It wasn’t looking good for Disney/Marvel’s newest entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Captain Marvel starring Brie Larson was on the path to utter failure long before the movie’s release, and the franchise owners had Larson to blame.

Blaming Larson, however, is off the table. In today’s political environment, that would be brand suicide.

Larson had spent a good deal of the film’s promotional time focusing on social justice, banning white reporters, and making something of an ass of herself. This propagandizing of the film left a sour taste in the mouths of many Marvel fans, and the failing Mary Sue trend that has swept Hollywood left them in the belief that this film is going to suck.

Many moviegoers went to Rotten Tomatoes and voiced there opinion. At the time, the website had a hype barometer that showed how excited people were to see a specific film, and allowed them to leave a comment or explanation as to why they did or didn’t want to see it. Needless to say, Captain Marvel wasn’t doing so hot.

The mainstream media, of course, didn’t like the idea of people denouncing a social justice propaganda film, and went to great lengths to make it seem like the film was being bombarded with negative reviews for the film by misogynistic trolls before the film had even come out.

Only that wasn’t what was happening. Moviegoers were upset that the film had been politicized with racism and sexism, and was explaining that they were choosing to stay home as a result. They weren’t review bombing, they were using the site as intended.

But Rotten Tomatoes either agrees with the social justice trend in movies or it’s feeling pressure being put on it by the great girth of the House of the Mouse, and is now altering its entire website in lieu of the Captain Marvel denunciation by people who were actually going to go see the movie in the first place, according to its blog:

As of February 25, we will no longer show the ‘Want to See’ percentage score for a movie during its pre-release period. Why you might ask?  We’ve found that the ‘Want to See’ percentage score is often times confused with the ‘Audience Score’ percentage number. (The ‘Audience Score’ percentage, for those who haven’t been following, is the percentage of all users who have rated the movie or TV show positively – that is, given it a star rating of 3.5 or higher – and is only shown once the movie or TV show is released.)

What else are we doing? We are disabling the comment function prior to a movie’s release date. Unfortunately, we have seen an uptick in non-constructive input, sometimes bordering on trolling, which we believe is a disservice to our general readership. We have decided that turning off this feature for now is the best course of action. Don’t worry though, fans will still get to have their say: Once a movie is released, audiences can leave a user rating and comments as they always have.

It would appear that now Rotten Tomatoes is adding to the artificial approval of Captain Marvel, in turn helping along the idea that people really do want to see propagandistic movies. The alterations they’re making to entire websites in order to move this illusion along is pretty sad, and should be proof positive to corporations that getting woke does indeed cause you to go broke.

Again, I expect Captain Marvel to open fairly well due to the fact that its a lead-up to the conclusion of the Infinity War saga. Disney will turn around and use this excuse to push more political messaging into its movies, though why they would is beyond me. They already have proof positive that this doesn’t work with the Star Wars fiasco they’re currently experiencing.

But a fool and his gold are soon parted, and there are none more foolish than a social justice advocate with an ax to grind.

Hopefully, I’m wrong. I hope Captain Marvel is a great movie despite all of Larson’s sexist, racist blustering, and Disney did indeed learn that Mary Sue characters are boring, and social justice propagandizing is divisive. I hope the MCU remains safe.

But I doubt it. I have a sneaking suspicion that Disney’s weight is on this change for Rotten Tomatoes. While I admittedly have no evidence of this, what I can see plainly is a good deal of the mainstream media shaking its head at the Rotten Tomatoes system in their many articles talking about how it let trolls take over the Captain Marvel page.

A lot of mob pressure seems to be going into this promotion of the move, and all of its approval seems artificial.

If Disney and/or those attached to the narrative are pushing this hard for something that’s not well liked to have the illusion that it is liked, then it’s an investment, and you can see more of it in the future.

(h/t: KotakuInAction)