Rotten Tomatoes score for ‘Black Panther’ breaks Marvel record

The score comes after an alt. right group launched a campaign to flood the website with negative review on the film.

Feb 6, 2018

Black Panther in costume thegrio.com — Disney (Courtesy of Marvel)

Rotten Tomatoes’ score for Black Panther is in and it’s 100 percent.

The film doesn’t premiere until Feb. 16, but the first batch of reviews are in and so far, it seems critics are more than impressed by the highly anticipated film.

As of today, the website was indicating a 98 percent “want to watch” rating and now that initial reviews are in, the film is off to an incredible start.

Black Panther‘s perfect Rotten Tomatoes score makes it the highest debut for a Marvel superhero film to date, according to the Daily Dot.

Undoubtedly the blackest superhero film the world has ever seen (and arguably the best) will welcome a whole new audience to the Marvel Universe with the Ryan Coogler-directed flick.

The score comes after news hit that an alt right Facebook group had launched a campaign to sabotage the film’s score and created hashtags like #DCOverMarvel and #BringDownDisney.

Down With Disney’s Treatment of Franchises and its Fanboys, started an online campaign to “Give Black Panther a Rotten Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes,” and the DC franchise fanatics weren’t shy about their shady intentions.

“Given the massive success of the audience review rigging on the Rotten Tomatoes site for ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi,’ and due to the sudden rise in those disgruntled with Disney business practices among other factors especially due to the corporate manipulations which created falsified bad press for the DCEU, I feel that it’s time to strike back at all those under Disney and bring down the house of mouse’s actions for paying off the critics that hurt DC Comics on film and for other parties affected by them,” wrote the event creator.

“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!”

On Monday, Facebook caught wind of the ridiculous efforts to thwart Black Panther‘s success and deleted the group’s page.

“People often use Facebook to challenge ideas, institutions, and practices,” a spokesperson from Facebook shared with CNN. “Such discussion can promote a diversity of perspectives and greater understanding. However, we’re opposed to hate speech and bullying, and don’t allow either on our platform.”

Rotten Tomatoes is already anticipating an increase in hate speech on its site considering Black Panther is the biggest, blackest movie to hit theaters in ever, and the site seems intent on doing what it can to minimize the racist chatter.

“While we respect our fans’ diverse opinions, we do not condone hate speech,” Rotten Tomatoes said in a statement. “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.”

So far, critics have praised Black Panther as one of the best, if not the best, Marvel film to hit theaters.

“Black Panther celebrates its hero’s heritage while delivering one of Marvel’s most all-around appealing standalone installments to date,” noted Variety‘s Peter Debruge.

“Say this about Black Panther, which raises movie escapism very near the level of art: You’ve never seen anything like it in your life,” wrote Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers.

Black Panther claws its way into theaters nationwide Feb. 16!