2. Attack Of The Batman Fanboys
There are some fans who will spiritedly defend what they love if someone starts criticising it. But there are the people who will happily have a give-and-take argument while fighting their corner, and there are the few moronic fans of The Dark Knight Rises whose method of defending the film was death threats. The Dark Knight Rises was something of a divisive film. A lot of people saw it as a worthy successor to The Dark Knight and solid end to the Christopher Nolan trilogy, while others thought it was flawed. And when critics started publishing negative reviews, things turned ugly. Film critic Marshall Fine
published a negative review of the film on Rotten Tomatoes that included criticisms such as "At times, the action is so massive and thunderously clunky that I might as well have been watching one of the "Transformers" movies." and "anyone forecasting serious Oscar love for this lumpish, tedious film has been smoking too much of that potent, prescription California weed." Strong words but not unusual for a film review. And because the previous films and the franchise (except Batman & Robin) are so loved, sanity was locked away while the fanboys let rip with abusive comments. Some proved that they had an infinitesimal amount of wit by quoting Bane's lines in their comments such as "Your punishment must be more severe" while others limited their bile to stuff like "Die in a fire" and threats to beat Fine "with a thick rubber hose into a coma". Things got so bad that Rotten Tomatoes' comments section was shut down for the first time ever and its managers even contemplated a permanent switchover to Facebook-based comments, eliminating the problem of abusive comments being made anonymously. All because of a few deranged fanboys. But the most insane thing is that, when the threats of dire retribution started pouring in, the film's public release was still four days away. So these crazed fanboys (and fangirls presumably) were threatening somebody's life for criticising a film that they hadn't seen and had no way of accurately judging the quality of. Had they seen the film, they potentially could have agreed with Marshall Fine and thought that it was a giant pile of bat crap (a gadget I really hope Batman doesn't have) but instead they let their slavish devotion to the films blind their judgement (such as it was) and became pathetic keyboard warriors who temporarily ruined Rotten Tomatoes for everyone and made the more devoted but not idiotic Batman fans look like bigger lunatics than the Joker.