Yesterday, the first reactions to the new Venom movie surfaced on social media and hoo boy were they painful to read, with the film’s subsequent Rotten Tomatoes score confirming that these negative appraisals were more than just the isolated opinions of a few individuals.
Nonetheless, defenders of Eddie Brock’s big screen debut insisted that these harsher critical responses were being blown out of proportion by a coordinated effort from Lady Gaga fans. Apparently, some avid devotees of the singer/actress were posting scathing reviews via fake Twitter accounts in order to encourage filmgoers to see A Star Is Born instead, with the Gaga-led drama also opening in cinemas this weekend. But according to some Gaga fans, the manufactured hate is coming less from them than from fans of a rival cinematic universe.
One Lady Gaga fan breaks down the organized smear campaign as follows:
“Those are DC fans. They’re trying to pin in it on us Lady Gaga fans. They’re the one who started it. I know a big DC fan account who’s making these troll accounts.”
As the plot thickens on this most bizarre of disputes, it’s hard to know what to make of all this blame-shifting. While it’s hardly implausible that a few fans of the DCEU would get a little overly competitive, you’d think that they’d feel a lot more threatened by the output of Marvel Studios than Venom’s one-film cinematic universe. In any case, given the bludgeoning that the movie is already getting from critics, you could argue that creating fake bad reviews isn’t just petty but a little redundant, too.
Regardless of which opinions are fake and who faked them, the Venom movie is coming to cinemas on October 5th, giving you the opportunity to see for yourself whether Sony’s flick is worth all the hate.