Arts: Batman Fans Go After Critics (Again)

Now playing: Slate V, a video-only site from the world's leading online magazine. Visit Slate V at www.slatev.com.
Brow Beat Batman Fans Go After Critics (Again) By David Haglund Posted Tuesday, Jul 17, 2012, at 03:49 PM ET The last time Christopher Nolan put out a Batman movie, the early reviews were nearly all raves. Then David Edelstein, formerly of Slate and now the film critic for New York Magazine, expressed some reservations, pointing out, for instance, that the movie's twists "play as if they'd been penned by Oxford philosophy majors trying to tone up a piece of American pop." Which is true, by the way. But many Batman fanboys, who, for the most part, had not actually seen the movie yet, unleashed a wave of online vitriol at the critic. This time around, the first negative review for a Christopher Nolan Batman movie—The Dark Knight Rises, of course, which comes out on Friday—has been published by Marshall Fine, and the response to that review apparently crashed his server. So says Matt Atchity, the editor-in-chief of Rotten Tomatoes, who has published an open letter on that site entitled "The Dark Knight Rises—This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things." As Atchity explains, the link to Fine's review has been removed from Rotten Tomatoes, at Fine's request, so the critic can get his own site working again—but the review itself is still counted in the Rotten Tomatoes score for the movie. And after explaining that site editors would be carefully policing comments on the Dark Knight Rises page, Atchity added an update saying that comments on that page have now been disabled. Meanwhile, another critic decided to troll the fanboys ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Offshoring Is Fine In a Sexless Marriage, the Marriage Is the Problem, Not the Breast-Feeding Jonathan Franzen Is the World's Most Annoying Bird-Watcher	Advertisement
Manage your newsletters subscription: Unsubscribe | Forward to a Friend | Advertising Information
Ideas on how to make something better? Send an e-mail to slatenewsletter@nl.slate.com. Copyright 2011 The Slate Group | Privacy Policy The Slate Group | c/o E-mail Customer Care | 1350 Connecticut Ave NW Suite 410 | Washington, D.C. 20036