The MTV Movie Awards nominees: The only place where The Social Network could lose to Twilight: Eclipse

By Sean O'Neal | May 3, 2011 | 5:14pm

Aux Features Film

Thanks to its many months of distance from actual awards season, and its ambitions to be nothing more than a holding pen for the squealing preteen progeny of various producers and agents, the MTV Movie Awards doesn’t follow the lockstep consensus of most other critical bodies. It’s the “fun” film awards ceremony, where it can nominate undeserving famous people just to entice them to show up (and not get shit for it like the Golden Globes), and even make up bizarrely contrived categories just to do so. It’s also the only place you’ll find Best Picture contenders like Black Swan and The Social Network battling it out with The Twilight Saga: Eclipse—and very possibly losing—or any recognition at all offered to the latest movies from Ashton Kutcher or Adam Sandler. Hey, what do you expect: It's mostly a set-piece for various would-be viral video stunts from Jim Carrey or Sacha Baron Cohen, or for hosts like Jason Sudeikis to remind everyone they have a movie coming out. (Horrible Bosses, this July!)

Anyway, for all its vaunted unpredictability, there are quite a few expected names on this year’s list of MTV Movie Awards nominees: Pretty much anyone who could get recognized for Twilight or Harry Potter did, in several permutations, and they even found a way to cram Justin Bieber and Zac Efron in there. However, for all its familiarity, there’s also a brand-new category—Best Line From A Movie—that pits Jesse Eisenberg’s “If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you’d have invented Facebook” against Justin Timberlake’s “A million dollars isn’t cool…” riff from The Social Network, leading us to wonder if Aaron Sorkin will show up to collect in person, and whether the inevitable deafening screams of his many teenage girl fans will then tear a hole in the Gibson Theater. But of course, he may not get the chance if you aid us in our personal quest: to snare a victory for Grown-Ups’ “I want to get chocolate wasted” instead. Vote for the disarming innocence of youth here.