This year’s iteration of the MTV Movie Awards was the first to carry many significant changes. First off, it’s now the MTV Movie & TV Awards now, with television shows now included for accolades with their own categories. Another change is the removal of gender-specific awards; now actors and actresses together will go head to head with each other to win one or more Golden Popcorn statues as they could.
It’s thanks to these changes that TV shows and performers can now share the spotlight with films where MTV is concerned. Now the power duo of the Movie and TV Awards is not the best actor and the best actress, but a “Movie of the Year” and a “Show of the Year.” This year it’s “Beauty and the Beast” and “Stranger Things.”
Laughs and laudations
The show, held at LA’s Shrine Auditorium, began with an MTV Awards tradition, a film spoof.
Quite obviously it was of “Beauty and the Beast” with the Beast’s role given to this year’s host Adam DeVine from “Workaholics” and nominee/presenter Hailee Steinfeld (“The Edge of Seventeen”) as Belle. Josh Gad who plays LeFou (and a nominee himself) also made an appearance in the number, which even ended up with the set in flames at one point.
As stated earlier, “Beauty and the Beast” was a shoo-in for “Movie of the Year,” while the first ever MTV “Show of the Year” award went to the hit Netflix series “Stranger Things,” which is up for a second season on October 31. It also captured three other awards, one being “Best Actor in a Show” for the cute and talented Millie Bobby Brown, who gave a rather emotional acceptance speech.
The Disney powerhouse film meanwhile also took “Best Actor in a Movie” for Emma Watson, who was gob-smacked by the intro parody of "Beauty and the Beast." To celebrate her win of the gender-neutral award, she also praised her category presenter, the non-binary actor Asia Kate Dillon from “Billions” and “Orange is the New Black.”
Other winners
Another big awardee of the evening was the “Fast and Furious” film franchise which received an MTV Generation Award, the ceremony’s “lifetime achievement” variant.
Actor Hugh Jackman and child actress Dafne Keen easily aced “Best Due” thanks to their awesome chemistry in “Logan.”
Unique MTV categories for this year are “Trending” (Channing Tatum as Beyoncé in “Lip Sync Battle”), “Best American Story” (“Black-ish”) and “Next Generation” (Daniel Kaluuya – “Get Out”), where both movies and shows were in consideration.
Horror flick “Get Out” had the largest award sweep with seven, while “Stranger Things” led the TV shows with four Golden Popcorns.
