“The actors you love and the movies you’ve actually seen,” has become the mantra for this year’s MTV Movie Awards. After this year’s Academy Awards consisted of movies almost completely unfamiliar to most of the show’s viewers, MTV is not exactly wrong on this one. Even comedian Daniel Tosh used a solid chunk of time on his Comedy Central television show Tosh.0 to make fun of the Oscar nominees for Best Picture, announcing during almost all of them that he never even bothered to watch it.
The commercials for this year’s awards began about a month ago, featuring Rebel Wilson and Channing Tatum driving in a car. Wilson has been chosen to be this year’s host. Already announced to hand out golden popcorn awards are stars such as Zac Efron, Steve Carell, Seth Rogen, Danny McBride, Melissa McCarthy, Chris Pine, Zoe Saldana, Zachary Quinto, Chris Rock, Adam Sandler and Amanda Seyfried.
This year a new category has been announced: Best New Hero. Those up to be the first to win this award are Iron Man, Snow White, Batman, Bilbo Baggins, the Hulk and Catwoman. Unlike the rest of the awards, which viewers can vote for on mtv.com, you have to use social media to vote for your favorite Hero. In tweets and Instagram captions, use these special hashtags to get your votes in: #voteironman, #votesnowwhite, #votebatman, #votebilbo, #votehulk and #votecatwoman.
Other awards viewers can vote for online are Best Fight, Best Kiss and Best Shirtless performance, along with the originals such as Best Male and Female Performance and Movie of the Year. Movie of the Year nominees are as follows: Marvel’s The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, Django Unchained, Silver Linings Playbook and Ted. Of all of these options, the only movies nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards was Silver Linings Playbook and Django Unchained, neither of which took the Oscar.
Last year, MTV gave the “Trailblazer” award to Emma Stone, who has always been known for her out-of-the-box comedy and her ability to stand out as an actress. This year the award will be presented to Emma Watson, who was able to take the role of Hermione to incredible heights throughout the Harry Potter film series, then stepped off the scene and into the role of Sam in last year’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
Another award to be given out at this year’s Movie Awards is the Comedic Genius Award. The first-ever Comedic Genius Award will be given to Will Ferrell, who has managed to keep the world laughing since he first demonstrated his comedic sketch-comedy skills on Saturday Night Live in the mid-1990s.
The show will begin at 9 p.m. on Sunday, April 14. Although 2012’s MTV Video Music Awards were less exciting than those of the past, there’s always hope that 2013’s Movie Awards will bring some fun to the table. If anything, at least it will be a way for movies less recognized at the Academy to get their chance in the spotlight. All fans can appreciate that.

By Danielle Taus