Rotten Tomatoes changes audience score system to combat 'Captain Marvel' trolls

Rotten Tomatoes has made changes to its audience score system to prevent online trolls from tanking ‘Want to See’ ratings before release.

Recently, Captain Marvel has been targeted by negative audience comments despite the film not being released until 8 March.

The reviews aggregator site released a statement to confirm that pre-release comments and “intent to view” scores will no longer be allowed before a film’s release.

“We are disabling the comment function prior to a movie’s release date,” says a post on the Rotten Tomatoes website. “Unfortunately, we have seen an uptick in non-constructive input, sometimes bordering on trolling, which we believe is a disservice to our general readership.

“We have decided that turning off this feature, for now, is the best course of action. 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 post added, “We’re doing it to more accurately and authentically represent the voice of fans while protecting our data and public forums from bad actors.”

Rotten Tomatoes will also be remodelling other areas of its website.

“You will notice we are making some layout changes to the site,” the statement read. “Through our research department, we have learned that our users would prefer a cleaner, less cluttered, presentation of the Tomatometer and Audience Score.”

Captain Marvel hinges on a pivotal female hero (played by Brie Larson) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – not to mention one that’s going to be key to Avengers: Endgame – but it has been subject to misogynist trolling in the same vein as that seen for movies like the all-female Ghostbusters reboot.

People have targeted the movie over feminist statements made by Larson who has recently pushed for more representation in the world of film criticism and entertainment journalism.

Though some are fighting back, the majority of the “ratings” come with tediously transparent remarks about the film’s so-called ‘agenda’, which has clearly upset more than a few chaps who are finding their masculinity in jeopardy.

Black Panther and Star Wars: The Last Jedi have also been targeted in the past.

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