'Captain Marvel' Shows How Trolls Lost Their Edge

Captain Marvel's $455 million opening weekend is an enormous, expensive failure. Not for Marvel, or fans of superhero movies, or people whose opinion seems to matter. Trolls have been trying to sabotage Captain Marvel's success since the first trailer dropped last September. So persistent and numerous were these trolls in their "review bombing" that Rotten Tomatoes changed its policies to prevent people from rating a movie before its release, and YouTube altered its search algorithm to uncouple star Brie Larson's name from the smears. Captain Marvel's box office performance has led many to say that the movie "defeated" or "conquered" the trolls--and the trolls certainly did lose.