I’m honestly not sure what the MTV Movie Awards are supposed to accomplish. The Oscars are meant to be the cream of the crop; the Golden Globes, more tooled towards recognizing the overlooked. Where do the MTV awards fit in? They’re not the best, the most popular, or the most anything - in fact, most of the winners seem to have been pulled out of a hat.

Observe:

Best Movie: Transformers
Best Male Performance: Will Smith in I Am Legend
Breakthrough Performance: Zac Efron in Hairspray
Best Female Performance: Ellen Page in Juno
Best Comedic Performance: Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Best Fight: Sean Faris and Cam Gigandet in Never Back Down
Best Villain: Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Best Kiss: Briana Evigan and Robert Hoffman in Step Up 2 The Streets
Best Summer Movie So Far: Iron Man

Fair enough - Never Back Down is pretty much a shoe-in for Best Fight, Iron Man is fantastic, Ellen Page is an MTV crowd favorite, and Will Smith was very good in I Am Legend. But what’s with the rest of them?

I know the MTV audience is responsible for these hijinks, but I can’t help but wonder what they were all thinking. Shia LeBeouf fans had no choice but to vote Transformers, I guess, but can it really stand up against Iron Man? I also have to object to the characterization of Sweeney Todd as a “villain,” since he’s the protagonist of the piece. No matter how you characterize him, it’s hard to make the case that he’s a villain in the classic sense of the word.

It also seems a little diminutive to call Depp’s POTC performance “comedic.” It certainly has those overtones, but there’s something more to it - and, of all three films in the series, At World’s End is the least comedic.

And maybe I’m just prejudiced against movies that try to work the sequel number into the title, but I don’t approve of Step Up 2 the Streets being included in any awards show, ever.

So here’s my message to MTV voters, and all the rest of us who had the opportunity to vote online and just didn’t care. We have the power to change this! We can make the MTV movie awards our own, with the power of our internet connections.

On the other hand, who cares?

Maybe I just expect too much.

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