Review-bombing is a very modern problem that doesn’t actually achieve anything in the long run, but that doesn’t mean the phenomenon can’t rear its head anytime a contentious film or television project arises. Funnily enough, with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 releasing in many international territories today, the latest campaign is already underway.
Disney’s live-action Peter Pan & Wendy was the most recent target of trolls trying to tear down its score on sites like Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, and IMDb, with The Little Mermaid guaranteed to experience an identical misfortune at the end of the month. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and The Marvels have been covering the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s bases recently, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why James Gunn’s threequel has been caught in the crossfire.
As the current co-CEO of DC Studios who isn’t Zack Snyder and almost instantly disregarded the SnyderVerse as relevant canon when he came on board, there are plenty of folks out there actively willing his overhauled vision for the superhero franchise to fail. As a result, even though it’s literally only been playing on the big screen for a matter of hours, his MCU swansong has racked up a suspicious amount of 1/10 ratings on IMDb.
Sure, it might be the worst-reviewed Guardians of the Galaxy movie, but the speed at which it’s lodging the most negative scores imaginable from the general public creates plenty of skepticism right off the bat. Of course, nobody’s going to be surprised in the slightest that Vol. 3 will be getting review-bombed, so it’s best to just roll with the punches and go along with it.