Entertainment
10 Years Later, Netflix Removes the Most Ruthlessly Review-Bombed Movie Ever
It appears that most review-bombing has been motivated by sexism. Is it a result of the Manosphere exerting its influence in a space that has always been vulnerable to attack? In recent years, the MCU film Captain Marvel and the Star Wars show The Acolyte were both ravaged by so-called fans who couldn’t bear to see some representation on screen. The same people had their pitchforks out for HBO’s The Last of Us, having seemingly taken offense to something as basic as casting and queer relationships. This trend began over 15 years ago, but truly metastasized around a decade after that with a movie that’s currently available on Netflix. But it’s not going to remain on the streamer for too long.
In 2008, angry fans began directing hateful messages to the minority of critics who had posted negative reviews of The Dark Knight on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, thereby lowering its official score. The website enacted basic housekeeping measures to prevent this sort of thing, but the review-bombers wouldn’t stop. A few years later, in 2016, they launched an all-out attack on a movie that suffered greatly because of it. The hate campaign, which was seemingly rooted in misogyny, began when the film’s trailer received a record number of downvotes. The backlash impacted the film’s box-office performance, and it ended up underperforming with less than $230 million worldwide against a reported budget of more than $150 million.
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Here’s the Patient Zero of the Review-Bombing Epidemic
The movie in question is the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot, which was headlined by Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, and Chris Hemsworth. Directed by Paul Feig, the movie earned positive reviews from critics — it currently holds a “Certified Fresh” 76% score on Rotten Tomatoes — but was dismissed by audiences predisposed to disliking it. The website’s consensus reads, “Ghostbusters does an impressive job of standing on its own as a freewheeling, marvelously cast supernatural comedy — even if it can’t help but pale somewhat in comparison with the classic original.” It holds a 49% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
The Ghostbusters franchise was rebooted by Jason Reitman with Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which was followed by Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire — both movies grossed more than $200 million worldwide against budgets that were less than half of the 2016 reboot’s. Feig, on the other hand, recently delivered his biggest hit, the psychological thriller The Housemaid, which grossed nearly $400 million worldwide.
You can watch Ghostbusters on Netflix until March 29. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
- Release Date
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July 14, 2016
- Runtime
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117 minutes
- Director
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Paul Feig
- Writers
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Katie Dippold
- Producers
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Ivan Reitman, Joe Medjuck, Michele Imperato Stabile, Tom Pollock, Ali Bell, Amy Pascal