MTV Generation Award winners by year

The first Generation Award was given to Tom Cruise, who had been a movie star since the ‘80s at that point. And yet, since then he’s appeared in a whopping four “Mission: Impossible” movies. He already has a Lifetime Achievement Award in his back pocket, and he’s still out there doing crazy stunts and starring in massive box office hits.

Unlike Cruise, Jim Carrey isn’t as much of a movie star as he once was. Yet in the ‘90s, he was as big of a star as anybody! These days, he seems content to do paintings and occasionally act. Recently he starred in the TV series “Kidding.” But you can’t argue with Carrey getting this award if you take one look at his filmography. He was a hit maker but also had some great dramatic performances mixed in.

Myers isn’t just a Generation Award winner. He’s also hosted the MTV Movie Awards twice! In fact, he hosted it in 2008, the year after he won this award. Of course that was to promote the film “The Love Guru,” which basically ended Myers’ run as a film star. Hey, he’s still getting “Shrek” residuals.

MTV, like Netflix, loves Sandler. Many of us grew out of his sophomoric style of comedy after we left our teens. That being said, what is MTV’s target audience? Sandler spent the bulk of his career catering to the exact people who watch MTV. Naturally, it gave him a Generation Award.

Stiller is also a former MTV Movie Awards host, and he made many an appearance on the show as well as in comedy bits. He was a quintessential Gen-X star, and MTV was built for a Gen X audience. In the early ‘90s, stuff like “The Ben Stiller Show” and “Reality Bites” would have catered to the MTV audience. This was also a good year for Stiller to get this award. The year prior he came out with “Tropic Thunder.”

Bullock was a beloved actor for years by this point. She was a rom-com star but could do other stuff. She made fun comedies, she was in “Speed” and she won an Oscar for 2009’s “The Blind Side.” Granted, that felt like a “career achievement” Oscar in and of itself. At least MTV had the sense to simply give her a Lifetime Achievement Award instead of rewarding her for an iffy movie in which she plays the white savior.

If you were one kind of kid who watched MTV, you loved “Legally Blonde.” If you were another kind, you loved “Election.” Some liked both. No matter how you slice it, Witherspoon has been a delight, and a really talented actress, for a long time. Now she’s doing the whole prestige TV thing with “Big Little Lies,” but she can still sell a movie if she wants to.

Given what we know about Depp now, and some of the rumors and murmurs about his private life, MTV may regret this decision. That being said, based on his career, Depp was more than deserving of the award. His filmography is full of amazing movies. He was Edward Scissorhands, and somehow he made Captain Jack Sparrow work. Plus, this was before all of his movies were just him playing dress up with Tim Burton.

No knock on Foxx, but so far he has the weakest resume for a Generation Award of anybody who had won one up to 2013. He doesn’t have the best filmography, and did a lot of MTV viewers love his Oscar-winning work playing Ray Charles? On the other hand, he had been around for a while and even starred in his own TV show for years. He also did some music, so there’s that.

To think that once upon a time Wahlberg was the leader of a group called “The Funky Bunch” and was more known for his underwear ads than his acting. A lot has changed since then. Wahlberg has been one of the biggest actors in the world for a while now, and he had really picked up the pace by 2014 thanks to movies like “The Other Guys” and “The Fighter.” Yet does anybody who stars in a movie like “The Happening” deserve an honor like this?

Speaking of people who at one point would have seemed incredibly unlikely for a role like this. Downey Jr. spent years more known for his substance abuse issues and criminal past than his acting. By 2015, though, he was Iron Man. Downey spent years as the face of the biggest movie series in the world. He turned his life around, became a massive superstar and got himself a Generation Award.

Better late than never, eh? Smith seemingly would have been one of the first people to get one of these awards. Not only was he a huge star for years, but he also was in the sort of blockbuster films that appealed to MTV watchers of the ‘90s. The Fresh Prince and MTV had a lot of overlap. Maybe it felt like Smith was too young for a Lifetime Achievement Award before this point. At least he got it eventually.

Um…what? How do you give a Lifetime Achievement Award to a film franchise? Also, why the “Fast and the Furious” movies? Why not just give this award to Dwayne Johnson? Heck, even Vin Diesel would have been somewhat justifiable. Instead, a movie series about cars and heists and stuff got a Generation Award. It was really weird and perhaps even mars the whole award a bit.

What a quick rise for Pratt. Not all that long ago, he was a tertiary character on “Parks and Recreation.” By 2018,\ he was maybe the biggest movie star in the world. Suddenly, he was Star Lord, the voice of the main guy in “The LEGO Movie” and also the star of those “Jurassic World” movies that a lot of people are down on but still make a ton of cash. Plus, Pratt isn’t even 40 yet, so he has a lot of career left despite winning this career achievement award.