Rotten Tomatoes Deletes Captain Marvel User Reviews...

[AGXStarseed]

(Not written by me. Also, this will be the last thread I post about Captain Marvel for a while as I've been following it but now I want to break away, as I feel I'm becoming obsessed by reading everything about it).


The controversy surrounding Captain Marvel and Rotten Tomatoes continues as apparently the review aggregate site run by a former Disney employee has deleted upwards of 54,000 user reviews, which affects the Audience Score.

Users on social media have pointed out that earlier saw the Captain Marvel Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score have upward of 58K votes, but now a majority of those votes and reviews have been deleted by Rotten Tomatoes. A recent check of the site reveals there are now around 12k votes and reviews listed by fans.

@DDayCobra @RottenTomatoes seems to be deleting reviews. User count used to be at 58,353, but now it is at 58,327.

— ---- -- P3NNYW0RTH -- -- (@P3NNY_W0RTH) March 8, 2019

Rotten Tomatoes recently delisted users' ability to vote whether or not they "Want to See" a movie, citing confusion with its "Audience Score," but now apparently that doesn't seem to really be the case, as the site seems to be attempting to censor and game the Audience Score by restarting the user process of reviews and voting. What is interesting is that the Captain Marvel Audience Score really hasn't changed much as it stands at 38%, an MCU low, so Rotten Tomatoes' attempts at - whatever they are doing - have been futile. I'm guessing the next step Rotten Tomatoes will take is to suspend user voting and reviews citing "trolls."


Update: Rotten Tomatoes claims it was a bug and that user ratings for pre-release were factored into the post-release Audience Score for Captain Marvel. However, this contradicts their previous statement and reasoning that the "Want to See" score is different than the "Audience Score," which only gets released after a movie is out.

While some fans may be quick to point to the present high box office for Captain Marvel as evidence the movie is liked, and that the Rotten Tomatoes reviews are fake, a high box office doesn't necessary mean the movie will perform better at the box office in the long run or will be liked by the critics or fans, with obvious cases being movies such as Han Solo, Suicide Squad, Batman vs. Superman, and I would even throw in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which is responsible in part for Han Solo performing so poorly in addition to Disney having stopped making any new Star Wars movies following Episode IX (none are in production). Even if Captain Marvel has a huge opening weekend box office, it remains to be seen if the flick will have legs. Again movies like Batman vs Superman and Man of Steel started strong out of the gate but faded away in subsequent weeks. It will be interesting to see Captain Marvel's box office in the long run in addition to its foreign gross. Aquaman was okay here in the U.S. but was huge overseas, with the same applying to Venom. Will something similar happen for Captain Marvel?


Source: Now Rotten Tomatoes Deletes Captain Marvel User Reviews

 

[Mia]

Review-bombing campaigns, which are run by a small (if loud) sliver of online fandom, don’t factor much into the larger cultural conversation around a movie. These efforts don’t even always affect a film’s box-office performance. In 2017, Star Wars: The Last Jedi was pilloried by unhappy viewers who drove the movie’s Rotten Tomatoes audience score to 44 percent; it was still the highest-grossing film of the year by more than $100 million. Certainly, there was legitimate debate among fans involving The Last Jedi’s characters and story lines. But the audience score was often cited in news articles as evidence of the film’s massive unpopularity—despite the fact that the metric is easily manipulated and not necessarily reflective of how most viewers felt about a movie.

The new Rotten Tomatoes changes, of course, apply to unreleased movies. In addition to restricting users’ ability to leave ratings, the site will also disable comment functions before a film’s release date. “Unfortunately, we have seen an uptick in non-constructive input, sometimes bordering on trolling, which we believe is a disservice to our general readership,” Rotten Tomatoes said in a statement on the site. “Don’t worry though, fans will still get to have their say: Once a movie is released, audiences can leave a user rating and comments as they always have.” The site has also said that Captain Marvel wasn’t the explicit reason for the change, which was reportedly part of a long-term strategy.

Captain Marvel wasn’t the only film under attack ahead of the Rotten Tomatoes change. J. J. Abrams’s Star Wars: Episode IX, which hasn’t announced its official title yet and won’t be out until December, was being barraged with negative comments on the site, perhaps owing to lingering resentment over the last Star Wars film. But the ire toward Captain Marvel appears especially heated. YouTube videos with hundreds of thousands of views have called the Rotten Tomatoes decision a “disgusting” act of “censorship” aimed at “protecting” the new film. Meanwhile, Larson has been the subject of all kinds of absurd complaints in tweets and YouTube comments, such as that she didn’t smile enough in the film’s trailer. “It’s just how it goes,” Larson told Yahoo. “This is part of why art that depicts the female experience is so important.”

The Rotten Tomatoes change makes perfect sense, but it likely won’t quash review-bombing campaigns, which can simply move to other online platforms such as YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter—at least until a movie is released. Then, site users, including those who haven’t seen a film, will be able to rate and comment as usual. After all, the site doesn’t require proof that users actually saw the movie in question, though perhaps it should. It could easily ask people to “check in” online when seeing a movie, or upload a ticket stub afterward as proof of viewing before commenting. That would confer more legitimacy on the site’s overall audience rating, making it similar to the surveys conducted by CinemaScore. (Rotten Tomatoes has said it plans to eventually roll out “verified reviews from ticket purchasers.”)

The site has made several strides in the past year to improve its rating experience; in 2018, it attempted to broaden and diversify its list of approved critics, who were largely white and male. But if it sincerely wants to convey with greater accuracy how most viewers feel about a film, more thorough changes are needed. Until then, the audience score will be open to exploitation by a narrow, outraged corner of the internet.

'Captain Marvel' and Rotten Tomatoes' New Review Policy - The Atlantic

 

[BrokenBoy]

Damn SJW's.

 

[AGXStarseed]

Review-bombing campaigns, which are run by a small (if loud) sliver of online fandom, don’t factor much into the larger cultural conversation around a movie. These efforts don’t even always affect a film’s box-office performance. In 2017, Star Wars: The Last Jedi was pilloried by unhappy viewers who drove the movie’s Rotten Tomatoes audience score to 44 percent; it was still the highest-grossing film of the year by more than $100 million. Certainly, there was legitimate debate among fans involving The Last Jedi’s characters and story lines. But the audience score was often cited in news articles as evidence of the film’s massive unpopularity—despite the fact that the metric is easily manipulated and not necessarily reflective of how most viewers felt about a movie.

The new Rotten Tomatoes changes, of course, apply to unreleased movies. In addition to restricting users’ ability to leave ratings, the site will also disable comment functions before a film’s release date. “Unfortunately, we have seen an uptick in non-constructive input, sometimes bordering on trolling, which we believe is a disservice to our general readership,” Rotten Tomatoes said in a statement on the site. “Don’t worry though, fans will still get to have their say: Once a movie is released, audiences can leave a user rating and comments as they always have.” The site has also said that Captain Marvel wasn’t the explicit reason for the change, which was reportedly part of a long-term strategy.

Captain Marvel wasn’t the only film under attack ahead of the Rotten Tomatoes change. J. J. Abrams’s Star Wars: Episode IX, which hasn’t announced its official title yet and won’t be out until December, was being barraged with negative comments on the site, perhaps owing to lingering resentment over the last Star Wars film. But the ire toward Captain Marvel appears especially heated. YouTube videos with hundreds of thousands of views have called the Rotten Tomatoes decision a “disgusting” act of “censorship” aimed at “protecting” the new film. Meanwhile, Larson has been the subject of all kinds of absurd complaints in tweets and YouTube comments, such as that she didn’t smile enough in the film’s trailer. “It’s just how it goes,” Larson told Yahoo. “This is part of why art that depicts the female experience is so important.”

The Rotten Tomatoes change makes perfect sense, but it likely won’t quash review-bombing campaigns, which can simply move to other online platforms such as YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter—at least until a movie is released. Then, site users, including those who haven’t seen a film, will be able to rate and comment as usual. After all, the site doesn’t require proof that users actually saw the movie in question, though perhaps it should. It could easily ask people to “check in” online when seeing a movie, or upload a ticket stub afterward as proof of viewing before commenting. That would confer more legitimacy on the site’s overall audience rating, making it similar to the surveys conducted by CinemaScore. (Rotten Tomatoes has said it plans to eventually roll out “verified reviews from ticket purchasers.”)

The site has made several strides in the past year to improve its rating experience; in 2018, it attempted to broaden and diversify its list of approved critics, who were largely white and male. But if it sincerely wants to convey with greater accuracy how most viewers feel about a film, more thorough changes are needed. Until then, the audience score will be open to exploitation by a narrow, outraged corner of the internet.

'Captain Marvel' and Rotten Tomatoes' New Review Policy - The Atlantic

(Part 1)
Something that bugs me, though, is that the media keep referring to the "want to see/not interested" meter as "reviews". As people across the internet have pointed out, these are not "reviews" - they are "indicators"; a way for people to say whether or not you want to see the movie and (if you want) offer your reasons as to why.
Looking at some of the reasons for Captain Marvel, some have merit and some not.

• The trailers don't look interesting: I can agree with this, as the trailers got my attention but didn't make me feel overly excited for the movie - which for me has happened with the trailers for some other MCU films. Also, who thought it was a good idea to show that clip of Captain Marvel punching an old lady with no context that the old lady was a Skrull (which they fixed with the second trailer)?
• Brie Larson's performance doesn't look good and she doesn't smile: I can see what people said here from looking at the trailers, but again I've seen other trailers where the acting looks a bit off/wooden and then the movies turn out to be good or at the very least decent (an example been Star Wars: Episode 3 - Revenge of the Sith), so I wasn't willing to write it off. Also, I think the smiling bit is just silly - especially when you look at the posters and a lot of the MCU's trailers and most times the characters aren't smiling.
  
• People have issues with Brie: I can understand this; we all have actors/actresses that we just don't like and a lot of the criticism stems from a speech Brie made at the Crystal and Lucy Awards in June 2018, where she stated she wanted more women and people of colour to become professional film reviewers. She declared three times during her speech that she "didn't hate white dudes" while - in a statement that has fueled most of the controversy, although whether it's justified or just a case of misinterpretation will depend on who you ask - stated that she "didn't care what 40 year old white dudes thought of A Wrinkle In Time" because "it wasn't made for them". Additionally, when Stan Lee died, Brie received a backlash from fans when she posted this (now deleted) picture on her Instagram (although additionally, Gwyneth Paltrow also deleted hers).
• Issues with the film's "Feminist" agenda: Without getting too political here as this isn't the place for it, it was confirmed that Captain Marvel would be a feminist movie (especially with the "a her...o" bit in the trailers) - which put off a lot of people who go to see movies for a bit of fantasy/sci-fi escapism. Combined with those who are angry with Brie for her comments, a lot of people simply didn't want to see the film because of it.
• Having Captain Marvel be the new face of the MCU after Endgame seems out of left field: I can agree with this one; a lot of people have taken issue with the fact that Captain Marvel is to become the new face of the MCU after Endgame, as the majority of the MCU characters have proven their worth and won us over while Captain Marvel just seems to appear out of nowhere and all of a sudden is to be the new main star. If you read the two threads relating to Captain Marvel that I've posted in the politics section, Marvel apparently has two endings planned for whether Captain Marvel succeeds or flops, while the news that she will become the new face of the MCU has also apparently got other MCU actors angry with the decision.

 

[AGXStarseed]

(Part 2)
Depending on how Captain Marvel does (which currently doesn't look good since it's in the 30% margin with audiences and with RT deleting reviews), it may depend on what Marvel do with her in the long run.
I've heard people say that they either want Brie Larson to be replaced as the character (similar to how the actors for Hulk and War Machine were changed) or that - for when Marvel bring the X-Men into the MCU (following Disney's buyout of Fox) - for the story involving Captain Marvel (then Ms. Marvel) been put into a coma and her powers taken by the X-men's Rogue to be put on screen.
For those of you who don't know who Rogue is, here's her origin story in the X-Men animated series:

I also find it odd that the media keeps claiming that people who don't want to see Captain Marvel are women-haters/misogynists (similar to what they did for Ghostbusters 2016), yet DC's Wonder Woman in 2017 was well received by both critics and general audiences (with a critic score of 93% - 90% if you look only at the top critics - and an audience score of 88%).
Furthermore in the MCU, Marvel fans and other people have been asking for Scarlett Johansson's character Black Widow (and whom many would prefer to be the face of the MCU after Endgame) to have a solo/origin movie for the better part of a decade since the MCU started - especially considering she would easily make a great leader for the Avengers as she's surrounded by people with great power and yet holds her own around them with no powers of her own; just her equipment, her training and her intelligence. I personally would love to see her get her own movie.

 

[Tom]

This is why I like movies where the monsters eat people's brains.

 

[Fino]

This is like if someone hacked into their school's system and changed their grade from an F to a higher F.

 

[AGXStarseed]

This is like if someone hacked into their school's system and changed their grade from an F to a higher F.

Reminds me a bit of that 1983 film, WarGames, with the main character doing the same to change his grades and the grades of his fellow classmate.

 

[Peter Morrison]

Ratings and the manipulation of such are not a new game - just more intense. It's easy to grasp that the expected dollar value stemming from manipulated ratings can override the cost of any penalties, if penalties actually exist. This is the cyber world, so loads of excuses can be concocted to justify alterations in the final tally. Trolls and other haters can appear from any source, as can supporter/promoters and other influencer groups. People are sheep, and the online ratings systems capitalize on that. Better ratings = more ticket sales, usually. Teams of people are paid well to ensure the successful promotion of any film, so they examine all the ways to effectively do so. Stuffing the ballot box is an old tactic. So is voting more than once.

 

[AGXStarseed]

Ratings and the manipulation of such are not a new game - just more intense. It's easy to grasp that the expected dollar value stemming from manipulated ratings can override the cost of any penalties, if penalties actually exist. This is the cyber world, so loads of excuses can be concocted to justify alterations in the final tally. Trolls and other haters can appear from any source, as can supporter/promoters and other influencer groups. People are sheep, and the online ratings systems capitalize on that. Better ratings = more ticket sales, usually. Teams of people are paid well to ensure the successful promotion of any film, so they examine all the ways to effectively do so. Stuffing the ballot box is an old tactic. So is voting more than once.

Very true.

I also want to share this video which I think is interesting to note on the subject:
(Mild spoilers ahead for Captain Marvel)

(I'm fully aware that some people aren't fond of Dave Cullen and why, but I honestly felt that this video was a good one to share).

 

[Peter Morrison]

I also want to share this video which I think is interesting to note on the subject:

Well done video - very broad, very real, and extremely fair. It covers all the ills and motivation affecting the forces with opinions and objectives, and there are many. I still believe that the public has a right to voice an opinion, but the general public is not always the best judge, even though films are made for the public, so their opinions still matter. Who else is there? Professional critics have always had to encompass the tastes of the audience and explain how and why a film had merit. Quality critics had a following because they had integrity. The public's opinions are more about personal tastes rather than an educated overview. It's not much different from the Yelp reviewer mentality. A perpetual complainer will find fault everywhere because they had to wait 2 minutes before being seated, and the guy who eats bologna sandwiches for lunch every day thinks the veal piccata at a chain restaurant is the best food ever.

 

[Judge]

<SIGH> A sign of the times we live in. Where any kind of public poll on the Internet is exposed to legitimate public opinion, as well as deliberate lobbying of a special interest to impose a specific outcome. With more often than not such polls reflecting a little of both. Worse even when you also factor in malicious trolling, done not so much to influence an equation, but just to cause malice to unknown parties.

With no way to really validate or separate a genuine opinion from pure manipulation. Making it increasingly more difficult to be a conscientious consumer.

The sort of question that still leaves me wondering who really "won" season 8 of "American Idol", let alone some of the other seasons' "vote".

American Idol controversies - Wikipedia

 

[AGXStarseed]

<SIGH> A sign of the times we live in. Where any kind of public poll on the Internet is exposed to legitimate public opinion, as well as deliberate lobbying of a special interest to impose a specific outcome. With more often than not such polls reflecting a little of both. Worse even when you also factor in malicious trolling, done not so much to influence an equation, but just to cause malice to unknown parties.

With no way to really validate or separate a genuine opinion from pure manipulation. Making it increasingly more difficult to be a conscientious consumer.

The sort of question that still leaves me wondering who really "won" season 8 of "American Idol", let alone some of the other seasons' "vote".

American Idol controversies - Wikipedia

Very true. It's not helped by the fact that people who get early access to movies have admitted to "soft-balling" their reviews of movies they don't like because, if they write a bad review about a movie they've been given early access to, they won't be invited to any more early access screenings.
As such, they'll deliberately hype up the movie as much as they can even if they don't like/hate it.
SyFy Wire's Dany Roth Admits to Creating Positive Reviews in Order to Maintain Access While Discussing Captain Marvel's Rotten Tomatoes Controversy - Bounding Into Comics

I also recommend that you see "Pompous, Privileged and Predictable - A Captain Marvel Review and Analysis" by The Fan Advocacy Network on YouTube as it also covers some great points.
(I can't post it here because the guy doing it drops a bad word, which the forums here won't allow).

Spoiler: Captain Marvel Review by Timcast (Spoiler Alert)

 

[Adora]

It’s ok to like or not like a movie,just because it’s a Marvel movie doesn’t mean it should be immune from negative reviews,they never did this with dc movies that got negative reviews so why can’t a Marvel movie be allowed negative reviews?,I always known that critics can be biased at times but deleting audience reviews is taking it to a whole new level.

 

[Iamnotarabot]

This movie is terrible and I am so sad it has so much succes, this is just like black panther , a bad movie with a lots of issues on every level (except the performance of the actors realy they do their job, but the story is horrible)

And on the other hands you have a beautiful masterpiece that is Alita battle angel and its succes may not allow it to have a sequel i'm so sad.

 

[Adora]

This movie is terrible and I am so sad it has so much succes, this is just like black panther , a bad movie with a lots of issues on every level (except the performance of the actors realy they do their job, but the story is horrible)

And on the other hands you have a beautiful masterpiece that is Alita battle angel and its succes may not allow it to have a sequel i'm so sad.

Star Wars is similar with TLJ,while it did well most people didn’t like it but the movie after it which was Solo showed the impact it really had on the franchise and I can see Marvel very soon going down the same road as Star Wars,maybe not as fast and besides the box office there is a division already happening within the fan base.

 

[Iamnotarabot]

Star Wars is similar with TLJ,while it did well most people didn’t like it but the movie after it which was Solo showed the impact it really had on the franchise and I can see Marvel very soon going down the same road as Star Wars,maybe not as fast and besides the box office there is a division already happening within the fan base.

Cleary I am also concerned it would hurt the future of the MCU, I mean, we had a good run with it so why not, I guess end game will still be a huge succes but maybe it will affect its score a litte, and then it may go down...after end game the main characters and story arc that I care about will be gone anyway, so they are in a transition phase , trying to get a new audience, I guess.

What realy bothers me is that this movie almost ruins the MCU and may ruin the conclusion of end game, I hope it won't, and after that if they go full on SJW writting then...what ever , I enjoyed it so far and the future movies won't be made for me anymore...

Maybe they are right and the next generation like this things, It may be easier to do that in the MCU because many viewers are younger and every years you have a new potential audience of 12 to 16YO?

While in the case of SW they did a bad call because the franchise was so old it could only bring back old fans and their kids, not teenagers not already familiar with SW...I dont know...

What I am sure is that the movie is terrible, I have closely looked at it, and nothing works in the scenario of captain marvel, it's clearly one of their worst movie.

 

[AGXStarseed]

Cleary I am also concerned it would hurt the future of the MCU, I mean, we had a good run with it so why not, I guess end game will still be a huge succes but maybe it will affect its score a litte, and then it may go down...after end game the main characters and story arc that I care about will be gone anyway, so they are in a transition phase , trying to get a new audience, I guess.

What realy bothers me is that this movie almost ruins the MCU and may ruin the conclusion of end game, I hope it won't, and after that if they go full on SJW writting then...what ever , I enjoyed it so far and the future movies won't be made for me anymore...

Maybe they are right and the next generation like this things, It may be easier to do that in the MCU because many viewers are younger and every years you have a new potential audience of 12 to 16YO?

While in the case of SW they did a bad call because the franchise was so old it could only bring back old fans and their kids, not teenagers not already familiar with SW...I dont know...

What I am sure is that the movie is terrible, I have closely looked at it, and nothing works in the scenario of captain marvel, it's clearly one of their worst movie.

Very true.

Another additional point to Rotten Tomatoes is that the current Audience Score is 53% - however, people online have now pointed out that Rotten Tomatoes (who already got a lot of flack for removing over 50,000 reviews of the film, the majority of them negative) is achieving this by combining the scores from the reviews with the "want to see" scores - which are supposed to be removed after a movie is released.
BIG Daddio John B on Twitter

Right now, I'm giving more credit to Metacritic than Rotten Tomatoes: Captain Marvel

 

[AGXStarseed]

Another two updates:

1. Following it's strong opening weekend, the film's sales numbers on Monday plummeted by nearly 72% - which is worse than when the sales numbers plummeted for Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice.

2. In the new trailer for Endgame, we see Captain Marvel - however, apparently people on Twitter are kicking off because Carol Danvers is wearing makeup...seriously...

 

[Raisedbywolves]

I'm a woman who believes in equal rights and opportunities.....

That being said, I cringe whenever I watch a movie with a feminist subplot. Or when I suspect a movie is just 150 minutes of SJW propaganda/ feel sorry for me fluff.

I want to see a good, fun movie and not be told how to think.

Also, I feel sorry for men, especially with all the Gillette nonsense.

Please don't hate!!