In recent years, critics have reviewed Marvel’s slate of films far more favorably than DC Comics’ lineup. Though some folks would agree that DC has trotted out some pretty uninspired efforts of late, it seems the recent string of rotten tomatoes has spawned some sour grapes.
As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, there is a petition circulating on Change.Org that demands the dissolution of the Rotten Tomatoes review site because “It’s Critics always give The DC Extended Universe movies unjust Bad Reviews.” And before you start taking us to task for the misplaced apostrophe and the random capitalizations, please note that the above was pulled from the petition verbatim.
The document was created by Abdullah Coldwater from Alexandria, Egypt, and — though we admire his spirited brand of fandom — we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t actually issue the reviews, it merely aggregates them. Thus, shutting down the site would not silence the “biased” critics that Coldwater and his co-signers so lament.
Speaking of co-signers, as of the publication of this article, the petition has 14,369 signatures and counting. Coldwater has since issued a clarification that states that he and his fellow fans merely wanted to “deliver a message to the critics,” adding “ … it’s just a way to express our anger.”
In his complaint, Coldwater cites two films in particular that he feels were unfairly lampooned: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (27 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) and the soon-to-be released Suicide Squad (32 percent on RT). Reviewers have used a host of unflattering adjectives to describe the latter, including (but not limited to) muddled, turgid, cluttered, messy, and sloppy.
That said, there are plenty of folks who refuse to let a little ol’ critics consensus get in the way of watching their favorite characters tear up the big screen. Suicide Squad officially hits theaters Friday and stars Will Smith, Margot Robbie, and Jared Leto.
As of press time, Rotten Tomatoes was still extant. Stay tuned for updates.
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?