Movie Awards: MTV and Otherwise

I was never in the habit to watch the MTV Movie Awards, but enjoyed last night's show. The highlights were, of course, the Andy Samberg song about the cliche of tough guys walking away from explosions without looking at them and Bruno's interaction with Eminem. While the actual outcomes of the awards were pathetically predictable--Twilight uber the rest, I have always enjoyed the MTV contribution of Oscar-worth categories: Best Fight, Best Kiss, and the WTF award (a new category).

Of course, the Bruno entrance will be this year's WTF winner, but how about the awards for May's movies? Having seen only three of them (Wolverine, Star Trek, Night at the Museum) challenges my ability to consider thoroughly all that has been offered thus far, but now that the first two have been out for a few weeks, I can ramble without too much spoiler-osity.

But, if you have not seen these three movies, don't read below [SPOILER ALERT]

• Biggest Surprise: That the optimistic, idealistic Star Trek would produce a body count that would exceed Wolverine's by several orders of magnitude.

• Best Use of Time Travel To Ignore the Canon: Star Trek--with its plot device of time traveling genocidal Romulan miners, JJ Abrams has created a new canvas to write a Star Trek saga.

• Best Use of History: Wolverine's climatic battle occurs at Three Mile Island, so that we now know the truth behind the 1979 "accident."

• Best Villian: None of the Above: Eric Bana had little material to work with. He was fine, but Trek has produced greater villains, so that this movie cannot compete with Wrath of Khan. The Riker character in Wolverine was even nastier than I had expected, but lacked some charisma. Night at the Museum 2's big baddie (played by Hank Azaria) was amusing, but not very scary and not that smart. My guess is that we will have to wait for HP6 for Voldemort to show these guys how it is done.

• Best Female Performance: Amy Adams, easily above the rest. She monopolized the charisma in Night 2. In other hands, the Amelia Earhart character might have been quite bad (even potentially Jar-Jar-esque). Zoe Saldana was great in Star Trek, but mostly just had to smolder. Again, she did it well, making it credible to the audience that Spock might imitate his father and choose a human mate. Wolverine's lover, played by Lynn Collins, was fine but not outstanding.
  

• Best Male Performance: Tough call between Zach Quinto and Chris Pike. Pike probably had the harder role since playing Kirk with just the right amount of Shatner is fundamentally more challenging than playing Spock. Both were great, and the next movies should be heaps of fun with these two leading the way. Hugh Jackman was fine as Wolverine, but he did not have to do as much.

• Best Fight: Might have been the opening battle in Star Trek--multidimensional, exciting, compelling. I will have to watch ST and Wolverine again to compare. The battles in Wolverine were well-staged, with Ryan Reynolds doing some interesting stuff early on, and nice realization of Gambit's powers.

• Best Intentionally Comic Moments: Any scene with Simon Pegg. His Scottie was terrific, and he stole every scene. Wolverine was hamstrung by the fact that it was not only an origin movie, but a tragic one. Wolverine is supposed to be a very damaged character, so not so much room for comedy here. Night 2 had many funny moments, and was better than I had expected.

• Best Kiss: Spock and Uhura. No contest.

• Most Unintentionally Comic Moment: Had to be Wolverine as a tragic story, there were several moments that were so unrealistic to produce a guffaw.

• Most Unrealistic Plot Device: Really, the rest of the fleet was busy, so they had to fill a bunch of ships with academy students where Spock was first officer and Kirk was able to jump into the big chair. Really?
  

• Biggest WTF Moment: Towards the end of Star Trek, the viewer suddenly realizes that there will be no time-traveling to undo the damage done by the Romulans. Count on the guy behind Lost to come up with the mind-@#$# moment of the summer.

• Best Summer Movie Thus Far: Star Trek, easily. Wolverine was a fun movie and was better than the reviewers suggested, but a tragic origin movie is simply not going to be as enjoyable. Plus Star Trek did a great job of giving each of the characters key moments. The new "Bones" was phenomenal, the chemistry was great among the players.

• Biggest Disappointment: Hearing that the director and star of the new Terminator movie contemplated killing off John Connor and letting the machines win. So much for the franchise. Will eventually see the movie, but much less enthused now.

• 2nd Biggest Disappointment: Didn't get a chance to see Up yet.

• June's Best Hope: Land of the Lost, with Year One also promising to bring the funny. The next Transformer movie might be fun, might be a lot of noise. The downside of my trip to Europe will be that next month's movie posts will be longer on speculation and less on actually seeing the movies.