‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ Rotten Tomatoes User Reviews Tanked By 4Chan Campaign?

“Star Wars: The Last Jedi” has been a box office success, racking up more than $220 million during its opening weekend, and is a hit with critics but its audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is barely floating above 50 percent as the result of what appears to be an organized review bombing campaign.

Of the more than 116,000 audience reviews “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” has received so far, just 55 percent have been positive. Many of the negative reviews take issue for what the viewers perceive to be too political and pushing a “social justice warrior” agenda.

It’s not often that a film was well received by critics as “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” struggles to please fans. While the franchise has a giant and rabid fan base, it appears the audience review section has been invaded by the only group more dedicated than Star Wars diehards: trolls.

A Facebook group called “Down With Disney's Treatment of Franchises and its Fanboys” took credit for at least some of the negative scores. In a post, the group’s creator claimed to be responsible for tanking the “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” review score by using bots and automated accounts to “review bomb,” or leave massive amounts of negative reviews to drag down the overall score of the film.

“Thanks to friends of mine who taught me a thing or two about Bot Accounts, I used them to create this audience score through Facebook accounts created that subsequently logged into Rotten Tomatoes who rigged this score and still keep it dropping,” the Facebook group creator wrote in a post .

The group’s creator threatened to do the same sort of review bombing to “Avengers: Infinity War” when the film is released as part of an apparent ongoing protest of Disney’s ownership over a number of beloved franchises.

Members of 4chan, an online image board site known for organized trolling efforts, have also been implicated as possible participants in the campaign to tank “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” review scores.

Members of 4chan have successfully carried out similar types of campaigns and is notorious for rigging polls and other online votes. The site is responsible for leading efforts to get a research ship named Boaty McBoatface, sending musical artist Pitbull to perform at a Walmart in Alaska and pushing 4chan creator Christopher “moot” Poole to the top of Time magazine’s list of most influential people.

Despite the site’s history, many users on 4chan have denied any involvement in an organized campaign against “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” Given that posters on 4chan often aren’t shy about taking credit for their efforts, it seems as though there isn’t an organized effort coming from the site.

Still, many of the complaints made by reviewers who bother to leave a full review of the film echo some of the sentiments that have been shared by 4chan in the past. The reviewers lament the film’s “social justice warrior” or “SJW” overtures—moments that the viewers deem to be too “politically correct.”

One reviewer took issue with the one of the women characters have purple hair—dyed hair is, for whatever reason, associated with being an “SJW” in some circles—and complained that a “ugly fat asian chick” was included in the film solely for “political correctness.”

“NEVER FOGET [sic]: All the other mainstream 'reviews' are paid hacks who lie to you! FAKE NEWS,” the reviewer wrote .

Others complained that the film was “communist propaganda” and injected too much story that reflected the current political climate and was viewed as commentary that the angry reviewers believe they shouldn’t have to be exposed to.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the low review scores have been left by users who just recently created their account. In most cases, the negative review of “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” is the only review that the user has bothered to post.

Review bombing is a common tactic online to express frustration. Other services including gaming platform Steam and restaurant review platform Yelp have dealt with similar campaigns in the past. Valve, the makers or Steam, recently added charts to help users identify review bombing efforts and make sure those campaigns don't cloud a person's opinion. In the past, Yelp has deleted reviews that it believes to be part of an organized effort to harm a business.

A spokesperson for Rotten Tomatoes told International Business Times that the company is experiencing a high volume of fan activity around “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” and is “closely monitoring all user review activity to make sure it’s valid.”