The 2012 MTV Movie Awards Nominees Make Us Feel Like We’re Stuck In 2011

The 2012 MTV Movie Awards nominees were announced today! But… don’t most of the movies nominated seem a bit old? Consider the choices for Movie of the Year:

Bridesmaids
The Hunger Games
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
The Help
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1

In fact, Bridesmaids and The Hunger Games have split up most of the nominations, with nods to Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy as well as Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson. And it just feels odd, because Bridesmaids was such a quintessential movie of 2011 and The Hunger Games is the first big blockbuster of 2012. Add to that the fact that Elle Fanning is being nominated for Breakthrough Performance for Super 8, and it just doesn’t line up.

What it is is just awkward timing: The MTV Movie Awards air on June 3, which means it naturally splits up the spring/summer movies, as opposed to the Oscars in January. Based on this cutoff, every year’s awards seems to reference the prior year of movies: 2011′s winners included Chloe Moretz for Kick-Ass and Emma Stone for Easy A even though each had at least three buzzworthy roles lined up by then.

However, Bridesmaids came out on May 13th, almost a month before the 2011 MTV Movie Awards. Especially because it had so much positive buzz and paid back on it tenfold, wouldn’t you have expected it to be automatically included in the 2011 awards? Again, awkward timing: Now that it’s been nearly a calendar year since the movie’s release, we haven’t thought about it much. And even though The Help came out in August, that horse was beaten to death thanks to the Oscars, and I just can’t imagine it picking up  yet another award. To compare these to The Hunger Games, which is obviously going to sweep the awards with this age group, just makes no sense.

Other nominations that made us go “huh,” even if the movies were released after last June:

Best Comedic Performance
Emma Stone, Crazy, Stupid, Love

Best On-Screen Transformation
Colin Farrell, Horrible Bosses

Best Fight
Tom Cruise vs. Michelle Nyqvist, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

Best Kiss
Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1

Best Gut-Wrenching Performance
Bryce Dallas Howard, The Help

You can check out the entire list here. Regardless, tune in on June 3rd at 9 p.m. EST to see if Bridesmaids and The Help stand a chance against The Hunger Games!

Photo: People