Aeon Flux

Ah, hell.

jrs will come unglued if he sees that. He's already posted a link to the trailer, and you know how he gets when someone else tries to steal his thunder.

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my apologies i didnt see this trailer posted anywhere, for anyone coming here pls refer to JRS's link.

No need to apologize. J doesn't 'own' trailer linking.

Everything's cool.

yay to my supporters! apologies for such a uselessly late reply, been out for medical. but yeah, what with Cartoon Network growing from airing only family-safe things to airing Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Adult Swim, and the Family Guy being back on tv, why can we not have the fabulous oddity that is Aeon return? Again, I repeat:

PETER CHUNG IS STILL ALIVE! Do not relegate him to Chronicles of Riddick straigh to DVD vehicles! Expose his Aeonic glory! Revive the show!

oh if they did that i would cry. do you think they could get the original voiceactors? cuz, that's like, important.

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They're trying to revamp the show.

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I want the dvd....

I'm reserving judgement til I see the movie. It may be great or it may suck. Who knows? I remember my nephew telling me the Godzilla of 1998 was going to be the greatest movie of all time. I said perhaps he should wait til it comes out. When it did, he hated it. He's a Godzilla purist doncha know.

But I haven't seen the MTV version and I'm looking forward to Theron in the role. It's great when quality actors like Theron and Angelina Jolie do action/scifi movies. I mean, Matrix was great and Keanu Reeves was the lead fer God's sake! How much better might Aeon Flux be?

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Ok, I saw Aeon Flux today (against the advice of most critics.) I didn't think it was horrible. Most reviews I've read have been abysmal. I don't agree. IMO, it's not a 1/10; it's closer to a 6/10.

But (and this may be why I didn't loathe it) I never saw the original MTV animated Aeon Flux. I had nothing to compare to. In some ways, it seemed different and fresh to me. And that's always a good thing.

It's not saying much but I preferred it over The Island. Flux was a better balance of "thought" and action. I was mentally engaged throughout the movie, unlike The Island which devolved into mindless action.

From what I understand, the MTV series was fairly graphic and yet this movie was PG13. The producers may have lost their audience by taming it down enough to avoid an R. They may have taken too much of the hard edge off. Sin City should have been proof that an R can succeed when it's warranted.

Charlize Theron... well, she's beautiful and looks good in all her outfits and she moves well. But she's a big girl and her features are somewhat soft. Not sure that's the right hard edge image for the role. But mentally, I think she's ok for the part. She has an edge and slightly dangerous quality that's believable. She's not all tall good looks and pass the bon bons.

As a virgin to the Aeon Flux story, I was entertained. It was no Bladerunner masterpiece but I don't feel cheated out of an hour and a half.

I also saw Aeon Flux opening day and I have to say after watching the animated series (the few episodes I've seen, I've been meaning to get the DVD's) I was sadly disappointed. I didn't even have to pay attention to the critics (though I did) to realize that this movie was a big miss. Yet it comes in second under Goblet of Fire in the box office with over 12 million!

Sigh, though Charlize Theron's acting wasn't bad it didn't make up for a poor script, confusing dialogue and scenes that didn't make sense. I've though up a list of things that stuck out:

1. In the first action scene where Aeon is killing guards, why is she wearing all white. I maybe figured that the building was white and she was trying to blend in, but to the audience she really stuck out. It didn't seem very stealthy (though it could have been the fact she had a "dinner date" with her sister).
2. The line "You have no right to question his authority," the scene after the first scene with Goodfellow. The members are on a comity that's what they're there for. To question Goodfellows judgement and to work together to make decisions that benefit the society.
3. The fact that Scafandra was so ugly, lol just kidding with that one.
4. The fight between Scafandra and Aeon Flux. Why didn't Aeon pick up her gun immediatly, it was sitting on the window ledge?
5. 2 really gross moments:
   

• When Aeon was trying to heal Goodfellow's wounds with what appeared to be dead skin from the back of her neck and boiling on his skin. I just assumed this was from the animated series and let it go. But even if I saw it in the animated series I'd also be confused.
• When it looked like Aeon was digging into her bones to communicate with Scafandra in the end fighting scene.

6. And lastly, one thing that really bugged me about the end.
None of the Monicans would have died if they had
simply...oh I don't know...brought more ammo?

Anyways, this is just my opinion and I'm most likely going to get scolded for this. But I'll take it in stride.

Not at all. Most critics and probably the public too, agree with you.

These may be reasons that I enjoyed it (sort of)...I was in a decent mood at the time, I like Theron, I like this type of movie and I didn't see the original.

Regarding decent mood: Many people consider Empire Strikes Back as the best of the Star Wars series. I saw it when I had a toothache. I wouldn't have enjoyed winning the lottery that day.

But all this reminds me of something else. Female kick butt action characters have become common in recent years. One of the best depictions of a female warrior IMO was the girl in the final segment of the 1981 animated movie Heavy Metal. If they could duplicate that in live action, I'd buy a large popcorn.

The movie runs at the cinema here for about a week or so but i didnt really bother to c it so eagerly; anyway, the movie its very far from what i expected; just a typical action movie combined with some features of a sc- fiction; all mixed up, but nothing too concrete; so, i must say id didnt really enjoy it;i put this movie to one of my categories which consists of movies made only for spending somehow ur boring time- when u really dont know what the hell to do; so its just a way of losing ur precious time form ur short life.
still i may admit that some scenes and stunts were kinda good and maybe the soundtrack too but still not so impressive.
in a word nothing SPECIAL OR ORIGINAL.

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sooo, i saw it! aaand, yes, you're right, they took way too much of the hard edge off.

i agree that theron is beautiful, but yes, per my old comments, she is too tall and too-soft-faced. the most she can accomplish with being "hard" is that she's displeased with you or angry. she can do dangerous, but aeon wasn't just angry with a gun. the hardness of aeon was not simply anger but emotional aloofness - she did not appear to FEEL. that is far scarier than someone who is angry with you. you had to follow aeon's actions to figure out her feelings. theron is so obvious, and of course the plot so trite, that we never doubt how she feels about anything. i'm sorry, you would never have seen Aeon gasp and tussle with her emotions and Trevor like you do in the movie.

i'm not saying theron's acting is bad. i'm simply saying they chose an actress with a certain skillset that could not be applied to the emotional performance required by the character of Aeon. it'd be like having Jennifer Aniston try to play Amelie. Sure, Aniston can try to be youthful, sweet, and girlish. But uh, would she sell it? I think not.

reservoir drought, to your points -

- yes, she should not have been wearing white. this is another example of the director and cinematography being more preoccupied with sleek packaging than the story. no assassin on earth is going to drop into an enemy compound wearing white unless everyone else is wearing white, too.

- yes, in the fight between Sithandra and Aeon, the Real Aeon would have a) struck Sithandra and disappeared immediately with the gun or b) killed Sithandra with the gun without blinking. Movie Aeon had to perform a pretty battle and show us angst about killing off someone she considered a friend. Real Aeon knows better than to trust anyone, let alone a friend.

- gross moments - a) it wasn't dead skin they were medicinal thingies she carried on her person for wounds such as these. if you look closely it's synthetic looking, not dead skin. b) they briefly mention that Monacans take a "pill," through which they communicate. the assumption is that in order to communicate with Sithandra, Aeon was triggering her pill (not scratching her bones - your bones aren't that close to the surface ). Why she needed to dig into her skin is beyond me.

cinemaniac - you are right about nothing special or original. which is the crime, because the very core and content of the Real Aeon Flux is special and original. and the film clearly isn't.

i shall address these burning issues in my review ...

So I went and saw it and, as a fan of the series, was disappointed. As a fan of scifi and kickbutt women, regardless of the series, I was not so disappointed, but it still wasn't special or particularly worth my $8.50. The movie covers some standard requirements, is aesthetically pleasing, carries very little depth, and pulls really really hard on democratic heartstrings to carry itself off.

As for kick-butt females, you can find better someplace else. There is nothing particularly interesting about anything Aeon does in this movie. She's supposed to be fighting for a cause, discovers the cause may be blind, switches sides, runs off with the enemy, is a "chosen one" who helps wake up her world. It's a mix of needing a plot (because, admittedly the series didn't get to fully develop its plot), needing to sell the story, and needing to sell the heroine. But in the end, it's all mediocre and pretty.

The core missing here that would have pleased fans and newcomers alike is focusing not on why Aeon does what she does, but on the imminent danger and confusion of the future she lives in and how she gets through it. The constant double crossing, the mistrust of everyone including those she's known a long time, the ambivalence that surrounds everything and everyone. How she perpetually risks her life never knowing if it's even for a good reason, but determined to succeed anyway. She does it with sass and arrogance, bared teeth and selfishness. Not with wounded martyrdom.

But in this flick, we know the minute Aeon appears that she is never really scared of any bullet flying her way, that she's "the best," that she believes in what she's doing for someone else, that she has people she cares about. All of these are tokens for the story telling that basically remove the spine out of Aeon. None of us, fans or newcomers, want to watch that.

The only thing the movie got right was an occasional capturing of the future's Essence of Weird. The biological creepiness of tools, defense systems, and creatures. It showed the the Monicans vs. the Breens. But there is more to the world of Aeon than that. That's what's depressing. The world of Aeon is unique and original, industrial, war-torn, chaotic and demented. But the movie wasn't. That's a big sign they didn't really capture the world at all.

I think it's best to say that the flick was inspired by the Aeon Flux series, and not an adaptation of the actual show or characters. Why? Because the relationships shown are completely changed and reinterpreted from what they were in the show. Core character traits are removed or replaced. Behaviors that would never have been shown by the characters in the series are shown in the movie. These people just aren't the characters. They may look like them, but they don't act like them, or think like them.

Case in point would be Spiderman. I think Spiderman shows the development in personality and character of our hero, and faithfully renders how he came to be what he became later. It would be a successful adaptation, although live action.

Alas, we don't get that with Aeon Flux. Instead, Aeon is having flashbacks that rouse emotions, suddenly has blood relatives, and she's clutching Trevor who never shows anything but sweet philanthropic scientific tendencies and a deep love and longing for Aeon. He's got a demented brother who has to be stopped. What the hell?

The point of Trevor was he was a megalomaniac, who believed in his military state. In the movie, he thinks it's "temporary." The Real Trevor believed it was ideal. He believed Aeon had to die and was trying to find a scientific way to create his own Aeon so he could play around with her in dark naughty rooms. His love was a sick love, and she knew it. She was cold and spindly with him, liked to tease him, and he liked to tease her. He liked to try and kill her just to see how she'd try and get away. They were cruel to one another on purpose. They knew they could never be together, and would never try. They loved and hated each other anyway. This was a key element to the Aeon world, and it's completely missing from the film.

This key element boils down to one key trait of everything Aeon that was nowhere in sight: Ambivalence. Aeon is a character that is about questioning. Is it ok to kill? Just this once, to defend something, or more than once, as needed? Do you love this person who is sick and cruel? Sometimes? Never? Would you shoot someone you've known for five years without asking questions? Of course? Never? Aeon was perpetually placed in sticky situations and always found her long-legged creepy way through it. That was what we loved about her, that she stayed true to herself and her idea of wrong and right, and no one else's.

The movie forgot that, and forgot Aeon. And ended up making a blah film while it was at it.

amazing!

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