Johnny Depp Appeared At The VMAs And The Internet Has Thoughts

The MTV Video Music Awards were last night and the show is always good for some entertainment, even if MTV hasn’t necessarily been focused on music videos for years. Taylor Swift brought the house down, as she almost always does, but a lot of the interest in last night’s show came from a very strange place. Johnny Depp made his “comeback” performance, following a series of legal challenges, appearing as the MTV Moon Man, with his face projected into a floating spacesuit at various points during the night. 

As one might expect, the internet has a variety of thoughts regarding Johnny Depp’s return in such a public forum. Fans were thrilled. Those that were unhappy with the defamation Verdict were upset, and everybody was just plain weirded out by the whole thing. And it’s not hard to understand why, it was all very weird. Give it a look.

Johnny Depp would appear from time to time during the show, with his face projected into the spacesuit, because he wasn’t actually at the show. From there, he would make a random comment or bad joke, and then the show would move on. It was a strange way to stage a comeback to be sure. 

Some found the whole thing to be quite intentionally funny, but others found the humor to be more on the simply ridiculous side. While the VMAs have been the location for iconic and even historic moments in the past, the show has sometimes missed the mark and instead created moments that were more embarrassing that hilarious, and some people felt this was one of those. 

Of course, there were also people who took the moment a bit more seriously. Johnny Depp has just come out of a long legal battle with his ex-wife Amber Heard where accusations of defamation and abuse were flung at both sides. While Depp largely prevailed in the case, that has not cleared him of wrongdoing in the eyes of many, who felt Depp’s appearance was in bad taste, or at least would have been if it hadn’t been so silly.

Meanwhile, on the other side, there has always been a vocal contingent of fans who felt the accusations against Depp were untrue, and were glad to see him appear on the VMAs. Several of Depp’s jokes from “inside“ the spacesuit took aim at the recent publicity around him, including a jab that the only reason he was doing this was because he didn’t have many other options, though Depp has actually found plenty of work.

Needless to say Johnny Depp will continue to be a controversial figure. With the recent Depp/Heard verdict now under appeal, that’s probably not going to change anytime soon.