Do not go gently into that Dark Knight

Do you remember "Batman"?  A 60's tv show based on a comic book, laden with colorful POW! and ZAP! words exploding off the screen while Adam West, before he became the mayor of Quahog RI, leapt around in tights? 

 

Batman fan all dressed up to go!

It certainly was an action-packed comic and tv show and series of movies. They're still making movies about it.  A whole comic book world, right there in Gotham City, with all the characters - the Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler, the Mother In Law. And people line up to see the movies. The new one comes out this weekend, the one we talked about because El Rushbo got his knickers in a twist about the villain.  The movie is called The Dark Knight Rises, and the reviews are in, and they're not all that kind.

So here's the quiz:  When the negative reviews came in - and only 14% of the critics knocked the film - did the Batfanatics...

a) take a neutral stance, planning to see the movie and judge for themselves

or

b) reply with so many profane and threatening comments - threats to commit murder and rape upon the dissenting critics - that the RottenTomatoes.com movie review site had to suspend user comments. Marshall Fine, a movie reviewer, received emails from people with nothing going on whatsoever in their lives or their minds, messages saying, "You should die in a fire" and another from a person who said he/she (probably he!) would like to beat him “with a thick rubber hose into a comma [sic].”

 

Let us bray.

No wonder this country can't have a presidential election without rancor and vitriol and thinly veiled threats from gentlemen such as the one pictured (left).  I mean, choosing the leader of the Free World is one thing, but don't you dare try to get in the way of a Batman movie!

Please don't threaten to beat me into an ampersand.