Dark Knight Rises ‘critic’ is banned from Rotten Tomatoes

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This article titled “Dark Knight Rises ‘critic’ is banned from Rotten Tomatoes” was written by Ben Child, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 17th July 2012 16.25 UTC

It must have seemed like a surefire method of attracting new visitors to your website: take the year’s most heavily anticipated movie, and post a negative review linked to the popular aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. The only problem for US blogger Eric D Snider of the Snide Remarks site is that he had not seen The Dark Knight Rises, and was therefore in no position to comment on it.

Rotten Tomatoes yesterday took the rare step of banning Snider from the list of critics whose reviews contribute to its aggregator scores for forthcoming movies. His crime has since been referred to elsewhere in the blogosphere as a form of “countertrolling” because the critic knew full well his verdict would cause consternation among vocal fans of film-maker Christopher Nolan who use the site. Rotten Tomatoes was later forced to temporarily disable comments on all The Dark Knight Rises reviews due to fan ire – though not as a direct result of Snider’s verdict.

Snider’s felony was compounded by the fact that he used his Rotten Tomatoes critic’s login to suggest his review was being hosted on the website film.com, whereas it was actually linked to his own site.

“In our opinion, by knowingly posting a link that isn’t a review (and he hadn’t seen the movie), Snider has abused our trust, and therefore, his reviews will no longer apply to the Tomatometer,” wrote Rotten Tomatoes editor-in-chief Matt Atchity in a blogpost explaining the decision to ban the critic. “If a critic abuses our trust by linking to something that’s not a review, we will take action up to and including removing them from the Tomatometer. If a critic doesn’t take their reputation seriously, then neither will we.”

Snider had initially posted: “The Dark Knight Rises is easily the most disappointing Batman film so far – and I’m including [Joel] Schumacher’s Batman and Robin in that statement. Nolan has finally lost his touch.”

When readers clicked the link to view the full review, they were informed: “Just kidding! I haven’t seen The Dark Knight Rises yet. It’s probably very good! I just wanted to post a negative quote on Rotten Tomatoes and see how many idiots would type angry words at me without actually clicking the link to read the review. ‘You ruined this movie’s RT score!’ is a dumb complaint that is only made by dumb people.”

Snider later removed the offending review, but not before Rotten Tomatoes and other sites had screengrabbed it as evidence. He has since tweeted: “I apologise to those I offended who like to respond angrily to reviews they’ve only read one sentence of, of movies they haven’t seen.”

The critic can, at least, take solace in the fact that his verdict would not – after all – have singlehandedly ruined The Dark Knight Rises’ 100% “fresh” rating on the site. So far, three critics out of a total of 35 have now given the final instalment in Nolan’s Batman trilogy a negative review: Christy Lemire of the Associated Press, Chris Tookey of the Daily Mail and Marshall Fine of the Hollywood & Fine blog.

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