Chapter 447: Battle of the Paid Online Shills

"Water army promoters," "malicious hype," "internet PR," "cyber thugs"... To professionals and corporations, these phenomena accompanying the rise of the internet might have gradually become common and exploitable tools. But in the world of ordinary users, they were still relatively unfamiliar terms.

Although many perceptive internet users had already noticed the existence of paid online shills, the vast majority of people were still swayed by positive or negative online comments.

When it came to movies, Norman Hiller was a staunch dukeist. Having missed yesterday's advance screening and the midnight screening, he woke up early to check the online reactions before driving to the theater where he had booked his ticket.

After entering the theater and picking up his ticket, Hiller sat in the lounge area, tossing popcorn into his mouth with his brows locked in a deep frown. He couldn't figure it out. He had only gone to bed, yet upon waking up, both IMDB and Duke's personal website were overwhelmed with negative reviews for The Two Towers.

'Is the movie really that bad?'

'That shouldn't be the case. Even though it's a trilogy, strictly speaking, The Two Towers isn't a sequel. All three films were shot and produced at the same time. There's no reason for The Fellowship of the Ring to be so good while The Two Towers turns out to be garbage.'

Then again, since officially becoming a director, Duke had never made a single bad film.

"Didn't you see the reviews online?"

An argument drifted over from the nearby ticket counter.

"This movie is getting a ton of negative backlash," a young man of about twenty said to his companion. "I think we should pick something else. Besides, we haven't even seen the first one."

"There are a lot of negative reviews, but there are plenty of good ones too..." his companion disagreed. "Plus, if we don't watch The Two Towers, there aren't any other blockbusters to choose from."

Under Norman Hiller's watchful gaze, the two argued for a bit longer before ultimately buying tickets for The Two Towers.

Sitting there for over twenty minutes, Hiller saw more than one person hesitate and argue. He could vaguely glean the situation from their conversations. Most of them hadn't seen The Fellowship of the Ring. Meanwhile, the people who were talking about how amazing The Fellowship of the Ring was bought tickets for The Two Towers without a second thought.

Although he wasn't a professional film analyst, Norman Hiller formed a vague conclusion: the negative online discourse didn't have much impact on the fanbase cultivated by The Fellowship of the Ring, but it would cause some new viewers to hesitate or even give up on the movie entirely.

'Duke wouldn't actually make a bad movie, would he?'

Harboring that tiny sliver of doubt, Norman Hiller walked into the auditorium. It only took ten minutes for that thought to be thrown completely out the window. The opening scene of Gandalf battling the Balrog was enough to ignite everyone's emotions.

This was, without a doubt, a masterpiece!

When the film reached the Battle of Helm's Deep—especially the moment Aragorn and King Theoden led the men in a suicidal cavalry charge—the entire auditorium boiled over. Norman Hiller swore that no war scene of such epic scale had ever appeared in the history of Hollywood, or even global cinema. If it were just a massive spectacle, that would be one thing. But at the critical juncture of human survival, the spirit of charging forward to the sound of the horn... how could people not be moved? How could their blood not boil? How could they not give it a rave review?

"This is an absolute classic! How is this the garbage the internet was talking about?"

Just as the battle sequence ended and the atmosphere in the auditorium began to settle, Norman Hiller caught those words. He turned his head and saw that it was the exact same pair he had watched arguing over tickets earlier.

"What the hell is wrong with those people online?" the guy who originally hadn't wanted to buy a ticket said angrily. "How could they post such irresponsible bullshit? I'm definitely leaving a comment to curse them out when I get back..."

His string of profanities drew sideways glances from quite a few people. The two quickly shut their mouths to avoid disturbing the rest of the audience.

However, those words resonated deeply with Hiller. The comments online really were too irresponsible. He was absolutely going to flame them when he got home!

Upon returning home, Norman Hiller immediately turned on his computer. As soon as he logged onto IMDB, he discovered a massive wave of replies and posts fighting back against the haters.

"You've got to be kidding me. A piece of trash like The Two Towers is temporarily ranked number one on IMDB?"

Hiller furrowed his brows. He really wanted to ask why such a spectacular film couldn't be ranked number one on IMDB.

There were more comments like that below, and they were particularly sharp.

"The ratings on IMDB have been getting more and more problematic lately. More and more kids are getting on IMDB, people who haven't even seen any real movies. It's creating a skewed trend where so-called epic spectacle films like The Two Towers get severely inflated scores. These days, as long as it's a Duke Rosenberg movie, the IMDB ratings are never low."

"I don't even know what the score for The Two Towers is based on. Just because it's directed by Duke Rosenberg, it gets to have such a high score? I've noticed that not a single one of Director Duke's films has a low score. They all get high ratings on IMDB. It's completely unimaginable and utterly infuriating!"

"The Two Towers is definitely a decent enough movie, but it's miles behind The Shawshank Redemption, yet it still manages to score above a nine? The Lord of the Rings nostalgia? Duke Rosenberg? The director's name? The star power of the cast? What exactly is the reason it gets such high marks?

"In my opinion, The Two Towers is at best in the same score bracket as Braveheart, maybe even a little lower. As for this movie's inflated score, all I can say is that there are brain-dead fanboys everywhere, regardless of genre or age..."

Reading this, Hiller suddenly felt his anger flare. Curses rose straight to his lips, but fortunately, he swallowed them back down when he saw countless people fighting back below—and not with this kind of brainless, malicious slander either.

"Viewed in isolation, The Two Towers is indisputably a nine-point film. The perfect story structure, plot development, acting, cinematic scale, deeper themes, and so on—if you put it in any given year, it would be a classic capable of competing for the top three films of that year. It's only slightly inferior to Director Duke's Saving Private Ryan.

"Also, let's just assume for a second that IMDB is filled with paid online shills, brain-dead fanboys, and kids who don't understand movies. Then can the original poster please explain how over forty thousand people on IMDB chose to rate it nine points or higher? Does that not prove something? Are all the young moviegoers in America inferior to you, a single keyboard warrior? Are all the young moviegoers around the world just brain-dead Duke Rosenberg fanboys?"

"If film fans all over the globe are brain-dead Duke fanboys, doesn't that just prove that Duke is a total badass?"

These words practically echoed Norman Hiller's own heart. He nodded unconsciously. Then, he refreshed the webpage and found that the comments fiercely supporting The Two Towers were multiplying.

"Commercial and genre films desperately need role models like The Two Towers. While immensely entertaining us, it also imparts a certain depth to the movie. As the connecting bridge of the trilogy, The Two Towers is absolutely fantastic. It's received critical acclaim both inside and outside the theaters; IMDB isn't the only place giving it high scores."

This person even posted the latest data to back up their claim.

"The Two Towers has a 96 percent audience approval rating in theaters, an A+ on CinemaScore, and a 94 percent popcorn audience favorability index. MetaCritic aggregated scores from 77 entertainment journalists for an average of 88. Is all of that still not enough to prove the point?"

Hiller gave a slight nod. He had already seen The Two Towers, and this kind of reception was exactly what made sense.

Reading this, he couldn't hold back any longer. He clicked open the reply box, his ten fingers flying rapidly across the keyboard, and quickly hammered out a targeted response.

"Across a runtime of nearly three hours, Duke delivered surprises that surpassed even The Fellowship of the Ring. The Two Towers has brilliant story details and masterful pacing. The action scenes and plot progression are tightly interwoven, balancing tension and release perfectly. The entire film has zero padding. Every single minute firmly grips the audience, keeping them holding their breath until the very last shot, leaving an impression that lingers long after.

"Although there's no shortage of dark atmosphere in the two films released so far, Duke remains a director willing to tell the audience a beautiful story. Even though this film isn't the conclusion of the entire series, he still upheld the most crucial rule—every touching character deserves a good ending.

"As the leading figure of Hollywood's new generation of directors, Duke has used these two films to prove once again that he is a director worth driving movie fans all over the world crazy. On a creative level, he differs from the previous generation of Hollywood directors. He is no longer obsessed with a film's so-called artistry and ideology. Instead, he strives to present a diverse array of cinematic techniques, delivering the maximum amount of enjoyment to a global audience through a spectacular story and mind-blowing visual spectacles!

"With a director like this, and works from a director like this, how could we not love it? How could we not give it a high score?"

After hitting publish, Norman Hiller didn't hesitate to rate The Two Towers a perfect ten. Without even remembering to eat lunch, he roamed across various websites, including Duke's personal homepage. Wherever there were attacks on The Two Towers, his rebuttals would follow. He battled them at every turn!

Over the course of the entire afternoon, subtly guided by certain online rhetoric, Norman Hiller had transformed into an entity he was completely oblivious to—an "organic fan."

But there was one thing Norman Hiller was very clear about: he was willing to stand up and speak out for such a spectacular film. This was all completely of his own free will.

In fact, by the time the afternoon rolled around, Norman Hiller noticed that the people supporting The Two Towers online were growing in number, and their voices were getting louder. Many movie fans were spontaneously suppressing the negative comments everywhere and farming positive reviews for the film they loved. By the time midnight approached, the negative reviews online had been almost completely buried.