A number of the cast members of Captain Marvel including Lashana Lynch, Samuel L. Jackson, Gemma Chan, and co-director Ryan Fleck recently addressed the Captain Marvel Rotten Tomatoes controversy.
As, we’ve pointed out the idea of “trolls review bombing” Captain Marvel on Rotten Tomatoes is categorically false. People were simply indicating whether or not they wanted to see the movie, and many fans were indicating they were not interested in seeing the film whatsoever. Nevertheless, following the negative feedback, Rotten Tomatoes completely redesigned their website removing the audience interest score and preventing people from commenting on the film before it is released.
In an interview with BadTaste, Lashana Lynch, co-director Ryan Fleck, and Samuel L. Jackson addressed the fan response to the film’s marketing and promotion.
Lashana Lynch, who plays Maria Rambeau, stated, “I really can’t understand it at all. And because of that and everything else I don’t pay attention to it. I don’t read it. I don’t watch anything. I don’t pay any attention to it. Especially when I’m releasing a movie I’m very, very proud of.” She adds, “It’s very easy to hide behind a screen and say what you think. If people saw a filmmaker, or an actress, or a writer on the street, they might not be able to share that opinion to them face to face. I think it’s an easy way out.”
She continues, “But people are always going to talk. And the more they talk about it, the more heat that’s on the movie so people are still going to watch it. And people that say they don’t like it still end up seeing the movie as well and they might end up enjoying it, so I can’t pay any attention to any of it.”
Samuel L. Jackson, who plays Nick Fury, took it a step further. He hinted at silencing people’s opinion and stating that even giving them a platform to voice their opinion is “part of the problem.”
“The mere fact that you give a voice or a platform to people who normally don’t have a platform is part of the problem. You can have an opinion that you don’t really have to be responsible for because nobody’s going to see you, nobody’s going to challenge you on it and if you want to bring somebody down or just ruin somebody’s day, you can say anything. Everybody doesn’t want to be uplifting and that’s pretty much what that problem is.”
Gemma Chan, who appears to have been fed the bogus story about people “review bombing” the movie by the interviewer responded saying, “Well, I think it makes sense right. You can’t really review something until it’s released. It just seems like common sense to me.”
Co-director Ryan Fleck seemed to be a voice of reason, when he stated he wasn’t going to comment on it because he didn’t know enough about it.
“We don’t know much about it. We’ve been in a dark edit room for so long and we’ve just come out into the world and we’re looking around as if we’ve been trapped in ice for decades. I’m perplexed, but I don’t really know enough to comment on it.”
Rotten Tomatoes would specifically explain why they redesigned their website pointing out that people were confusing their ‘Want to See’ score with the audience review score.
“As of February 25, we will no longer show the ‘Want to See’ percentage score for a movie during its pre-release period. Why you might ask? We’ve found that the ‘Want to See’ percentage score is often times confused with the ‘Audience Score’ percentage number. (The ‘Audience Score’ percentage, for those who haven’t been following, is the percentage of all users who have rated the movie or TV show positively – that is, given it a star rating of 3.5 or higher – and is only shown once the movie or TV show is released.)”
Captain Marvel flies onto the big screen this Friday March 8th.