The MTV movie awards were once an outlet for passive movie lovers to voice their opinions, catering more to ass-kickery than the arsty-fartsy namby-pamby Dances-With-Wolvesy schlock of the Oscars. Nowadays, being twice the age of the demographic it targets, it appears MTV’s widened the gap to the point of mockery; their voting system oversaturated with the United Tweendom of today’s online-savvy youth. This year, with The Twilight Saga: Eclipse nominated beside The Social Network (It burns us!), this trend is alive and well. It’s only within the last ten years, however, that MTV’s cinematic credibility has noticeably declined, starting with…
2001 – Gladiator
Ok, so this isn’t really the first sign of MTV’s cinematic suicide (to use an unfair hyperbole). In a very rare instance, the MTV crowd and the Academy gave each other a high five on this one (the other previous occasion being Titanic in 1998). I’m not at all a fan of Gladiator. How it won the Best Picture Oscar I’ll never know. I’m not so baffled by the MTV win however, mainly because X-men was it’s only real contender. Still, Russell Crowe was favoured over The Wolverine, so I‘m gonna bitch and moan about it. Screw you, Ridley Scott.
2002, 2003, 2004 – The Lord of the Rings trilogy
The next three years, the MTV’s movie polls surrendered to the powers of geekdom, with Jackson’s trilogy taking top spots. While the Academy were humping A Beautiful Mind with their Crowe boner, The Fellowship of the Ring got its rightful accolades from the MTV generation, conquering rival heavy-hitter (in a mainstream sense) The Fast and the Furious. And while the Academy were pretty much forced to pick The Return of the King in 2003, the MTV vote seemed more genuine by comparison. In turn, 2004 seemed to be the last year where the MTV movie awards show itself seemed genuine.
2005 – Napoleon Dynamite
Take your right hand. Slap it firmly on forehead. Shake head in a disgruntled fashion. What can only be described as an American pop-cultural anomaly, Napoleon Dynamite isn’t just a film that will remain stuck in its decade, it’ll remain stuck in its year. Regardless of critical opinion, the movie hit teen audiences harder than puberty. Perhaps in this sense, MTV were more victims than villains. They couldn’t deny what their audiences praised. Then again, “fans” favoured Dynamite over The Incredibles, Ray and Spiderman 2. For better or for (most likely) worse, this was the most prominent turning point.
2006 – Wedding Crashers
Take your left hand and repeat. Wedding Crashers isn’t a bad comedy, so instead of labelling everything that is absurd with MTV’s decision for Best Picture of 2006, I’ll simply try to justify how it beat out the other nominees.
The 40 Year Old Virgin: At the time, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughan were, by name, heavier hitters than Steve Correll and Seth Rogan
King Kong: The MTV crowd’s attention span definitely played better to Wedding Crashers than Jackson’s remake…
Sin City: …and they probably weren’t old enough to see this in theatres.
Batman Begins: Ummm… yeah, f**k Wedding Crashers.
2007 – Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
I don’t want to rip into Dead Man’s Chest too much (because I’m the moron who enjoyed it as much as the first one), but suffice to say, you wouldn’t call it the fan favourite. What’s more laughable about 2007 awards show is that BLADES OF GLORY WAS NOMINATED FOR BEST MOVIE!!! The lukecold ice-skating comedy staring Will Farrell and guy who played Napoleon Dynamite (whose name is not important enough for me to remember) got equal attention from MTV voters as 300. And in case you skipped that partially caps-locked sentence: BLADES OF GLORY WAS NOMINATED FOR BEST MOVIE!!!
2008 – Transformers
I know Karl’s not a fan, but of course Transformers was gonna win this year. It had cars, explosions, Megan Fox’s waist, a Lincoln Park single, everything an adolescent wanted from a mind-numbing action film. Sure, most of the voters weren’t even born when the original cartoon series was popular, but they didn’t need that awareness. Michael Bay’s “adaptation” triumphed over other teen-related flicks like Juno (for the 16 and pregnant crowd) and Superbad (for the 16 and stupid crowd). Transformers wasn’t a bad decision in my opinion, partially because they could’ve voted for National Treasure 2: Indiana Cage chronicles.
2009 – Twilight
We’ve now hit the infamous Twilight slump. I could rant on about this wooden, teen-throb cash-grab series, but what’s the point? Everything that can be said about this series already has been said, and that is a testament to its popularity. Popularity is exactly what got the first Twilight the award for best movie, outing Iron Man (wha!!!???), The Dark Knight (God no!!!) and High School Musical 3 (travesty!!!). It was clear at this point that the MTV Movie Awards became a teen-fuelled popularity contest, devoid of any merit of ass-kickery, though the Slumdog Millionaire nomination was a pleasant surprise.
2010 – The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Still riding the Twi-dal wave of mediocrity, New Moon “bested” Avatar, The Hangover, Alice in Wonderland and Harry Potter and the Half Baked Script to take MTV’s 2010 Movie of the Year along with shards of their dignity. When the first Twilight won, jaws dropped from glam-pire haters everywhere. When New Moon won, those same folks laughed it off. This year frustrated those who once valued the MTV movie awards for reflecting the young people’s choice. For such a polarising franchise (that you either love or despise) to win twice, it seemed counterintuitive to that once seemingly genuine public reflection.
2011 – ?????
Will Eclipse take it this year? Probably. Who’d be surprised? It’s so heavily expected that many will probably not even try to sway the vote. What’s interesting to note is the obscure nomination for Black Swan, a heavily metaphoric ‘art’ film. The MTV producers choose these nominees and leave the winner to public opinion. Is MTV trying to recapture its old slither of cinematic credibility with these nominations? Did MTV have any cinematic credibility AT ALL? By nominating more Oscar-calibre films, are they losing touch of what the MTV awards were originally perceived to be, namely, a youth-reflected awards show?
