After Poor Suicide Squad Reviews, Fan Creates Petition to Shut Down Rotten Tomatoes

[bastardofmelbourne]

Ok, some quick Googling has revealed that the people who started the petition know that it won't get the site shut down, but is rather an effort to make critics aware that they don't like the negative reviews about the movie. And what?!

Why the hell... oh, nope. Having a rage stroke. Back in a day or so.

Well, a critic is supposed to translate their impression of a movie to their target audience. If the critic is out-of-touch with their audience, their reviews are less useful. The critic goes "Well, I hated Margot Robbie's hot pants, so I'm giving this a 2/5" and their readers go "We fucking love hot pants! Your 2/5 did not accurately represent the quality of the movie as it pertains to our opinions re: hot pants!"

I mean, having a guy review Finding Dory with the same critical lens that he uses for The Revenant, without considering that one is aimed at five-year-olds and the other is aimed at the Oscar awards committee, would be considered bad reviewing. So maybe there's something worthwhile there, in getting the critics to rethink who their reviews are going to be read by and what stuff they might like or not like.

Honestly, who cares? Just watch what you want. Why do you need your tastes validated by your dad a bunch of critics?

Nerd fandom remains the worst.

The critics tangibly affect the success of the film, and the success of the film tangibly affects the odds of more films in the same vein being produced.

Fans of the DCCU want to see more DCCU films. (If they're like me, they want to see more good DCCU films, not more "meh" films.) That means they have an emotional investment in seeing the franchise succeed on the promise that it will one day produce what they want (the fabled, near-mythical, oh-so-close Wonder Woman solo film).

That means when critics - or Rotten Tomato's shitty aggregate of critics, in this case - trash the latest DCCU film to an unfair degree, it makes people salty. And you wouldn't like people when they're salty.

(they taste awful)

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Well, a critic is supposed to

I think you may have missed the point I was making; The petitioners knew their efforts were a shallow attention grab, but went ahead with it anyway.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

I thought the trailers looked pretty cool, so me and a few friends are going to see it today.
I hope the reviews are wrong I and I find reason to sign a poorly worded doomed to fail petition.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

Well, a critic is supposed to

I think you may have missed the point I was making; The petitioners knew their efforts were a shallow attention grab, but went ahead with it anyway.

The entire point of a petition is to get people's attention. That's what petitioning is; a system by which a group of people make their desires or intentions known to a governing body, in the hope of influencing that body's decisions.

I thought you were making the point that the petition had no clear practical purpose. If your issue was instead that the petition was a plea for people's attention then...I don't know what to say, other than "that's what a petition is."

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

The entire point of a petition is to get people's attention. That's what petitioning is; a system by which a group of people make their desires or intentions known to a governing body, in the hope of influencing that body's decisions.

I thought you were making the point that the petition had no clear practical purpose. If your issue was instead that the petition was a plea for people's attention then...I don't know what to say, other than "that's what a petition is."

Any petition is pointless unless it is capable of enforcing the change the signatories want.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

The entire point of a petition is to get people's attention. That's what petitioning is; a system by which a group of people make their desires or intentions known to a governing body, in the hope of influencing that body's decisions.

I thought you were making the point that the petition had no clear practical purpose. If your issue was instead that the petition was a plea for people's attention then...I don't know what to say, other than "that's what a petition is."

Any petition is pointless unless it is capable of enforcing the change the signatories want.

That's like, 99% of all petitions.

When I was in university, every other week the socialist guys would have a new petition saying we needed to legalise gay marriage, or remove all immigration restrictions, or declare war on Israel. All kinds of shit that was never going to happen. That didn't stop them, because it wasn't the point. The point was getting everyone who signed the petition to think about gay marriage/immigration/how much Israel sucks. Get enough people talking about an issue, and it suddenly becomes an important issue, and now the government has to address it.

Which makes sense; the people or groups who are capable of enforcing change, generally speaking, don't need to make petitions in order to do it. The President doesn't need to petition the White House to get the executive branch to do something. A petition is a way for groups incapable of affecting change to get the attention of people who can enforce change; not necessarily to convince them, because that's unlikely to occur, but to draw public scrutiny to the issue in question. A petition to Barack Obama to increase NASA funding, for example, isn't unlikely to succeed just because the petitioners asked nicely and got 0.0004% of the national population to sign it, but it will prompt discussion on the topic of funding space exploration.

In this case, this petition against Rotten Tomatoes has a 0% chance of getting Rotten Tomatoes shut down. I don't know what kind of action by what body could even do that to start with. But it has a non-zero chance of getting people to go "Hey, Rotten Tomatoes is kind of a bullshit website, maybe we shouldn't take it so seriously," or getting a critic to think "Am I out of touch with my audience in a way that affects my capacity as a critic?"

The very fact that we're in this forum having this conversation shows the petition was successful at drawing attention to the issue it's aimed at. Every news website who reports on this petition is furthering that goal. If you think that's just a plea for attention, that's...because it is, and a lot of online political or social commentary is, fundamentally, a plea for attention.

You can be all brusque and insist that petitions must be brutally pragmatic or else a waste of time if you want to, but that's just blinkering yourself, to be honest.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

petition was successful at drawing attention

Attention yes, action no. And in a week or so, it will be forgotten.

 

[maninahat]

Actually the reviews I've seen thus far haven't been that bad.
General consensus = good movie, big characters were underutilized, but would likely have overshadowed the film had they had more screentime.

Damn those preview screens are not inviting. What's the odds that they are going to start yelling at the camera the moment I press play?

 

[Remus]

Damn those preview screens are not inviting. What's the odds that they are going to start yelling at the camera the moment I press play?

Actually they won't. Angry Joe on the other hand? Well, he's Angry Joe.

 

[maninahat]

Damn those preview screens are not inviting. What's the odds that they are going to start yelling at the camera the moment I press play?

Actually they won't. Angry Joe on the other hand? Well, he's Angry Joe.

Oh my, it was even worse. That Jeremy Jahn guy keeps windmilling his arms like he's the fucking salesman from Monkey Island.

 

[RJ Dalton]

Is 8 year old me more mature than these people?

I'm often shocked to find that 8-year-old me was sometimes more mature than people twenty years older than I am.
So I'm going to say yes. 8-year-old you is probably more mature than these people.