http://www.examiner.com/article/rotten-tomatoes-restricts-dark-knight-rises-comments-after-death-threats
Movie fans can sometimes take their beloved franchises and characters a little too seriously. Right now, with possibly the most highly anticipated movie of the year getting ready to hit theatres, fanboys all around the world are ready to defend Nolan's new "Batman" flick, even before they have a chance to see it. The movie website, RottenTomatoes.com , has temporarily restricted user comments on the upcoming "The Dark Knight Rises" after some threatening messages in response to negative comments about the movie.
Early in the week, when reviews started coming in for the final installment of Christopher Nolan's "Dark Knight trilogy", some were considered less than favorable-- or at least not as positive as some Batman fanboys thought or hoped they should be. Once the negative reviews started dragging the score of the film down, some fans went into hysterics and started posting death threats to any critics who would dare drag down the third and final Batman movie.
Rotten Tomatoes is known for rating a movie as either "Fresh" or "Rotten" based on positive and negative reviews. The name comes from the traditional act of throwing rotten tomatoes or vegetables at a poor stage performance. The company is owned by Flixster , which coincidentally is owned by Warner Bros.
The site’s editor-in-chief, Matt Atchity, has said the site is considering a move to a Facebook commenting system, which might cut down on the glut of anonymous posts. This is the first time RottenTomatoes.com has ever had to suspend user comments but uses should be able to start posting comments again by Friday, when the film opens nationwide.
“The job of policing the comments became more than my staff could handle for that film, so we stopped the comments altogether,” Atchity on the decision to temporarily ban comments. “It just got to be too much hate based on reactions to reviews of movies that people hadn’t even seen.”
The reality of the situation is that no movie is perfect and everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Either way, "TDKR" is going to make a ton of cash during its opening weekend and most of the audience is going to be satisfied with what Nolan and company came up with for the final act. Whatever your opinion is, just remember, you don't have to agree with someone else, the same way they don't have to agree with you.
For the record, "The Dark Knight Rises" currently sits at 87% fresh, which is not bad at all for the third act of a superhero trilogy.
