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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Aeon Flux

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00:16 / 04.12.05

a more cerebral kind of "proper" science fiction story

So entirely unlike AEON FLUX in any way, then.

Keith, like a scientist

14:15 / 04.12.05

Well, yes.

And no.

Anyway, I saw it last night, and it was fairly close to what AICN lead me to believe. One of those science fiction movies that were focused on science-centered story. The questions raised with the science of the movie formed the basis for the characters actions and the story in general (unlike Star Wars, for example).

It was like Gattaca in the way that the general populace found Gattaca to be too weird and strange to like, but it was a fairly smart SF movie that is thought of quite fondly by fans of the genre. Aeon Flux is like that. Quite bizarre in places. It pulls off the weirdness of the cartoon in some ways, mostly related to the acting style.

Unfortunately it suffers from some fairly bad action sequences, terrible music, and a general phoniness to the entire thing. Story-wise, though, I quite enjoyed it after the first 20 minutes.

I can't say I loved it, but I don't think it was terrible, and I can certainly understand why a movie studio would be unhappy with it's lack of widespread appeal. It's actually quite impressive for a movie made by the twin idiots of MTV and Paramount.

18:24 / 05.12.05

Never mind the acting and directing, this is 2005 we don't need that shit- what were the SFX like? Schizandra's handy feet? The carnivorous grass? Those ballbearings in the trailer looked really cool...

Keith, like a scientist

18:50 / 05.12.05

the ballbearings were pretty cool.

the effects were... ok. most of the cool sfx stuff was the subtle "future" things like the cellphone in your ear, or the peel-away skin bandages.

oh, and all the secret communication by drugs. the resistance people pass their secrets by ingesting these chemicals that allow them to communicate with their "handler" person (hey, she's got crazy hair! it's the future! ahem).

Our Lady Has Left the Building

18:28 / 11.07.06

So, I've never seen the cartoon so have nothing to compare it with. I thought it was rubbish, but just to clarify: Aeon is superhuman right? She's more Superwoman than just Batwoman right? They set up the premise of this future world then forget to explain what Aeon is.

What was the significance of the bug in the eye moment?

18:44 / 11.07.06

The bug in the eye was a reference to the Tv series's opening, which did feature a blue eye catching a fly with the eyelids before the words AEON FLUX appear on screen

Since the seires featured self-contained (sort of) episodes with slightly different backstories and characters' personality and/or motivation, I tend to think about the movie as one of those self-contained episodes, but not one of the best ones (the removal of any sort of sexual and/or mental "deviance" - pratically a trademark of the seires - kinda ruined the purpose. I strongly recomend yoy get the DVD, if you can.

Aeon Flux is slightly super-human, yes, but not "super-naturally" super-human. It was more like she was an extremely well-trained and well-equiped elite spy from the future...

23:41 / 11.07.06

The defining element missing from the film was that there should always be moments that reveal your inner perv, by establishing something clearly sex(ual), that is immediately revealed to not be, and then establishes something traditionally nonsexual in a way that makes it totally so.

That was a seriously underperved movie.

Ambiguity was not a friend to that film, whereas the original shorts were nothing without it. The lack of edges, the vagueness of boundaries, allowed the original material(s) to take on all sorts of interesting forms, like looking at clouds or listening to recordings made on a busy street. The movie tried to plot clouds and then reshape them to fit the plot they'd come up with. Like, trying to turn Clive Barker's silent short version of 'Salome' into Schumacher's 'Batman Forever' without the batnipples and slashy Riddler on Wayne bits.

Which isn't to say you can't, but why? Why in hell's infernally bright name would you? Aside from the money.

20:16 / 12.07.06

Aeon is superhuman right? She's more Superwoman than just Batwoman right?

No, she's not. To use your analogy, she's Batwoman, not Superwoman. Highly trained, funny costume, gadgets. No superpowers whatsoever. Just crazy ninja skills.

However, it's worth noting that, in the cartoon, everything is exaggerated and distorted and surreal, so Aeon doing a thousand and one totally absurd stunts during one of her kill-crazy adventures fits.

That was a seriously underperved movie.

I've been watching the animated series on DVD a lot lately, and while I remembered it being pervy, I thought that perhaps over time I had begun exaggerating the perviness level of the show. It certainly couldn't have been as pervy as I remembered it, right?

No, wrong, wrong, wrong. Perviest show I've ever seen. Actually pervier than I remembered it, and the perviness is so integral to the series in every way that I can't really fathom what the movie must be like without it.

Which isn't to say you can't, but why? Why in hell's infernally bright name would you? Aside from the money.

Pretty big caveat there, don't you think?

21:05 / 12.07.06

Judging from the pacing of that sentence, I think that was the point.

21:13 / 12.07.06

It's a shame that people discovering 'Aeon Flux' (will) probably move on to the movie, instead of just following Peter Chung over to 'Reign' or something much more 'in the vein of...'

And I still love the episode that took the over-obvious psychosexual love-violence underpinnings of Aeon and Goodchild and transliterated into an onscreen, jovial shout of: this is sexual frustration and dramatized sweaty angst because this whole world's totally hot for itself and can't admit! Because it's a special kind of genius that can take the subtext that's already too on the nose and dance in front of it, pointing and yelling, for an entire ep.

You think 'The X-Files' or 'Knots Landing' could do that? They couldn't even handle machines under a sheet and some wheezing bellows. Which, is probably why 'Mulholland Drive' became a movie instead of a weekly ABC television experience.

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