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Gotti Marketing Calls Critics 'Trolls Behind Keyboards'
After receiving a zero percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the marketing team behind Gotti lashed out against critics, calling them "trolls behind keyboards." The biopic about one of New York's most infamous gangsters, starring John Travolta, was the actor's personal passion project.
Based on the real-life story of American gangster John Gotti, Gotti documents the crime lord's rise and fall in the Gambino crime family. Chronicling three decades of the mob boss's life, the movie documents his turbulent life on his rise to power. Starring Travolta, Kelly Preston, Stacy Keach, and Pruitt Taylor Vince, and directed by Entourage's Kevin Connolly, Gotti was a passion project of Travolta's that ultimately failed to resonate with critics. As a result, the movie now bears a rare zero percent rating on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, prompting the marketing team behind Gotti to not only defend the movie, but criticize the critics themselves.
As a reaction to the record-low Rotten Tomatoes score, Gotti's marketing flat-out accused film critics of being "trolls behind keyboards" in an ad on the movie's official Twitter account. In the 16-second ad solely dedicated to convincing audiences that the film is not nearly as bad as critics have claimed, a block of text insists that "audiences loved Gotti" before following it up with another block of text that reads, "critics put out the hit." Then, after a rapid series of clips from the movie, a final block of text reads, "Who would you trust more? Yourself or a troll behind a keyboard?" What's more is that the lines of dialogue used in the ad all reflect a general dispute against opposition, including lines like, "You've never been under this kind of scrutiny," "You fight till you can't fight no more," and "Never back off. Never." It's then all capped off with Travolta firing his gun at someone.
As it so happens, Gotti isn't the first movie in which Travolta has starred that earned a zero percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Staying Alive, the sequel to Saturday Night Fever; Look Who's Talking Now, the second sequel to Look Who's Talking; and Life on the Line all received zero percent ratings. Other films in which Travolta has starred that have come close to a zero percent score include Battlefield Earth (3 percent), Old Dogs (5 percent), and The Forger (9 percent).
While Travolta's low-rated movies may or may not be flukes, the two-time Academy Award-nominated actor is by no means on a downward spiral in his career. Just last year, he was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance in American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, and having made triumphant returns into the limelight several times in the past (most notably with Pulp Fiction), Gotti isn't necessarily the nail in his career coffin.
