Aeon Flux Review (Spoilers)

[Durandal]

Okay, so I saw Aeon Flux this weekend. In short, it was a piece of shit. Considering the weather I had to drive through to get to the theatre, I think that's a generous rating. But here's the full review. And if anyone responds with "Well you didn't watch the TV show then!", it's an automatic "Shut the fuck up".

The movie's central character is Aeon. She's an über-assassin girl who's a part of a resistance to an oppressive regime. This regime rules over Bregna, the last city left on Earth after a disease wiped out 99% of the population, leaving only 7 million people on Earth. (My calculations show that wiping out 99% of the population on Earth would leave in excess of 60 million people, but math is the least of this movie's problems.) We're informed of this during the first frames of the movie. So right off the bat, I had an issue.

This plague took place around 2015. My question is simple. How the fuck did this disease spread? Did it travel on the backs of photons or something? Every major health organization was caught completely off-guard and couldn't quarantine major infection zones? The survivors were all in the same spot and could build a city?

All right, I'll give them the premise. It's a stupid premise, but I'll give it to them. Anyway, a scientist, Goodchild, manages to cure the disease and vaccinates the survivors, who were completely untouched by this massive outbreak for some reason. The movie takes place 400 years afterward, and the Goodchild regime rules Bregna with an iron fist. People are disappearing randomly, and no one asks questions.

The movie opens with Aeon being assigned a mission by the head of the resistance. They communicate secretly via some sort of telepathy / seance. The head of the resistance simply exists; we're never given any background on her. She's just a creepy-looking ginger kid, only grown up. Anyway, Aeon's mission is to take out the city's surveillance system so the rebels (or "Monicans") can escape detection.

Aeon is slated to go on the mission that night. Before that though, she has time for a boring conversation with her sister, Una, about her line of work. The characters in this movie are seriously fucking boring. Their mannerisms, the way they talk, everything feels like the actors are just going through the motions. It's like watching Episode I characters, only it's not Star Wars, so there's no excuse for me to be watching it at all. Anyway, Una invites Aeon to dinner that night, promising her a surprise and hoping she'll come back alive.

So Aeon runs off at night to sneak into the Bregna surveillance center, I guess. And what does she wear? A white jump-suit, in the middle of the fucking night. In her dastardly clever camouflage, she manages to break over 300 random guards' necks in 15 seconds. Very impressive. She enters the facility and gets to the heart of Bregna's surveillance. In essence, it's a giant suspended waterfall whose existence makes about as much sense as a man slamming his dick in a sliding glass door. Basically, little drops of water, each containing video, fall into a pool or something. Keep in mind that absolutely no one is watching these feeds. I don't know what the Monicans were so worried about, although it's possible that Aeon broke their necks off-camera.

(By the way, we're never told how Aeon has come to possess the miraculous acrobatic / neck-breaking skills she does. Trailers indicated that she was the government's "top assassin", but this isn't mentioned in the movie at all, nor is anything mentioned of a defection.)

So she pulls the plug on the surveillance pool, I guess, and it spins down a drain. Having finished her mission, she runs back to her sister's house, and it turns out that the big surprise is that Una has been shot in the head and being carted out on a stretcher! Aeon's reaction is as boring and unbelievable as the rest of the movie.

Okay so fast forward about a year, maybe more, I don't know. Aeon is in a skimpy outfit, but she still doesn't look sexy. Charlize Theron is beautiful, but she can't pull off the dark-haired, slicked Trinity look. Seeing that hair greased against her head made me want to vomit. I can't believe costume designers and makeup people can make her positively unappealing.

So she's in her skimpy outfit, and she does her Ouija session or whatever with the resistance leader. She tells Aeon that her next mission is to kill Goodchild, who Aeon holds personally responsible for Una's death. To do this, she meets up with a genetically-modified friend with hands for feet. They both make their way into The Citadel, but not before encountering security measures. These measures fall in the realm of tree pods that shoot spikey things, grass that turns into knives and ... well, that's about it. Nothing like land mines or anything. Wouldn't want to ruin the property stopping an assassin.

She gets in, and Chairman Goodchild is practicing a speech. Completely alone. She walks up to him about to shoot him, but she can't. He calls her "Catherine" and says it's good to see her. Then she gets knocked unconscious and captured. Then she breaks out with the help of silver bomb shell things. I won't explain.

So she runs back to find Goodchild to finish her assignment, but she just ends up sleeping with him instead. I suppose one's as good as the other.

The rest of the movie is boring and I'm tired of explaining it, so I'll skip to The Big Revelation. The Big Revelation is that the original vaccine for the killer disease has rendering humans sterile. To get around this problem, the Goodchilds have been harvesting dead citizens' DNA and implanting it in prospective mothers, all without their knowledge. So everyone still thinks they're having natural children. Goodchild was working on curing the sterility and had made progress. His maniac brother, who wants to thwart him for no real reason, had any women who were pregnant naturally killed to maintain the status quo. Including ... wait for it ... Aeon's sister. Also, Goodchild and Aeon were married in their previous lives. But Goodchild's asshole brother, who was an asshole even back then, ordered her DNA destroyed. But the Good Doctor Dude kept it around just in case they ever needed to make a movie.

By the way, all the harvested DNA is stored in a blimp that flies around the city.

So the asshole Goodchild burns the nice Goodchild's research notes, destroying the cure he had created. Aeon goes off to blow up the blimp thing, saying that she has faith Goodchild will find the cure again and that they all have to stop living as clones. Blimp thing blows up, Aeon and Goodchild hold hands. The end.

So why is this stupid? Here we have a society with such mastery over genetics that they can clone humans ... and yet they can't seem to handle invitro fertilization? Why the giant cloning conspiracy? Their technology is ridiculously off-the-wall; surely they can manage to combine DNA to form new people.

Basically, it was supposed to be an all visual movie. But the visuals weren't all that great, and the fights were boring. Aeon wasn't sexy at all, and the only character with any kind of depth was Goodchild. It was a giant excuse to say, "Cloning's bad ... mmmkay?" I have absolutely no interest in seeing the series after this.

[Majin Gojira]

Hear that? That is the sound of the viewers brain leaking out their ears from the sheer improbability of this film's story.

[Stravo]

By the way, all the harvested DNA is stored in a blimp that flies around the city.

This is one of those lines in a review for a godawful movie that makes you stop and just say "Alright....this really does suck."

[Eleas]

Is this a Boll film, or was it a homage?

[Arrow]

Thanks for saving me ten bucks! I was going to see this movie, but now it sounds like watching a random Voyager episode or the original BSG would be more entertaining.

[Mr Bean]

By the way, all the harvested DNA is stored in a blimp that flies around the city.

This is one of those lines in a review for a godawful movie that makes you stop and just say "Alright....this really does suck."

Plus its good to know that the people behind copying have been elminated since the good doctor can't do anything but keep all his notes in one place.

[VT-16]

And if anyone responds with "Well you didn't watch the TV show then!", it's an automatic "Shut the fuck up".

Some parts sounds like homagés to the original series, but everything else sounds boring. They should have made an animted movie instead.

Oh well, another nail in the coffin for Hollywood creativity.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Is there any teeth-licking action like in the cartoon?

[VT-16]

I believe the commercial showed a "capsule from mouth to mouth" reference, so you're halfway there. :P

[Durandal]

And if anyone responds with "Well you didn't watch the TV show then!", it's an automatic "Shut the fuck up".

Some parts sounds like homagés to the original series, but everything else sounds boring. They should have made an animted movie instead.

Oh well, another nail in the coffin for Hollywood creativity.

If this movie in any way resembles the series, it's not Hollywood's creativity that is the problem.

[Peregrin Toker]

It appears that this film has the most insane script this side of Highlander 2: The Quickening.

Scratch that, it may be even less sane.

[Grasscutter]

And if anyone responds with "Well you didn't watch the TV show then!", it's an automatic "Shut the fuck up".

Some parts sounds like homagés to the original series, but everything else sounds boring. They should have made an animted movie instead.

Oh well, another nail in the coffin for Hollywood creativity.

I think if you saw and liked the TV show you'd react even more violently toward the film. Apparently Peter Chung, the creator of the original cartoon, wasn't involved with the film at all.

Thanks for saving me $10 Durandal.

[General Soontir Fel]

Hear, hear. After years of seeing crap, I still can't believe how Hollywood can make anything look good in a trailer. Thanks for saving my money.

So she runs back to find Goodchild to finish her assignment, but she just ends up sleeping with him instead. I suppose one's as good as the other.

Hmm... a bad Mara/Luke ripoff? (Probably reading too much into it, but I think that as soon as I see "assassin in love with target" -- has that become a cliche already?)

GSF

[chaoschristian]

Yes, thank you for your review. It has saved me from wasting my time and money.

The entire concept of an Aeon movie was doubtful from the beginning because the format of the original show conflicts so much with what makes a sucessful big screen showing. And now, according to your portrayal, it has proven itself to be the mistake it is.

And while she is beautiful, Theron is not the right actress to cast as the infamous, deadly and frightfullyt erotic Aeon Flux.

Well, let's hope it dies its death quickly and becomes nothing more than a footnote to the series.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Hmm... a bad Mara/Luke ripoff? (Probably reading too much into it, but I think that as soon as I see "assassin in love with target" -- has that become a cliche already?)

That was almost the entire plot of the cartoon, I think.

[HemlockGrey]

And while she is beautiful, Theron is not the right actress to cast as the infamous, deadly and frightfullyt erotic Aeon Flux.

Does anyone else find this phrase frightfully comic?

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Aeon Flux was about as erotic as a drowned rat.

[chaoschristian]

Spanky the Dolphin:

Aeon Flux was about as erotic as a drowned rat.

Come on, impossibly pointy hair doesn't turn you on? Hornet-wasp waists and leather string bikinis don't give you a rise?

[Zed Snardbody]

Hmm... a bad Mara/Luke ripoff? (Probably reading too much into it, but I think that as soon as I see "assassin in love with target" -- has that become a cliche already?)

That was almost the entire plot of the cartoon, I think.

It had a plot

[Durandal]

Come on, impossibly pointy hair doesn't turn you on? Hornet-wasp waists and leather string bikinis don't give you a rise?

Not the ones in the movie.

[Admiral Valdemar]

And it's Æon Flux anyway.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Hmm... a bad Mara/Luke ripoff? (Probably reading too much into it, but I think that as soon as I see "assassin in love with target" -- has that become a cliche already?)

That was almost the entire plot of the cartoon, I think.

It had a plot

Sort of. In the first season, before the characters talked, each episode was I believe Aeon going on a mission, with her dying violently at the conclusions. In the second season, they decided to introduce a plot and have the characters spout off meaningless clap-trap dialogue.

Spanky the Dolphin:

Aeon Flux was about as erotic as a drowned rat.

Come on, impossibly pointy hair doesn't turn you on? Hornet-wasp waists and leather string bikinis don't give you a rise?

No.

[VT-16]

It had a plot What the fuck?

Well, each individual episode was its own self-contained universe anyway, so if you're expecting a storyline, it's not there. However there is a plot to every episode, they are only self-contained and often centered around an "idea" rather than a really coherent story.

Basically, I had ill tidings about this project ever since I saw Theron's hairstyle. MTV can go fuck themselves.

[Stark]

I've gotta say, just looking at promo material and seeing the 'white jumpsuit' and 'black jumpsuit' outfits is enough to put me off. Blergh.

[Noble Ire]

I've gotta say, just looking at promo material and seeing the 'white jumpsuit' and 'black jumpsuit' outfits is enough to put me off. Blergh.

Really, even if the film got really good reviews, I probably wouldn't see it because Theron looks so awful, in any of the outfits she wears I've seen. I don't see how anyone could find her make-up/character design erotic or even bearable. The first two things I thought when I saw her slick hair were "Adolf" and then "Snape". Gah.