The Marvel Critic Conspiracy

As I made clear earlier, I did not like Dawn of Justice. If Rotten Tomatoes is to be believe, neither did most critics. Or youtubers (I would pick a videoreview to exemplify what I mean, but there's just too many).

Well, there's this youtuber, who believes Dawn of Justice is a "rock-hard, rectum-shredding, anus-prolapsing blockage." I thought it was a little over-the-top, but I laughed. Anyway, hatred for this movie took over the world like a zombie virus of disappointment, rage, and sadness. Or so I thought.

It seems that there are people who loved this film (seriously), and they've come to a certain conclusion about why the rest of the world (critics in particular), are trashing it: Marvel Studios payed them off.
I think this is dumb. For several reasons, some of which I will expand upon in list format:

1. Marvel Studios is notoriously cheap about everything from actor salaries to. . . soda and snacks for critics at showings of their own films, apparently. If they can't be bothered to suck up to critics at their own movie showings, why would they pay critics to trash a movie from another studio?
2. Critical reception is a poor predictor of a movie's success. Plenty of movies that get brutalized at Rotten Tomatoes go on to brutalize the world-wide box office. See: The Transformers franchise, anything Adam Sandler has done in at least a decade. 
3. Unless Marvel has been paying random moviegoers to be disappointed, they have nothing to do with the B Cinemascore.
4. Likewise, unless Marvel has deployed legions of disgruntled DC fans to tell their friends and family not to watch the film, they have nothing to do with its profit drop after its first week in theaters.

And most importantly, the random movie goer has zero idea about this on-going Marvel vs. DC fandom war. I mean zero. The guy I want to see BvS with didn't even remember that Disney doesn't own all Superhero properties. But why would the evil Marvel empire care about the public being misinformed about this all-important facet of our society?

Because it makes BvS's success (or failure) important for their own business model. See, people see a massive superhero blockbuster sputter and fizz out at the box office, and they might be less enthused about an upcoming superhero blockbuster (like. . . oh, Civil War). It hard to say that BvS will have any impact on Marvel's upcoming movies, but it's not hard to say that any impact it does have will probably be negative.

Think of it this way: Marvel trying to destroy DC's live action films by buying bad reviews makes about as much sense as Pepsi telling you to stop drinking Coke because it's unhealthy.