Movie Info
Movie Name: Æon Flux
Studio: Paramount Pictures/Lakeshore Entertainment/Valhalla Motion Pictures
Genre(s): Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Action/Adventure
Release Date(s): December 2, 2005
MPAA Rating: PG-13
I know how to strike a pose!
In 2011, a virus kills 99% of the population and leaves the last one percent fighting for survival. The Goodchilds save society and the survivors live in the walled city of Bregna. Æon Flux (Charlize Theron) is a member of the Monicans who are trying to free the people through espionage and their target is Trevor Goodchild (Marton Csokas) who leads the city. When Æon and her partner Sithandra (Sophie Okonedo) are sent to assassinate Trevor, Æon learns a secret that could change the course of Bregna and the future of humanity…and she’s not the only one who knows.
Directed by Karyn Kusama, Æon Flux is a sci-fi fantasy action film. The film is an live-action adaptation of the Peter Chung animated TV series which aired from November 30, 1991 to October 10, 1995 on MTV. The film was released to negative reviews and a poor box office return.
More of hands lady! (who also just happens to have the word “hand” in the middle of her name)
I didn’t watch Æon Flux when it aired on MTV though I did watch The Maxx which was also part of MTV’s animation block. Stylish looking and bizarre, it just wasn’t what I was looking for at the time. I decided to try Æon Flux the movie, but now the movie has me wishing I watched the show instead.
The movie’s plot is rather garbled. A lot of the surface things seem rather arbitrary and the core plot (aka the cloning and coup attempt) are revealed in strange ways that don’t help develop the story. The story has a lot of coldness built into it with characters and the director’s vision was twisted and reworked multiple times (the studio thought it was too art house) to take out plot points that seem important to telling the story.
Having seen a lot of imagery from Æon Flux, Charlize Theron doesn’t quite how I pictured the figure of Æon, and she is in general hurt by the rather bland script that comes with the film. Marton Csokas is a rather bland love interest, but I like Jonny Lee Miller in general. Pete Postlethwaite and Frances McDormand are underused in the film, and the story’s more interesting characters Sithandra (played by Sophie Okonedo) and Freya (played by Caroline Chikezie) don’t get enough screentime.
I hate you…I love you…oh, the conundrum!
The visuals of the film are interesting and a nice attempt to try to translate the unique looking visuals of the animated series to the screen. Sometimes there are direct adaptation (like the capturing of the fly) but mostly the film tries to get the utopia-dystopia feel by having a perfect (and sometimes deadly) city of perfection. Unfortunately, some of the fight scenes are rather poorly edited.
Æon Flux is a misfire, and it lets down a decent cast as a result. The story never develops and the visuals don’t really pay off as a result. It is the type of film where I’d like to see a version of the director’s vision be released just to see if it could have been a good movie. Æon Flux doesn’t seem to be something that anyone asked for.
