Black Panther has every breed of anticipation working in its favor. In addition to being the 18th film in the MCU and the one that leads us directly into Avengers: Infinity War, there is a cultural importance attached to it. Black Panther's commercial success could mean a lot of good things for minorities in the film industry. However, it also spelled internet outrage.
As was to be expected, the film already faces some preliminary backlash, namely from a group on Facebook that planned to flood Rotten Tomatoes with negative audience reviews of the film, citing their preference for DC Films as their inspiration. The themes explored by Black Panther have led many to speculate that this coup was founded in more malevolent reasoning. We don’t know for sure, but at any rate, Rotten Tomatoes issued a statement about the matter:
"We at Rotten Tomatoes are proud to have become a platform for passionate fans to debate and discuss entertainment and we take that responsibility seriously. While we respect our fans’ diverse opinions, we do not condone hate speech. Our team of security, network and social experts continue to closely monitor our platforms and any users who engage in such activities will be blocked from our site and their comments removed as quickly as possible,"
The group, which amassed over 3700 members, was promptly deactivated by Facebook for the violation of community standards. The social network also issued this statement: “We’re opposed to hate speech and bullying and we don’t allow either on our platform.”
I anticipate this sort of thing to get worse as we near closer to the Black Panther’s release. Via The Wrap, the event creator of the removed group had written: "I’ll be making events like this for Infinity War and the Netflix shows etc so we can rally together to truly make a difference…If you want to spread spoilers to Marvel fanboys, use this event as a platform to inform us of targets!
Still, it will be very difficult to stop Black Panther from being a massive hit—it’s already projected to have a $150 million opening weekend. Ryan Coogler is a promising filmmaker and the material is rife with inspired visual potential. I am very excited about the film, and what it will hopefully do for the future of the medium.
