Defeat the Skrulls, I Mean, Trolls

Moviegoers beware - this week's blog post contains lite spoilers for Captain Marvel.

She's hanging upside down in an unknown place. She attempts moving - no luck. Her arms are encased in some sort of cylindrical object and her shoes are missing.

Observing her surroundings, she sees her presumed captors standing in front of her. Their voices range between muffled and loud as they fidget with a computer terminal with wires that are connected to her head. Clearly they want something…Hence the reason she's upside down.

Her captors, none other than the Skrulls, or as Nick Fury posits later "So Skrulls are the bad guys…?" to Brie Larson's character, Carol Danvers (aka Captain Marvel), in the latest Marvel Studios film Captain Marvel. And boy do they fit the description, reptilian in every way - green skin, severe, carved lines along their face and pointed ears. They can shape shift - making it difficult to distinguish friend from foe.

Little does Carol Danvers know that things are not what they seem. In fact, her biggest foes are not the Skrulls, they are not even in the movie at all…they exist behind screens, distributed across the planet that swarm and then quickly dissipate - internet trolls.

No, I'm not talking about those furry, combed up hair miniature troll dolls that rose to fame in the 1960s. Nor am I referring to the 2016 animated film with the all-star cast and ear worm song "Can't Stop the Feeling!" The cohort I reference are a darker, more troublesome lot.

Per Meriam-Webster, internet trolls:

2a. "to antagonize (others) online by deliberately posting inflammatory, irrelevant, or offensive comments or other disruptive content"

2c. "to harass, criticize, or antagonize (someone) especially by provocatively disparaging or mocking public statements, postings or acts"

You may know them by another name - cyberbullies.

Despite being the most touted as the powerful character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Carol Danvers is embroiled in a never-ending fight against an army of internet trolls.

Altercations between the two began after the movie trailer dropped in September 2018. Trolls have attacked Captain Marvel from a variety of angles -

• The character's gender (in the comics, the moniker Captain Marvel has been represented by both a man and a woman)

• Movie posters which depict the title, female character not smiling

• Brie Larson's (who plays Carol Danvers, Captain Marvel) physique

• Brie Larson's pre-premier comments that in Hollywood "less than a quarter of [movie] critics were white women, less than ten percent were underrepresented men, and only 2.5 percent were women of color"

In recent weeks, internet trolls upped the offensive by carpet bombing Rotten Tomatoes with negative reviews - driving down a metric followed called "Want to See."

On IMDb, the film was inundated with abysmal user scores, averaging 6.1 stars (the lowest of any Marvel film). It had the largest gap between high user reviews (10) and negative user reviews (1). No Marvel movie up to this point had seen this type of user review fluctuation.

Both actions occurred before the film had even premiered on any theatre screens.

Note - Captain Marvel had over 4500 1 star votes before release.

After the film hit theatres nationwide on Friday, March 8, trolls restarted their attacks - Rotten Tomatoes saw another 10,000 negative reviews and IMDb with over 40,000 reviews.

On YouTube, videos calling for boycott of the film or criticizing the actress appeared as top results when users entered search terms for "Brie Larson."

On Twitter, trolls posted doctored movie posters of Brie Larson's character smiling.

The attacks have been unrelenting and widespread, covering all forms of social media. Yet, the unfortunate part is that Captain Marvel is not the first victim of internet trolls. In fact, it's just the latest victim. The list is endless, below are some high profile trollings:

2019

• Captain Marvel (see above)

• Taylor Swift publishes an essay in Elle magazine that the number one lesson she learned before her 30th birthday was to "block some of the noise" by disabling comments on her social media posts.

"I think it's healthy for your self-esteem to need less internet praise to appease it, especially when three comments down you could unwittingly see someone telling you that you look like a weasel that got hit by a truck and stitched back together by a drunk taxidermist." - Taylor Swift

2018

• Black Panther (which was nominated for "Best Picture") is hit by negative reviews on IMDb (6.7 distributed across 2000 reviews) prior to nationwide release.

• J.K. Rowling fends off criticism/trolls for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald decision to cast a South Korean actor as Nagini, Voldemort's sinister snake.

• Actress Kelly Marie Tran, who appeared in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, deletes her Instagram account due to internet trolls

2017

• Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson is blitzed on Twitter for supposedly disrupting the canon of Star Wars lore. Trolls and fans even author a petition to have the film remade.

• Note - A report from 2018 claims that a majority of the negativity could be attributed to Russian trolls although some out there dispute this claim

• Gal Gadot receives push back for not being "curvy" enough to play Wonder Woman

• YouTube comes under fire for prioritizing conspiracy videos over news report for the Las Vegas music festival mass shooting

2016

• The all-female "Ghostbusters" reboot received more dislikes on YouTube than any other in the history of the service.

The examples above are disappointing and disheartening. It is important to point out that minorities receive the highest concentration of trolls. And that internet trolls impact every industry, not just entertainment/media.

The good news is that a counterattack to internet trolls has begun.

After the record number of dislikes and negative reviews for Captain Marvel, Rotten Tomatoes announced several changes.

First, it removed the ability for fans to rate or review a movie that was not yet in theatres. (Yes, this sounds like a "no duh" action but it was new for the 21 year old site).

Further, this only prevents negative scores prior to a film's release, not after it. In fact, Captain Marvel saw this exact scenario play out. Within hours of the film's debut, thousands of negative reviews reappeared.

Second, it removed the "Want to See" percentage score attached to films before its release.

Interestingly, the site removed over 50,000 negative reviews regarding the film on Friday, March 8 citing them as a "glitch" in the system.

Note - The 50,000 would have been the largest number of reviews ever

IMDb had less of an impact with Captain Marvel but did note they use a "secret weighting formula" to calculate star ratings and will take action to remove "inauthentic reviews."

Meanwhile over at YouTube, the video service, with a few key strokes - recategorized Brie Larson's name as a news-worthy search term. This simple change modified the algorithm to return news outlets results first, moving internet troll videos, blogs to the bottom.

It should be noted YouTube initiated this practice back in 2017 after the Las Vegas mass shooting.

Other social media outlets - like Facebook and Twitter - have deployed human moderators. Their job - watch content and decide whether it violates their corporate policies. Last year, they took down pages with inflammatory statements or messages about Black Panther.

The biggest adversaries to the trolls has been Walt Disney Studios and Brie Larson, Captain Marvel, herself.

Recall trolls stating she did not smile enough and doctoring movie posters? Larson shared altered photos of male, Marvel heroes smiling.

Or that she did not have the right physique? Larson publishes a video of her pushing a ~5,000 pound Jeep as part of her training regiment for the role.

Walt Disney countered by increasing their digital ad spending. In layman terms, they bought more ad space on the internet - drowning out troll messages, banners. As Bloomberg reported, Walt Disney is not the only studio to do this - in fact, overall ad spending in Hollywood is expected to hit $6.64B.

Will spending more money make internet trolls dissipate? No, but it's a start. Everything above is a start - a necessary start for a trend that will only grow as humans spend more and more time behind a blue screen.

However, in my opinion, the sweetest victory lies with the box office numbers. Good news on that front - The New York Times reported that Captain Marvel racked in $153M in ticket sales on opening weekend, making it in the top ten of highest Marvel films and eclipsing Wonder Woman by nearly $50M.

Despite best efforts by the Skrulls and the trolls, Carol Danvers proves once again why she deserves the marvelous moniker going "higher, further, faster" just as Marvel advertised. Now, let's hope she's just the beginning - in female representation and in temporarily silencing the internet trollers out there.