While Batman is busy defending Gotham City from Bane and other miscreants, some fans of that comic-book crime fighter have proved too vocal in their attempts to defend the coming Batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises” from negative criticism.
The review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes said that it had suspended user comments on reviews of the film, directed by Christopher Nolan, after readers reacted angrily to two negative write-ups and made threatening and derogatory remarks about the critics who wrote them.
On Monday, Rotten Tomatoes posted and linked to a negative review of “The Dark Knight Rises” by Marshall Fine at his Web site hollywoodandfine.com. That generated a wave of irate reactions from “Dark Knight” fans – many of whom have not yet seen the movie, which opens on Friday – and an overwhelming influx of traffic to Mr. Fine’s site.
Later that day a second negative review of the movie, written by Christy Lemire of The Associated Press, was posted at Rotten Tomatoes. Matt Atchity, editor in chief of Rotten Tomatoes, said he and his colleagues spent several hours policing the post and removing comments with misogynistic or threatening remarks about Ms. Lemire and announced that comments would be suspended.
“Just take a deep breath, step away from the computer, and maybe go for a walk,” Mr. Atchity wrote in an open letter to Rotten Tomatoes readers. “Have a smoke if you need one. There are plenty of other things to get angry about, like war, famine, poverty and crime. But not movie reviews.”
In a telephone interview on Tuesday, Mr. Atchity said that Rotten Tomatoes would probably restore commenting on Thursday or Friday, once a wider range of reviews had been posted and more readers had been able to watch “The Dark Knight Rises” for themselves.
But as he looked ahead to the release of fantasy films like “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” Peter Jackson’s version of the Tolkien book that is also likely to provoke strong reactions (and reactions to those reactions), Mr. Atchity said his site was contemplating a new system under which readers could no longer comment anonymously on reviews.
Or, Mr. Atchity said, the site could remove the user comment function altogether.
“It’s within the realm of possibility,” he added. “I’m not sure that’s page views we really want.”