“Seemingly suggesting that the anonymity of Internet commenting tends to bring out the worst in people and that fans of Christopher Nolan’s Batman films are particularly sensitive to slights, Rotten Tomatoes has suspended all user comments—for the first time in its history—on reviews of The Dark Knight Rises, after a mere few hundred minor personal attacks and fanciful violent fantasies against those critics who have dared to find fault with the film. As the site’s editor-in-chief Matt Atchity told the Associated Press, “The job of policing the comments became more than my staff could handle for that film, so we stopped the comments altogether,” adding, “It just got to be too much hate based on reactions to reviews of movies that people hadn’t even seen.” And of course, threatening to gut some idiot hack who expresses a differing opinion is only acceptable after a film’s official release.”

— Rotten Tomatoes suspends Dark Knight Rises comments after negative reviews go over about as well as you’d expect  | Film | Newswire | The A.V. Club

6:38 pm  •  18 July 2012