Critic Who Slated 'The Dark Knight Rises' Banned From Rotten Tomatoes

One critic was having a very, ahem, dark night of the soul, after playing an ill advised prank that blew up in his face.

Eric D. Snider of the Snide Remarks site had posted the review of 'The Dark Knight Rises' on the critc aggregation site Rottentomatoes.com. There was nothing strange in that, he has status as a 'top critic' on the site, after all.

Snider's difficulties occurred firstly because he hadn't actually seen the film, and secondly because he'd slated the film in an ill advised statement against the site he was posting on.

On the page for reviews of 'The Dark Knight Rises' all a reader could see was: "The Dark Knight Rises is easily the most disappointing Batman film so far – and I'm including [Joel] Schumacher's Batman and Robin in that statement. Nolan has finally lost his touch."

Then upon clicking on the link to his review they were informed: "Just kidding! I haven't seen The Dark Knight Rises yet. It's probably very good! I just wanted to post a negative quote on Rotten Tomatoes and see how many idiots would type angry words at me without actually clicking the link to read the review. 'You ruined this movie's RT score!' is a dumb complaint that is only made by dumb people."

The 'RT score' refers to the way that the site aggregates the views of various critics to give a percentage score to show a film's merits. 'The Dark Knight Rises' has 36 positive reviews and 6 negative ones, giving a rating of 86%. In contrast 'Ice Age: Continental Drift' has a score of 39%.

Rotten Tomatoes editor-in-chief Matt Atchity wrote a blogpost explaining the decision to ban the critic which read: "In our opinion, by knowingly posting a link that isn't a review (and he hadn't seen the movie), Snider has abused our trust, and therefore, his reviews will no longer apply to the Tomatometer," adding: "If a critic abuses our trust by linking to something that's not a review, we will take action up to and including removing them from the Tomatometer. If a critic doesn't take their reputation seriously, then neither will we."

Snider has since apologised, although not particularly convincingly, Tweeting: "I apologise to those I offended who like to respond angrily to reviews they've only read one sentence of, of movies they haven't seen."

PHOTOS: Stills of 'The Dark Knight Rises'

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