Rotten Tomatoes Makes Changes After ‘Captain Marvel’ And ‘Star Wars’ Trolls Attack

Rotten Tomatoes is making it more difficult for trolls to bombard movies with bad reviews before they hit theaters. The review aggregating website is removing the Want To See rating and taking down the comment function pre-release date after the recent attacks on upcoming releases like “Captain Marvel” and “Star Wars: Episode IX.”

“As of February 25, we will no longer show the ‘Want to See’ percentage score for a movie during its pre-release period. Why you might ask? We’ve found that the ‘Want to See’ percentage score is often times confused with the ‘Audience Score’ percentage number,” the website announced along with a few other updates.

The Audience Score is from viewers who have already seen the movie, and it’s determined after the movie’s release. Want to See is the score from pre-release movie buzz. In addition to now having no score from audiences before films hit theaters, Rotten Tomatoes is also disabling user comments before the official release date.

“We are disabling the comment function prior to a movie’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,” the update revealed.

Trolls are known to flood the website with bad reviews when a big movie is coming up that they don’t want to succeed. “Captain Marvel” haters, many of whom take issue with star Brie Larson’s calls for more diversity in filmmaking and film criticism, brought the Want to See rating down to 52%, according to ComicBook.com. The comments are still up, but there are not anticipation ratings shown.

“Star Wars: Episode IX” faced the same problem this week. Ten months ahead of its release, fans were already trying to bring down the Want to See rating and posting negative comments, ScreenRant reports.

This issue isn’t new. “Black Panther” faced similar problems on Rotten Tomatoes, but it didn’t seem to affect the movie’s success. It made $1.3 billion at the box office and won three Oscars. It likely won’t affect “Captain Marvel,” either. The legitimate early reviews for the flick have been overwhelmingly positive.

“Captain Marvel” hits theaters March 8.