Latest Ad For 'Gotti' Equates Film Critics To "Trolls Behind A Keyboard"

We’ve reached an age where social media and film criticism have converged. No longer are reviews these formal write-ups found in magazines and newspapers. No, as you can see from Rotten Tomatoes, reviews can range anywhere from highly-respected journalists to people with small websites that can barely string a word together. Needless to say, the landscape of film criticism has changed significantly over the last decade.

The marketing team behind John Travolta’s new film “Gotti” want audiences to recognize that, and they’re throwing subtlety out the window. Instead of filmmakers and cast members doing the generic “we made the film for the fans” excuse that happens when a movie gets ravaged by critics, there’s a new ad that tells the audience to distrust the “trolls behind a keyboard” aka film critics who are responsible for giving “Gotti” a 0% on the Tomatometer.

READ MORE: MoviePass Reportedly Accounted For 40% Of ‘Gotti’s’ Box Office Total This Weekend

That’s right, in the ad seen below, the marketing team thinks the best way to attract new audiences to see their film is to trash the film journalism community, with name-calling and even floating the idea of a conspiracy by insinuating an ulterior motive behind the bad reviews. Yeah, not a good plan. But hey, desperate times call for desperate measures, right?

And judging by the weekend’s box office receipts for “Gotti,” these are indeed desperate times. On the back of the 0% score, the film only earned $1.7 million, with a reported 40% of that gross coming from subscribers to MoviePass. As we detailed yesterday, that means that MoviePass bought almost half of the tickets to a film they actually distributed themselves. Not good business.

But maybe the marketing team behind “Gotti” knows something we don’t? Let’s take a look at some of the “trolls” who gave the film bad reviews and see if it really is just a bunch of nobodies behind a keyboard. A quick glance at the 25 negative reviews (again, the film has a 0%) shows that some of those negative reviews came from the “trolls” at Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, New York Post, LA Times, New York Times, Variety, and The Hollywood Reporter, with descriptions of “Gotti” like “terrible,” “laughable,” “mess,” and “shitshow.”

Look, everybody is allowed to have their own opinions about film critics. Some you can disagree with wholeheartedly. And yes, there are dozens of examples of films that get bad reviews that turn out to be classic films. However, trying to pit audiences against critics is silly.