Rotten Tomatoes Overhauls Audience Rating System After Trolls Attack ‘Captain Marvel’ To Bomb Numbers

The world is extremely influential, and people put a lot of weight in reviews of items, movies or anything they may partake in. Sometimes, though, people take advantage of those platforms and do whatever they can to manipulate the system and steer people the way they want. Now, Rotten Tomatoes has overhauled their rating system after trolls did whatever they could to get negative reviews and bomb numbers for the upcoming Captain Marvel.

It’s a practice known as “review bombing,” as reported by MCU Cosmic, and it’s happened before on other films, but nothing like Captain Marvel. Trolls would go onto Rotten Tomatoes and completely destroy the “Want to See” rating, which is generated strictly by fans.

Critics and reviewers make up the score represented on the “Tomatometer.” Numbers for the movie had been very low prior to its release on March 8, and it had been purposely driven down by trolls who were apparently dead set against the Marvel movie and the female lead represented by Brie Larson.

The changes have already been put in place and fans no longer rate a movie as “Not Interested,” but only “Want to See.” The upcoming movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) isn’t the main reason for the changes to Rotten Tomatoes, though, as so-called fans have done it with other movies, too.

Rotten Tomatoes Disables Negative Pre-Release User Reviews for #CaptainMarvel https://t.co/mUD01PbrdQ pic.twitter.com/evTRjtuF80

— ManaByte Stands With ?? (@ManaByte) February 26, 2019

Some trolls have purposely attacked the pre-release ratings on Rotten Tomatoes for films such as Ghostbusters in 2016 and Star Wars Episode XI. The latest film in the Star Wars franchise won’t even hit theaters until December of this year, yet it had received plenty of negative reviews.

Here are some of the other changes that have been made to the Rotten Tomatoes site with the hope of halting the actions of review bombers.

• Fans must be registered to leave comments or rate a movie as “Want to See.”
• Comments cannot be left by fans until after a movie has been released.
• The “Want to See” score is no longer a percentage but is a “raw number” that will be updated in real time. The “Audience Score” is a percentage.

The toxic nature of the old way of doing things on Rotten Tomatoes was extremely damaging to some movies. Fans being able to leave reviews and score a movie before they even had a chance to see it was not only influential but extremely manipulative and misleading.

Captain Marvel is likely not going to be overly affected by the views of trolls on the Internet and neither will Star Wars Episode IX later this year. Still, there are people who rely heavily on Rotten Tomatoes and the opinions given forth, and people did whatever they could to sway opinions the way they wanted. These new changes are long overdue and will help everyone in the long run.