Post by Morreion on Jul 27, 2012 10:47:21 GMT -5
Critic (And Commenters) Banned From Rotten Tomatoes Over 'The Dark Knight Rises' (Criticwire)
In light of the death threats and generally vile invective thrown at Marshall Fine and later Christy Lemire over their negative reviews of "The Dark Knight Rises," film critic Eric D. Snider decided to perform a little experiment. On Monday, he posted a fake negative review of "TDKR" on Rotten Tomatoes, linked with a deliberately provocative excerpt: "'The Dark Knight Rises' is easily the most disappointing Batman film so far -- and I'm including Schumacher's 'Batman & Robin' in that statement." If you clicked over to the full article, you were taken to a brief commentary about the lunacy of getting angry about a movie review, no matter how excited you are about its subject.
Creating the Comment Monsters (Just a Tad)
If we’re going to call out the insane fans who spew terrible language, misogyny and even death threats at critics, we should also look back at ourselves and see how we supported them all this time. And not just supported them. We practically created them. We play into that awful hype machine and treat a movie like The Dark Knight Rises as though it’s the most important event in modern history, and then we act surprised when the event arrives and a select few people actually behave like all that was true. It shouldn’t surprise us that the monsters we create sometimes get loose and turn on us.
This whole incident reminds me of the bitter MMO forum battles that go on with fanboys and haters, where gamers take themselves way too seriously. Maybe blockbuster movies are similar to MMOs- they take a while to make, there's tons of hype surrounding them, and they have passionate fans. Maybe this is an internet thing. Then again, maybe this is a cultural thing...
In light of the death threats and generally vile invective thrown at Marshall Fine and later Christy Lemire over their negative reviews of "The Dark Knight Rises," film critic Eric D. Snider decided to perform a little experiment. On Monday, he posted a fake negative review of "TDKR" on Rotten Tomatoes, linked with a deliberately provocative excerpt: "'The Dark Knight Rises' is easily the most disappointing Batman film so far -- and I'm including Schumacher's 'Batman & Robin' in that statement." If you clicked over to the full article, you were taken to a brief commentary about the lunacy of getting angry about a movie review, no matter how excited you are about its subject.
Creating the Comment Monsters (Just a Tad)
If we’re going to call out the insane fans who spew terrible language, misogyny and even death threats at critics, we should also look back at ourselves and see how we supported them all this time. And not just supported them. We practically created them. We play into that awful hype machine and treat a movie like The Dark Knight Rises as though it’s the most important event in modern history, and then we act surprised when the event arrives and a select few people actually behave like all that was true. It shouldn’t surprise us that the monsters we create sometimes get loose and turn on us.
This whole incident reminds me of the bitter MMO forum battles that go on with fanboys and haters, where gamers take themselves way too seriously. Maybe blockbuster movies are similar to MMOs- they take a while to make, there's tons of hype surrounding them, and they have passionate fans. Maybe this is an internet thing. Then again, maybe this is a cultural thing...
