Fan Petition To Shut Down Rotten Tomatoes Stopped When Fans Realise What Rotten Tomatoes Is

It's become all too common an occurence this year - the review embargo for a major superhero tentpole lifts, the reviews are less than savoury, and the fanbase reacts like they've taken a big gulp of fear gas. Across Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, X-Men: Apocalypse and now Suicide Squad (as well as counter arguments for Captain America: Civil War and Ghostbusters) we've seen accusations critics are being paid off, the popularisation of the idea that some films are made for fans exclusively, and most recently a petition demanding Rotten Tomatoes be shutdown because it's hurting these film's reputation.

That last one is particularly deluded, especially given that the movie that's catalysed it isn't even out yet. But on a more fundemental level, it patently misunderstood how Rotten Tomatoes works. It's an aggregate site that takes opinions from all sorts of critics (print, online, video) and works them together to form a consensus.

It's methods are rudimentary - it's a "Yes or No" voting system where 60% is a pass - but in managing to distill an internet's worth of opinion into a single number, it's doing a great job (and is a little more open to interpretation than Metacritic). And most people you'll read will contribute to it. I'm on it. Simon's on it. James is on it.

That's what all this Rotten Tomatoes hate seems to have missed, and is where the petition story gets really funny: it's been pulled! After having the nature of the site and how critics work actually explained to them, the fan behind the petition cancelled it because he finally realised how "pointless" it was.

Right, now that's all over can we get back to talking about movies?

What do you make of the Rotten Tomatoes petition? And what of the wide fan/critic debate? Have your say down in the comments.