Aeon Flux (Special Collector's Edition)

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Product Description
A ruthlessly efficient 25-century assassin fights to free her people from totalitarian rule in earths last living city. Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 08/21/2007 Starring: Charlize Theron Sophie Okonedo Rating: Pg13

Amazon.com
Like the animated series it's based on, Aeon Flux is the kind of sci-fi that's best appreciated by the MTV generation. It's a serious attempt at stylized, futuristic action/adventure (the title character, played by Charlize Theron, is essentially a female James Bond for the cyberpunk era) and taken for what it is, it's not all that bad. The action takes place in the year 2415, four centuries after a virus nearly decimated the human race, leaving only five million survivors in a utopian city called Bregna. Aeon belongs to the Monicans, a secret rebel resistance force that is struggling to destroy the Goodchild regime led by its namesake, Trevor Goodchild (Martin Csokas), the ruler of Bregna and a descendant of the man who found a cure for the deadly virus. As instructed by the Handler (Frances McDormand, gamely playing along in ridiculous sci-fi regalia), Aeon is assigned to assassinate Goodchild, but there are deeper secrets to be discovered, and conspiracies to be foiled. This leads director Karyn Kusama (who fared much better with her debut feature Girlfight) to indulge in all sorts of routine action and fast-paced gunplay, but the elusive pleasures of Aeon Flux are mostly found in the sleek athleticism of Theron and costar Sophie Okonedo (as a fellow Monican), who commit themselves 100% to roles that are dramatically flat yet physically dynamic. Other highlights include Aeon's high-tech gadgetry (including an eyeball that doubles as a microsocope) and the amusing sight of Pete Postlethwaite in a costume resembling a construction-site disposal tube, but Flux fans may wonder what happened to the surreal, chromium sheen future that gave the MTV series its visionary appeal. As a live-action feature, Aeon Flux is a miscalculated exercise in cheesy style and dour tone, but it's entertaining enough to earn a small cadre of admirers. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews: Read 193 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Fantastic utopia with a slick heroine March 28, 2006
103 out of 126 found this review helpful

I had no idea I would love this move as much simply because I heard it got some bad reviews, I'm not a Chalize Theron fan and I have never watched the original cartoon. Man I was wrong, to heck with all the negative rubbish, I love it!

The film itself is pure fantasy captured on the screen. I felt transported to another world for the time it took me to absorb the story and on a minor vain note I ended up loving Aeon's hairdo- do, it was awesome!

Aeon is the equivalent of a bounty hunter in this movie, as she is a part of rebel group called the Monicans. She has a secret mission to kill Goodchild, the chairman who oversees the last surviving place called Bregna as he rules with other scientists. Since 99% of the population was killed by a virus, he is in charge and Aeon with her rebellion are about to change that.

What I loved, other than the fantastic costumes and surreal landscapes was the twists and turns in the story! This reminded me of those books I read and loved, when you didn't really know who the bad guy was and that was really going on. You must pay attention as a lot goes! Aeon and Goodchild are caught in a game of cat and mouse and it was enticing to see how they were connected and what the truth would do.

The twist start when Aeon if faced with fleeting memories of a previous life that keep her from fulfilling her mission and as the truth is revealed to her, she changes the future of Bregna with the equivalent of taking the bottom block of the foundation out. She lets all the skeletons loose as she jumps, shots, cartwheels, slinks through the night, paralyzes and disarms army men and fights for the truth of her and her people.

As I said, I'm not a die hard fan, I've never even seen the series and I absolutely let the movie swallow my brain and possess my interest till the end credit. I loved it, cant wait to own the DVD so I can pop it in when I have a sweet tooth for some sweet , eccentric and off-the-wall action.

3 out of 5 stars

What the...? December 4, 2005
53 out of 108 found this review helpful

The main problem with this movie is that it makes the mistake in thinking that everyone is familiar with the series or story. I didn't know that this movie was a live version of an animated series until after I saw the movie. For me personally, it took too long to explain what the heck was going on. Who was who and what was what. When Trevor explains about some disease that left the world sterile and the whole cloning thing, I was like oh, okay...but it still didn't explain who the heck was the redhead speaking in everyone's ear and dispatching orders. It's definitely not Catwoman 2, but I still feel that there are some vital pieces of this story on the cutting room floor. So it was good, but not good. Go figure.

1 out of 5 stars

I Shake My Head and Ask, "Why Is This So Insipid?" June 30, 2006
32 out of 45 found this review helpful

First off, no comparisons between the film and the MTV cartoon. They're related, inexorably; you draw your own, deeply personal parallels and comparisons. Me, I think it's irrelevant.

Second, I liked the supporting character casting. How great to see Frances McDormand outside of a Coen Brothers movie, with that wicked red hair--very cool. Really enjoyed seeing Pete Postlethwaite in this, despite the old-guy make-up and prosthetics. It's always so great to hear his voice, and look into those deep, sincere eyes, set inside that contradictory mug. And Johhny Lee Miller. It took me the ending credits to finally tag him as "Trainspotting's" Sick Boy, and I enjoyed him in this work.

And that's the extent of my enjoyment. My only comment upon this film's conclusion was that I'm glad I didn't pay to see it in a theater.

The Theron costuming was ridiculous, strikingly unsexy and contradictory to the story. She's attacking one of the most closely guarded facilities in the city, at night, and she's wearing an all-white bodysuit. The hair is distracting, looking like a despondent Alfalfa most of the time.

Overall, the F/X weren't inspiring or impressive, not at all. I mean, seriously, the jungle landscape at the end looks like that super-cheezy Montezuma pyramid backdrop painting at the end of "From Dusk 'Til Dawn." The chicky fights look exactly like what they are: gymnastics-on-wire, all spinning and floating.

She's the best agent ever, yet she's constantly in need of everyone's help to get her out of jams and to help her complete her mission. Everyone fears her, but it seems she can't get anything done.

She's the greatest agent ever, yet her baby sister knows all about her activities as a rebel. How's that for solid operational security?

The Council has surveillance everywhere--everywhere!--and yet Aeon and her partner infiltrate the inner sanctum without any real problem, just more sexy wire-gymnastics. And not one alarm goes off; no guards are alerted. Seems they don't even have cameras to monitor these incredibly sensitive areas.

At the end, Aeon, Trevor, and evil brother Oren all get shot, but the dozens and dozens and dozens of evil guards/troopers never land a shot on any one of them. All three main characters go down, heavily wounded, until the script tells them to get up, run, and do something conclusive. The evil guards manage to kill all three Monican snipers, hundreds of feet away, but when it comes time to shoot down either Trevor or Aeon, they're predictably incapable; it's just sad, stock, laughable Hollywood pan-n-slow-mo of Aeon in her cool outfit with the casings spinning, mowing them down as they stand pretty for her.

And Aeon destroys the Relicle. How is it that in 400+ years, no one, no rebel had ever boarded it before? Seemed to be relatively easy, again with no security, no monitoring whatsoever. How is it they'd never shot it down, since weapons and training don't seem to be a problem for the rebels? How is it no one else knows what its functions are? What absolutely stark raving idiot of a government chief executive chose to store the collected DNA repository of all living human beings in a Goodyear blimp with gold taffeta trendrils flying in circles over the city? How is this a common-sensical security decision? I think an underground vault would be a smarter move.

And Aeon somehow has freed everyone because she's killed the DNA library and now everyone has to really die? Like just destroying the Relicle puts it all to rest? Hello, the DNA is standing around you in the city streets gawking at the spectacle, and the scientific knowledge to continue the cloning program is common. Yes, there's that long sought after regime change, but the only change in the dynamic is enlightened leadership allowing natural procreation, the path out of the dark and into a new dawn for humanity.

And the big wall gets all smashed down and there's that wild jungle outside. Gosh, I didn't get that symbolism at all. Say, why don't you just glue that symbol to a two-by-four and hit me over the head with it, so I'll really REALLY get the point.

Bottom line: This is not the cartoon--which was better in every way--and one shouldn't expect it to be. If you're looking for mindless violence, then you've got it, but there is a lot better and more original out there than this. If you want hard, reasonably logical sci-fi, this isn't it. If you're looking for ultra-sexy, then this won't scratch that itch either. But if you're a fanatically loyal Charlize fan, then this is just for you. And that's about it.

3 out of 5 stars

Not nearly as bad as I had been led to expect April 17, 2006
25 out of 29 found this review helpful

OK, so this is not a masterpiece, but this is not nearly as bad as I would have expected given the horrid reviews by both critics and moviegoers when it first came out. The real question, I believe, is not why people think this is so good, but why anyone imagines that the graphic novel and the MTV animated series based upon it were so great. In all three cases the basic story had plot holes you could drive an armada of eighteen-wheelers through, all three were based vastly more on style than substance, and all three were more about how it parsed visually rather than logically. No version of Aeon Flux could be honestly considered any kind of classic and I really can't privilege either of the previous versions over this one.

Once one gets past the fact that this doesn't have the tightest plot in the history of cinema and just concentrates on the visuals that was really all the previous two versions had going for it, this is actually a fairly pleasant film. Yeah, there were moments when I would flinch at the silliness of things, but, again, the same silliness afflicted the novel and animated series.

If there is a chameleon in the movies today, it is Charlize Theron. I find it nothing should of stunning the various physical types that she can play and I think she did a more than creditable job in this one. Her presence here is remarkable of only because she truly is a first rate actress, capable of a wide variety of roles. She can do action films, dramas, Sci-fi, and comedy, and could probably do other kinds of films as well if called upon to do so. She looks good as Aeon, nothing like the previous two versions, but then Aeon in those incarnations looked, in my opinion, rather ridiculous. Since no actresses who are 6'2 and have measurements of 32-16-30 were available, one has to settle for someone like the lovely Ms. Theron. The greatest testament to her abilities comes from the fact that in the same period of time this film came out, NORTH COUNTRY was released for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and she appeared in ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT in an extraordinary role for which she could very well be nominated and win an Emmy (you heard it here first) as the "special" British female Rita. As many will know, Theron, who is a very good athlete, did as many of her stunts as possible.

I thought the basic story, as long as one doesn't try to poke too many holes in the plot (an easy thing to do), was fun. I put no spoiler warnings here so I won't go into the plot, but the basic premise has a kind of Philip K. Dick quality twist on things, where reality isn't as real as it seems. Nonetheless it is impossible to completely ignore the essential silliness of so many things in the novel/series/movie. The superfluous athleticism is only one of these. Why the endless back flips, not only when they are nonfunctional but when they would be actual distractions? For instance, when Aeon jumps to grab one of the things dangling from the ship that hovers the city she does a full somersault on her way down. How in the world could that help things? And why do fifty feet of somersaults instead of simply sprinting? A one legged person could out hop someone doing back flips or somersaulting. You can contrast this with the action sequences in another fairly recent film, THE BOURNE SUPREMACY. What makes Matt Damon's action sequences so refreshing is that in every instance he does the absolute minimum number of moves to be effective. It makes Bourne come across as the effective killing machine that he is supposed to be. Here, as in the novel and series, Aeon comes across as an extravagant wind up toy. And one of my pet peeves: breaking necks. I took quite a bit of martial arts and in grappling classes actually was trained in the ways that one can break a neck, mainly so that you can be on the defensive of it happening to you. On a host of shows and in movies there has developed an intensely dumb way of doing this, which apparently consists of pushing the chin off to one side. Trust me, you can't break a neck this way. (My beloved series BUFFY and ANGEL were two of the worse at perpetuating this method of neck breaking.) OK, this is nitpicking, but I state it as an example of the way the film starts falling apart if you pick at it. But, again, the same was true of the novel and series. It's not like the silliness suddenly started with the movie.

So, I recommend this, especially to fans of Sci-fi, as long as you don't expect a tautly thought out story. What you get is a host of gorgeous images, a compelling main character portrayed by the lovely Charlize Theron, and a pretty interesting visual representation of the future. I've seen worse and I've definitely seen better but I think a tolerant fan will find more than a little to enjoy in it.

5 out of 5 stars

"Flux" Off June 25, 2006
18 out of 27 found this review helpful

This is my most favorite movie of 2005; a true dream on the silver screen. Being a huge fan of the world of "Aeon Flux" I found this incarnation to be a great hommage to the classic Aeon Flux character. While the story was "nothing new", it worked well with the characters and gave Aeon and Trevor a back history that had been previously left blank. Charlize's performance was wonderful as well; Ms. Theron filled out that her suit like a true champ.

The true beauty of the film was the art direction. The world of Bregna was truly realized in true life. It's insistance on using natural beauty over industrial was a true genius to the art team. And major props to the costume team.

The extra on the DVD are also well done. With lots of featurettes for the fan in all of us to indulge and enjoy over and over again. I won't hold my breath for "Aeon Flux 2" but at least I have this gem to treasure.

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