Since the dawn of moving pictures, there have been critics. Reviews have played a massive role in the success of films. Often the critic is the party pooper, the cinema buff who's out of touch with the standard moviegoer. This is often not the situation, and critics can be a very good thing. When done by a knowledgeable critic with good taste, such as the late great Rodger Ebert, a movie critic can help you decide whether to spend the next two hours watching someone's movie. However, with the dawn of the internet, a floodgate opened, revealing a devastating downpour of everyday moviegoers voicing their opinions. One might say, "Well, isn't that what matters the most?" It sure is important, but even though many reviews are genuinely due to disliking a movie, sometimes the motives are malicious.
The age of the internet brought on the unexpected and relatively new box office/popularity sabotaging tactic of review bombing. This is when many people, or maybe even a few people with multiple online accounts, post negative reviews to damage a film. This can be a fan base that is unpleased with a remake or something not faithful to the original content, such as The Witcher: Blood Origin being review bombed by Henry Cavill Fans, but unfortunately, more often than not, the review bombs are a result of political issues and or cultural discrimination. All of the LGBTQ+, feminist, racial, and/or religious prejudice that are at the root of these review bombings are often hidden behind the pretense of "woke," which is a word that has been weaponized to be a negative description of anyone that tries to give a voice to minorities and include them more in the mainstream, anything...
We will be looking at movies that where review bombed prior to release but TV series suffer just as much. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law was review bombed with a litany of one out of ten reviews on IMBD due to people being unhappy that Disney took a known male character and made him female. However, this is not particularly the case in today's age of the MCU as She-Hulk was first created by Stan Lee and John Buscema in 1979, making She-Hulk simply a Marvel character like any other.
Some platforms have started to take action to stop this phenomenon. With the release of The Rings of Power, Amazon Prime had to suspend the use of ratings due to a massive review bombing from racists being upset about the new addition of racial minorities to the Lord of the Rings universe.
There is the unfortunate reality that, if not all, the mass predominance of these harmful and hate-driven attacks comes from conservatives. It is to be clear that not all conservative party members, American or foreign, think or feel this way, and these individuals or coalitions that generate all of this hate speech and malice are not representative of the majority.
With that said, whether it's racism, sexism, or just displeasure with the direction of a remake/reboot, here are ten films that were review bombed before they even came out.
Review-bombing is not always politically or culturally charged. Sometimes it's just due to fans not liking the direction one of their believed franchises is going. Before its release, The Suicide Squad got hit with review bombing due to James Gun stamping it with his signature action-comedy style, which is much different than the serious tone and mood of the other films in the D.C. universe. The Suicide Squad was primarily attacked by fans of Zack Snyder's gritty and flashy Justice League, which is worlds apart from James Gun's endeavor into D.C.
The Promise takes place in 1914 and revolves around a medical student, Michael (Oscar Isaac), and a dance instructor, Ana (Charlotte Le Bon), who bond over their Armenian heritage and develop a romantic relationship that is challenged by Ana's boyfriend, Christopher (Christian Bale). The story is coupled with the Armenian genocide, which took place during World War I. An extreme conspiratorial group chooses to deny this genocide ever happened. Before its release, this organized group of Armenian genocide deniers generated thousands of one-star reviews to tank, The Promise.
Related: Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale Take on Armenian Genocide
With Disney pushing to have minorities feel more recognized and including more and more minority characters comes the outcry of hate from all the people who feel uncomfortable with minorities. Whether it contains a nonwhite race, feminism, or LGBTQ+, no character that falls under these categories is safe. The Eternals is arguably the worst MCU movie to date, even without the review bombing, but yet, it was the victim of a litany of review bombing due to the character Phastos, being the first ever openly gay superhero in the MCU. Phastos is a black man with a husband and children. The fact that he kisses his husband heated homophobic groups into to feeling Disney is trying harder than ever to push "woke propaganda."
Unlike the Eternals, which received all-around poor reception despite review bombing, Black Panther is one of the highest-rated and acclaimed Marvel movies ever. A typical display of racism is fans upset about replacing historically white characters with a different race. Still, the Black Panther was always black, even in the original comics, so why all the pushback? Well, there was a mass review bombing of people who considered having a story about an African superhero and king of an African nation with the most advanced technology in the world too "woke."
Related: Seth Rogen Says "White Supremacists" are Review Bombing His Series Santa Inc.
Ghostbusters (1984) has a massive fan base considering it's one of the greatest comedies ever. The directing and the screenplay were all great, but what embedded this film as one of the all-time greats was its hilarious four members of the Ghostbuster. So, despite which ever actors replace the original four, there would probably have been upset fans, but when the Ghostbuster crew was replaced in Ghostbusters (2016) with all women, there was a defamatory response. The movie was review-bombed pre-release with accusations of pushing the feminist movement. Regardless of all the actresses being famously hilarious comedians, this didn't stop the anti-feminism bunch from voicing their disdain.
Bros is about two men trying to make a relationship work while each suffers from commitment problems. Of course, this was met with homophobic backlash. Even before it was released, and anyone could give it a fair chance, up to 300 one-star reviews made up almost half of all reviews at the time. These poor reviews tanked its ratings. While this film is by no means a masterpiece, it received excellent critical reception with an 89% on Rotten Tomatoes and an audience score of 90%. The fact that these harsh reviews came out before it was even released says it all.
Captain Marvel was subjected to review bombing like many films with female leads encompassing a powerful, strong-willed character. Captain Marvel is the first female lead in the MCU and probably one of the strongest, her powers being similar to those of Superman. Review bombing campaigns took effect and were so bad that these particular attacks led to Rotten Tomatoes altering its rating system to prevent reviews from being made before the release of a movie.
Related: MCU: A History of Review Bombing and Its Roots in Misogyny
After the first trailer for Peter Pan & Wendy, fans, non fans, just anyone with hate in their heart and nothing else to do took to the web. The film is not great, and it did stray away from the original quite a lot, but reviews with a genuine disliking for it artistically were not what gave it such a remarkably low score. The trailer revealed that a black woman plays Tinker Bell, Peter is South Asian, and the lost boys are much more diverse than ever before. To not much surprise, the movie was massively bombed and criticized for being Marxist and having a woke agenda. This particular film was review-bombed heavily the day it came out, but still, none of the negative reviews accrued from people who watched it or even had time to watch it. The Review-Bombing was so bad that the unrealistically low audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes had to be removed.
After The Force Awakens, Star Wars had more issues than extreme cultural prejudice. The franchise's direction was under heavy scrutiny from die-hard fans who hated where the Star Wars story was going. Still, in conjunction with standard backlash, there was also a mass wave of hyper-toxic fans called The Fandom Menace, who posted on YouTube and forums lambasting Star Wars: The Last Jedi before its release.
They were unhappy with many aspects of the narrative and a chunk of this group was probably only upset about the direction of their beloved franchise feeling more Disney, which many where upset about, but at the end of the day, a massive amount of review bombers simply didn't like that Finn, essentially the new Hon Solo, is black, and a woman is the protagonist. According to the Huffington Post, in 2017, a member of the 'Alt-Right' took credit for the review bombing of The Last Jedi. They utilized a bot to generate bad reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and plunge the ratings. This member vocalized that the character Poe is a "victim of the anti-mansplaining movement," and they expressed fear that Poe and Luke Skywalker could be turned gay.