MTV held its annual Movie and TV Awards last night. The awards are voted on by fans which means that we tend to see more popular films take home the prizes. The fact that awards are given for "Best Kiss" and "Best Fight" certainly doesn't hurt either.
This year's Best Fight award was given to to the battle between Carol Danvers and Minn-Erva from Captain Marvel. Brie Larson was there to accept the award, but in a classy move, she didn't accept the award alone. The actress brought her trainers and Captain Marvel stunt doubles, Joanna Bennett and Renae Moneymaker with her. Then, she stood aside, and let each of them say a few words. Check out the speech below.
This is an incredibly classy move from Brie Larson. While it's great to see Brie Larson win an award for the fight scene, the actress knows that she didn't do it alone and she wants to be sure the appropriate people get recognized. These two women helped train her for the fight in question, and in at least some of the shots of that fight scene, it's probably one of them, and not Larson, anyway.
As Joanna Bennett says here, it's rare that stunt people get recognized for the work that they do, all the more reason that it was a wonderful gesture for Larson to make sure that the MTV audience saw all the people behind the award winning fight. Hopefully, they can get a couple more of those popcorn bucket statues so that both of these women can go home with an award as well. It was clearly a team effort between the three to make Captain Marvel work.
The most prominent award given for stunt performance is probably the Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble award given out by the Screen Actors Guild. That award has been given out since 2007. None of the other major movie awards have a specific award for stunt work.
There have been numerous calls for the Academy Awards to recognize stunt work in some way. As of yet, that hasn't happened. Hopefully more moves like the one Brie Larson made here will help that cause. Stuntpeople should absolutely receive an Oscar for their work. They are skilled as anybody else on either side of the camera in what they do, and cinema simply wouldn't be able to function, especially in the modern blockbuster landscape, without them.
There's a good chance we'll be seeing these three working together again. While we don't know what the Marvel Cinematic Universe has planned for Captain Marvel, considering the movie made $1 billion, a sequel seems all but guaranteed. When it happens we can be fairly sure that these three will work together once again to bring Captain Marvel back to life.
