Movies Daily by Zach Cannon

Each summer, the MTV Movie Awards or, The Award Show That Should Be Less Boring Than the Oscars But Aren’t, takes over Music Television for one night a thousand repeats, and is quickly forgotten. Honestly, I haven’t watched the MTV Movie Awards in years. They’re usually too slow with weak jokes and the only redeeming part of the whole thing is the hilarious spoofs. Originally, I was going to fill this post with the nominees, but I realized that was a bad idea because a) you can just find them here and b) I don’t think anyone really cares. While I was looking over the list, however, I noticed a category I hadn’t seen before: Best Summer Movie So Far.

Best Summer Movie So Far? Seriously? First, let’s define a summer movie.

Summer Movie: (n) – Typically a Hollywood film that comes out during the summer movie season. Usually has a large budget and grosses boat loads of money. If it doesn’t make boat loads of money, it is considered a “disappointment.”

And, just to clear up any confusion, lets define the summer movie season:

Summer Movie Season: (n) – The period from about the first weekend in May till Labor Day in which summer movies come out.

What was the first movie of this year’s summer movie season? Iron Man. When did Iron Man come out? May 2. That means when the MTV Movie Awards airs tomorrow, June 1, it will be less than a month into this year’s summer movie season.

So what are the nominees for Best Summer Movie So Far? The only five summer movies that have come out.  Prince Caspian, Indiana Jones, Iron Man, Sex and the City and Speed Racer. I don’t know what MTV was thinking creating such a category. It might be to ride in the jet stream of a hit, or to give that hit some more press. Iron Man, Indy and SATC are the only true films in contention here and Iron Man will probably win, but the demographic that watches the MTV Movie Awards probably already saw all three of these films, so it won’t give them much of a boost, especially something like Iron Man, which, despite the legs it had in the box office, is now buried beneath Indy and SATC.

In the end, what’s the point? The award won’t really give much of a boost to any film nominated and people won’t tune in just to see which of the five big movies to come out in the last few weeks is going to win the category.  I supposed this is a rather pointless topic to write 500-words on, but it kind of encapsulates the MTV Movie Awards as what they are: pointless.