Rotten Tomatoes Kills Dark Knight Comments

Rotten Tomatoes has stopped accepting user comments on Dark Knight Rises reviews after Batman fans unleashed their fury on critics who panned the film. Most reviews of the movie, which opens Friday, have been glowing, but the minority of critics who gave it a thumbs-down have been the target of profane and threatening remarks. "The job of policing the comments became more than my staff could handle for that film, so we stopped the comments altogether," editor-in-chief Matt Atchity tells AP. "It just got to be too much hate based on reactions to reviews of movies that people hadn't even seen."

Atchity, who fears a similar backlash when the first Hobbit movie comes out later this year, says Rotten Tomatoes might switch to a Facebook commenting system to do away with anonymous posts. "There are a lot of options on the table," he says. "We may do away with comments completely or get to a place where comments are only activated after a movie opens." AP's Christy Lemire, who called Dark Knight Rises a "letdown," was one of the critics under attack. "Christy gives her opinion and we expect people will agree with some of her reviews and disagree with others," said AP's entertainment editor. "It's unfortunate when the conversation turns ugly." (More Rotten Tomatoes stories.)