Captain Marvel and The Review Score War...

By Rohon Nag | 1.9k |

Rotten tomatoes Deleting negative reviews and adding copy pasted reviews to boost the score?

Fake Bot Audience Reviews on Google to make it look better reviewed than it really is!!!

Can any of this be actually true or a reality manipulation by Thanos to bring down Captain Marvel!



I am a huge fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or the MCU as it is called. Right from the first Iron Man I have followed this series through its ups and downs. But till now no film has seen such divided opinions or controversy as Captain Marvel has in the last few weeks.

Before you think this is another hit piece written to defame said movie, read on. Events were provoked from both sides but in the end it is Disney the corporation who is publicly manipulating figures, lying and pretending that the film is critically and publically liked!

Before we start, I am aware that this film had made a lot of money at Box office. The audience must be loving it? I personally gave it a positive and VERY generous 7 out of 10 in my review. But I believe the reason this film is doing SO well is because of Infinity War… but that’s a separate discussion for a later time…

So… Just what is going on and how is Disney doing all of this? Find out below…

(Although I saw all of this happen more or less Live on various media and YouTube outlets, don’t take my word for it, Sources and screenshots are linked at relevant sections.)

Part 1: The controversial statements.

This film’s lead actress ‘Brie Larson’ might just be one of the most unlikable persons in show-business. Don’t just go for my word. Just see any single interview of hers and form your own opinion. She is sort of Meh in the film itself with lots of stiff and bad acting despite having won an Oscar (for acting in ‘Room’) before the age of 30!
This actress made statement such as:
Then during Captain Marvel’s press tour she mentioned how she wants to be MORE inclusive by giving women an opportunity of interviewing her for the most part.
Source : irishtimes.com

All of these statements led to some people online not liking her and started to protest by Clicking the ‘Not interested’ button on rotten tomatoes.

Which brings us to the next part.

Part 2: The Rotten Tomatoes Saga.

Rotten Tomatoes is a review aggregator site, which many people in the west go to check out how a film is rated and what the audience thinks of the film apart from the professional critics.

They made not one but three attempts for this film to manipulate its image online.

Just a few weeks ago this site had a feature (just like Bookmyshow also has) showing a percentage of people who want to go see this film. It was a ‘Want to See’ Meter.

People bombed this with ‘Not Interested’ and the ‘Want to see’ went down all the way to 27% No huge MCU film has a ‘Want to see’ that low. Usually it’s in the high 90s.

(The Screenshot is from when it was at 33% but it illustrates the point none the less).

To fight this, Rotten Tomatoes changed their entire site and removed the ‘Not interested’ button. Now you can go to a films page before release and find only a ‘Want to See’. Those who are ‘Not Interested’ can’t click anything to show their lack of enthusiasm for any film going ahead.

Most of the regular media reported on this by saying that Trolls were review bombing the film… if any one pointed out that these were NOT reviews, just a “Interested or NOT interested’ ratio… they got called trolls themselves.

These days presenting facts is trolling.

Once the movie was released, the site again got a LOT of negative reviews from the audience. The audience score went down into the 30s… a first for an MCU film. Then rotten tomatoes suddenly experienced a glitch and more than 50000 to 60000 reviews disappeared overnight bringing the score upto to 39% or so. I saw this happen more or less Live. The page loaded with the Low rating and then few hours later I refreshed the page and yep… there were SO many reviews deleted. Again, don’t have to believe me, the source is linked right below!

50,000 Captain Marvel reviews were deleted due to a “bug.”

Source : https://boundingintocomics.com/2019/03/09/rotten-tomatoes-explains-why-over-50000-captain-marvel-reviews-were-deleted/

Next up, now that deleting reviews wasn’t enough, the film was still only at 39%, they needed to get a higher rating. They did this by copy pasting reviews via bots. Too hard to believe? See this video…

I personally have discovered that to HIDE this copy pasting, Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t even let you go past the 51st page of Audience reviews! Try it for yourself…

this

Vs

this

If you load the 51st page (at the time of writing this article) the page loads. However, the 52nd or 53rd page doesn’t load. This is hiding all the Positive copy paste reviews pre March 9th!

Part 3: Google Bot Reviews

Google Reviews is also having a spate of Copy Pasted Reviews and it’s just clearly visible to anyone who searches for this film on google.com

What this does is influence the audience meter on google, which is one of the most obvious ways by which people decide to see a film or not.

I myself do it… searching a film’s name if the audience score is really low like 2 or 3 out of 5 I skip the film!

To artificially inflate the Google audience score, Disney or one of its hired companies is using bots and I don’t know how ethical it really is…

The film got very mediocre reviews from professional media outlets as well as general audiences, but it’s still doing VERY well at the Box-office. But will it be able to sustain its big opening weekend?

That remains to be seen.

For the time being, Disney is trying every dirty trick in the book ensure their Endgame is not spoilt… (wink wink)

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