11 December 2005
A Movie You’re Not Likely To See: Aeon Flux

Filed under Movies

This is a post in a series on movies that perform below expectations at the box office, causing them to quietly disappear to the bargain DVD section in a few years time.

It’s not that I have a problem with the lead protaganist, Aeon Flux, in the movie of the same name, being believable. It’s that I have a problem with the remainder of the word she lives in being believable. Even in a fractured society set amist the “perfect” last city of a virus-ravaged Earth, Aeon Flux is a flimsy film that tries too little to do too much.

It wasn’t surprising to me to see the writers of Aeon Flux also had a hand in writing The Tuxedo, a modest success for Jackie Chan. Both films share a decided emptiness when it comes to their most-publicized feature: the fight scenes. Charlize Theron trained for months, working with trampoline experts from Cirque du Soleil, but the film dices and slices its way through these scenes. The directors for Aeon Flux and The Tuxedo were new-comers to the chair, so I wonder how much they thought it was appropriate to deviate from the flimsy edit-filled script that was presented to them. It may not surprise you either that MTV, the long-standing champion of the quick-cut and edit-fest, helped release this film through the MTV Films name, a subsidary of Paramount.

Where mediocre fight scenes the only problem facing Aeon Flux, the movie wouldn’t be so bad. But Flux doesn’t -or can’t – translate its world from the cartoon or comic books well. Plot holes muck up the action, and there’s just a general state of confusion washing over viewers while the credits roll. The futuristic world inhabited in Aeon Flux may look pretty, but it’s not enough to make up for the ugliness – or just plain dreariness – of the people who live in it.

 ::  Adam College