Captain Marvel’s ratings attacked by trolls, Rotten Tomatoes audience score falls to 40%

The unshakable Marvel machine seems to have run into its biggest roadblock, with a concentrated online campaign to malign Captain Marvel’s audience score underway on Rotten Tomatoes.

In another instance of a situation that is becoming all too common, a major female-led film has been attacked by online trolls. Captain Marvel’s audience score on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, which allows users to post comments and rating ahead of a film’s release, has fallen to 40%.

This score is called ‘want to see’ before a film’s release, and is replaced by an audience score post the film’s release. With more than a week left before Captain Marvel is unveiled, star Brie Larson’s outspoken feminism seems to be the bone of contention.

“Larson has made it clear, men need not attend this movie,” one commenter wrote. “Larson’s sexist and racist comments don’t want me to spend money on this anyway, so here you go, Ms Larson,” wrote another.

Several such comments have since been taken down by Rotten Tomatoes, who according to a Huffington Post report did not respond to queries regarding such trolling.

Captain Marvel’s score tampering isn’t a rare occurrence. Marvel’s Black Panther was similarly attacked, as was Star Wars: The Last Jedi and most infamously, the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot, whose trailer recorded the most dislikes in YouTube history. In India, similar campaigns were allegedly launched against Anubhav Sinha’s Mulk.

Several hateful comments about Captain Marvel, according to HuffPost referenced a recent interview in which Larson had called for a broader pool of journalists writing about films, which she said was ‘overwhelmingly white male.’

She told Marie Claire, “I do not need a 40-year-old white dude to tell me what didn’t work for him about ‘A Wrinkle in Time.’ It wasn’t made for him. I want to know what that film meant to women of colour, to biracial women, to teen women of color, to teens that are biracial. And for the third time, I don’t hate white dudes. These are just facts. These are not my feelings.”

Captain Marvel’s ‘want to see’ score has fallen from over 90% to 40% in a matter of days. The current score is based on over 25,000 ratings. Captain Marvel will be released on March 8 and is tracking for a US opening weekend of more than $100 million. It will directly lead in to Avengers: Endgame. Early reviews have been very positive.

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