Sorry Trolls, Rotten Tomatoes Has Banned Reviews Of Movies That Haven’t Been Released Yet

Really, in a perfect world, Rotten Tomatoes wouldn’t have the cultural heft that it does.

After all, film criticism shouldn’t just tell you whether a film is ‘good’ or ‘bad’, nominal terms that are useful for marketing companies and literally nobody else. It should expand art for you, whether you actually like the film in question or not — it should work like a short story, or a film itself; hooking you with a narrative, altering your point of view.

But it’s not really worth moaning about — whether we like it or not, sites that aggregate critical notices are the future, at least as far as massive multi-national companies are concerned.

anyone making a concerted effort to lower CAPTAIN MARVEL's RT score before the movie is even out is, in fact, the world's biggest fucking loser https://t.co/7tdluPd5ck

— priscilla page (@BBW_BFF) February 26, 2019

Trolls know this, and for that reason, they have a habit of tanking the Rotten Tomatoes scores of films that they feel represent an attack on their manhood, sexuality or character. See: organised, herd-driven troll attacks on The Last Jedi, a film about personal freedom and the hollowness of herd-driven social causes (irony!), and Captain Marvel, a forthcoming Marvel superhero flick that has committed the apparently unforgivable sin of starring a woman.

But, thankfully, Rotten Tomatoes are moving to make such troll campaigns a thing of the past, announcing that they will no longer allow audience members to submit an audience score before a film is released.

Which makes a lotta sense! After all, it’s not clear why audiences were ever allowed to submit scores ahead of time — big budget movies tend to only be seen by critics and select test audiences before being released, and both parties are usually signed to secrecy anyway.

A moment of silence for the fully diaped and cathetered warriors who now have to work overtime on release day to serve percentile justice. https://t.co/rRJWWTTduw

— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) February 26, 2019

Of course, the measure doesn’t stop trolls from trying to tank the Rotten Tomatoes score after a film has been released. But at the very least, it’ll stop the first weekend gross being affected by the coordinated attacks of a bunch of internet junkies who think that the gender of a superpowered person from space in any way counts as a slur against their character.