On Friday, February 2, Black Panther director Ryan Coogler addressed an alt-right connected Facebook group called “Down with Disney’s Treatment of Franchises and Its Fanboys” that vowed to tank reviews for the movie on movie review site Rotten Tomatoes.
Coogler told HuffPost, “For me, I’m looking forward to everybody seeing the film,” Coogler said. “I’m really looking forward to sharing the film with audiences regardless of what their political views are … that’s kind of where I [stand on that]. It … can be an oversimplification of what critics are saying about a movie. It’s quicker to look at the consensus than it is to read the articles. But I’m a person who definitely respects film criticism and draws on it in the filmmaking process.”
The website previously messaged the moderator of the page, who claims he used bots to tank scores for The Last Jedi, which is sitting at a 48%, despite critics giving it over a 90% rating. The moderator stated, “It’s time to strike back at all those under Disney and bring down the house of mouse’s actions for paying off the critics that hurt DC Comics on film and for other parties affected by them.”