where comments are only activated after a movie opens.”
Rotten Tomatoes had never previously suspended user comments despite there having been previous occasions when they went beyond the pale. As the Comics Journal’s Abhay Khosla (via Tucker Stone) reported in May, Box Office Magazine’s Amy Nicholas met with viciously misogynistic abuse when she awarded “The Avengers” only three out of five stars. Khosla predicted, albeit hyperbolically, that the first negative review of “The Dark Knight Rises” would be greeted by murder.
The issue is particularly embarrassing for Rotten Tomatoes because the site is owned by Warner Bros. (though Flixster.com). Warner is the co-owner and distributor of the Batman franchise. In a piece headed: “Warner Bros. Civil War? Its Rotten Tomatoes Suspends Comments On Its “Dark Knight Rises After Movie Reviewers Threatened,” Deadline’s Nikki Finke observed, “Now the studio finds itself with the weird and rare dilemma of protecting movie reviewers who hated the movie from furious Rotten Tomatoes readers.”
There is no indication, however, that Warners put pressure on Rotten Tomatoes to censor the lopsided dialectical argument involving the naysaying reviewers and its audience. As of 12:40 pm today, “The Dark Knight Rises,” which opens Friday, has an 86 percent approval rating – 74 positive reviews, 12 negative – on the Tomatometer. Of 346,941 users, 93 per cent say they want to see the film.
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