Don’t be hating! The Dark Knight needs a few critics.

First a confession, the writer of this piece does happen to be a currently working film critic so there is a little bias on my part. On IMDB there is a story about how newspaper critics that didn’t come out with The Dark Knight is the best movie ever made have been receiving hate mail in massive quantities. Not just small time reviewers but even those such as the critics for the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times.

One of the reviewers has even commented that “I’ve gotten 250 or 300 e-mails, almost all with the vilest, most abusive language you could possibly imagine. I was stunned. These people aren’t just discourteous. They’re insane.” The comments continued with “I write for an educated readership and usually the responses to my reviews are courteous and collegial,” he remarked. “But this was really ugly. It did feel like a mob.”

My two cents on this is by default for print published reviewers there are two default settings for comments. The first is that a no feedback policy is enabled between the editor and reviewer so they receive no feedback from the readership and thus feel no pressure beyond providing an honest opinion. The other option is to publish the reviewers email address and allow them to feel the full force of the readership. This is a negative in my opinion as comments made do leave a lasting impression and everything under the sun would receive a generic 3/5 as to not upset anyone one way or the other.